Janeane Garofalo
Issue #20
and her majority report
By Maysan Haydar
Published: June 1st, 2004 | 12:00am
Janeane Garofalo has added another hyphen to her list of jobs. The comedian-actor-author-activist began her gig, on March 31, as host of a show on the new left-leaning talk radio network, Air America Radio. The network was developed as an answer to the right-wing stronghold on talk radio and features Al Franken, Chuck D, Laura Flanders, and radio veteran Randi Rhodes. The network airs in several major markets, and can also be heard online at airamericaradio.com.
Garofalo’s show, The Majority Report, airs weeknights from 8 p.m. to 11 p.m. In the first month of the show, she interviewed historian Howard Zinn and Feminist Majority President Eleanor Smeal, among others. Garofalo says the response has been overwhelming and that the weblog associated with the show (majorityreportradio.com/weblog) crashed due to high traffic.
As for her acting career, Garofalo has two movies coming out soon: Stay with Ewan McGregor and Naomi Watts, and Duane Hopwood with David Schwimmer.
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On the day of the interview for Venus, Garofalo called to say she was going to be 10 minutes late, which instantly chalked points in her favor. That she was going to be late because she was trying to sort out an absentee ballot (she was going to be on location on March 3, the day of the New York City Democratic Primary), confirmed that she is indeed worthy of the admiration and iconic status she’s been elevated to in the eyes of twenty- and thirty-somethings.
She arrives at New York’s Gramercy Park Hotel, and her uniform is a walking political billboard. She’s wearing a “Stand Up for Choice!” Planned Parenthood T-shirt, a cap that says "Harvey Milk School" (an NYC high school for gay and lesbian students), and her backpack reads like a primer of pressing issues — an example button says "Have a Boss? Get a Union."
The conversation began with Garofalo announcing a shocker: author Ann Coulter is an Andy Kaufman act.
"Andy was at Surf Reality on the Lower East Side as Ann Coulter; he did not die of lung cancer. That is the great hoax," Garofalo said. "He said he was coming back, said it was a hoax, and it’s true. I’m blowing the lid off that one — Andy Kaufman is Ann Coulter. That’s [the reason] the behavior is so bizarre, so belligerent, so out there. I want Venus to break that first. I can’t explain Laura Ingraham."
The only time I’ve liked Chris Matthews [host of MSNBC’s Hardball] was when he flat out told Ann to shut up — that she was just making things up. I was floored.
It’s about time. Bill Maher — unfortunately, they’re like bestest buds — [said] on some show, when she was going off: “You just make this stuff up.” And she said, “No I don’t, in point of fact …” and that’s when you know that she’s about to lie. Whenever she says “in point of fact,” because that’s a way for her to pause and think of her next whopper. That’s a little red flag. Whenever you see her on a talk show and she says, “Uh, actually in point of fact …” that’s her cue, and I’ve noticed the biggest whoppers come on the tail end of “point of fact.”
I’ve been scared to read her books.
Don’t do it. Because that’s a problem I’m having with my book [the upcoming Simon & Schuster release, For Those About to Salute, We Will Rock You] is, fun is fun, but there comes a point when you see enough of Fox news, and enough of MSNBC and you hear enough of right-wing radio, where you realize that this isn’t fun, this isn’t funny, this is dangerous. New York Post, this is not only coarsening the culture, it is dumbing us down. It’s in the same genre as morning-drive radio. That’s what your news is now.
Except the DJ names aren’t as bad.
You may not have “The Fat Man and Bean Bean” or whatever the fuck it is, but [the news] is as bad. I have been asked, this is a fact, on no less than four shows since Super Bowl Sunday to discuss Janet Jackson’s boob. I’ve been asked to go on Nightline, Deborah Norville, another CNBC show, Maria Bartiromo, and CNN to discuss …
Whether or not it was intentional?
No, no, no. “What is this world coming to?” or “How low can you go?” — that type of stuff. First of all, I’m not going to go on, I didn’t see it, and when I got the phone messages saying “the boob flap,” I was thinking, “Dude, Toby Keith?” In my mind, that’s the only boob I can come up with. But do they want me to talk about Toby Keith, knowing that I personally find him to be repugnant? His prideful ignorance … he’s one of those guys who’s just, like, “Kill 'em all and let God sort them out.” His politics is bumper stickers. He had a doctored photo of Natalie Maines kissing Saddam on his tour and that’s the dangerous stuff. Because in the wrong hands, you have a fan who’s a little not right and they think it’s perfectly OK to harm her.
It’s the same thing when Ann Coulter does Sean Hannity [on Fox News’ Hannity & Colmes]. You say enough negative untrue things about a person and there’s enough unstable people who will translate that into “Oh, it’s OK to harm them” — that this is a license to harm because clearly they’re dangerous.
When you hear enough right-wing lies about people who are in the Democratic Party, [they] are going to move into fair-game territory for psychopaths, because right-wing rhetoric attracts a very dangerous element of our culture. And there’s nothing wrong with being a Republican; there’s nothing wrong with being conservative. These people are neither of those things. The right-wingers on Fox and MSNBC are a whole new breed of … I guess you could call them new-new conservatives. They don’t believe in the Constitution, they don’t believe in the democratic process, they don’t believe in First Amendment rights, and they are the type of people who applauded Bush’s installment in 2000 by a right-wing Supreme Court. That’s how they prefer to have their politics go, with the people not being involved at all.
How bad do things have to get before you think people notice that this is all a sham? Just before you showed up, I was watching the Bush press conference; he was talking about all the successes they’ve had in Afghanistan and Iraq ...
(laughs) Which are zero.
But they’ve changed their wording from “saved the world from an immediate threat” to …
Gathering threat.
Yeah, he said, “Grave and gathering threat,” and even if you’re not politically inclined, even if you don’t pay attention to these things, it wasn’t that long ago that the message was “if we don’t move now, he’ll kill us first." Do they expect people to just forget?
Sure. This particular strain of Republican Party, which as I’ve said is not really Republican, [is] radically right wing, the new-new … I want to use a “u.”
With an umlaut over it, like nü metal.
(laughs) the Nü-Metal Republicans — they depend upon ignorance and apathy — that’s what makes the machine go, that greases the machine. You must be a type of person that fits into these categories to support George Bush:
Either A, not a political person, you don’t pay attention one way or the other, you just vote incumbent, it’s not on your radar screen, you don’t care one way or the other, the sound bites are good enough for you, whatever.
2. You have zero attention span, amnesia, historical amnesia, and cannot remember what you had for breakfast yesterday.
3. You’re just a nasty motherfucker and you admire the cruelty and you admire the coldness and the “kill 'em all, let God sort em out” Toby Keith–like ethic that the New-New Republican, the Nü-Metal Republican Party brings to it.
That’s the three ways. For these types of George Bush enthusiasts, seeing is not believing; believing is seeing. Facts are not at all in play.
Actually, they’re kind of a hindrance.
The question of how bad does it have to be for people to notice is not really the question. The question is when does the mainstream media do its job? Because the mainstream media does everything it can to keep legitimate information from you. They are not your friend, they don’t work for the public trust. They don’t give you history, context, nuance, or perspective on their stories. They don’t allow a person to understand their world or their political process. That’s not what they’re there for. They are basically there as corporate entities to make sure the status quo is maintained. They basically are part of the military industrial complex — it’s the military industrial cable news complex. Or military industrial news-tainment complex. Do you know what I mean? It’s the same behemoth that is the opiate of the masses. It’s not religion.
Well, then, where does the reputation that the news has of being a “liberal media” come from?
It’s a nice trick started about 30 years ago by people who criticized Reagan’s fitness for office. Well, what did Lee Atwater and his operatives come up with? “I know we just say that anybody that criticizes Reagan or Republicans has a liberal bias. That’s what we will say until it is believed. Until it is common wisdom, conventional wisdom. And it’s as much of an urban legend as the vanishing hitchhiker. It’s in the same genre of the girl in your high school class who had a frozen hot dog stuck in her. It’s right up there with the gerbil in Richard Gere’s anus.
You mean that’s not true?
No, it isn’t true! It is to political culture as the gerbil in Richard Gere’s anus is to pop culture. Or Rod Stewart’s passing out onstage because he had a quart of jism in his belly.
I thought that was one of the New Kids On the Block.
That’s must be the nü metal version of the story. The myth that there’s a liberal bias in the media is an urban legend. [One] that has been so effective on the masses because most people don’t care enough to … if there was a liberal bias in the media, our culture would reflect it and it would be a good thing. To be a liberal is a very good thing to be. It means you care about social justice, gender equality, civil rights, human rights, environmental protection …
Means you have the essentials for being a good person.
Everything good we have in our culture is a liberal reform, from the Emancipation Proclamation to seat belts to child labor laws to the 40-hour work week to the eight-hour work day to women voting to birth control. These are all liberal reforms. Without these things, we’d still have a feudal society. Which is where the right wing would prefer that we are. The new-new right doesn’t want democracy; they can’t function under a democracy and the corporate media makes sure that we don’t function as an active democracy, case in point: Super Bowl Sunday, the boob flap notwithstanding. Moveon.org purchases air time to air “Child’s Pay.”
They didn’t let them, did they?
Would not — just absolutely blocked it. So CBS ostensibly works for you and me, but they don’t. They work for the Bush administration. They want the FCC rules relaxed, so they don’t want to do anything that would perhaps compromise [Federal Communications Commission Chairman] Michael Powell’s decision-making process. So they don’t put on a commercial that doesn’t even mention George Bush’s name, it just talks about the deficit.
Which one won the “Bush in 30 Seconds” political ad contest?
“Child’s Pay” which is basically pointing to [the question of] who will pay down this deficit? Your children. That’s it, that’s the commercial. CBS would not allow the democratic process to play out on Super Bowl Sunday. They just said no. What you will hear about in the news is Janet Jackson’s boob and Michael Jackson, Robert Blake, all these things, because celebrity culture is used as a diversionary tactic so you don’t notice how nude the emperor is. George Bush is probably one of the least competent presidents in the history of this country. Probably one of the worst things that’s ever happened to this country is the combination of 9/11 and George W. Bush. [He] is in no way fit for office, he probably never really wanted it; this is a Dr. Phil issue for that family to work out. He is not a political creature, he’s not intellectually curious. He, by his own admission, does not read the papers. He works out a lot, which is fine.
He should have been able to keep his job of running that baseball team.
That’s who he is. Affable guy. Affable sports-team owner who makes lots of money from insider trading and enjoys all the things that being born with a silver spoon affords you. That’s who he is. Why he’s President is because of other people. Dick Cheney is really the guy that calls a lot of the shots, but my prediction is you’ll see Dick Cheney take the fall for a lot of things, and Giuliani will be named as Bush’s running mate. That’s just my opinion. You heard it here first, Venus. I also say that Osama will be found during either the Republican or the Democratic National Convention. I really believe that.
The Bush family and the bin Laden family have such a long history. I’m sure that Osama’s family has an address for his and that they could pass along the information …
Oh, they know where Osama bin Laden is, for crying out loud. I got no problem with [the Bushs] being friends with the bin Ladens. That would be racist to say “how dare you be friends with the Saudis.” In fact, I like that kind of internationalism, that people do business together, that’s not the issue. The problem is the secretiveness around it, that [the Bushs] want to pretend that they never dealt with the bin Ladens, and that the house of Saud and the White House aren’t like that [holds up fingers crossed over each other]. There’s nothing wrong with Saudis and Americans being friends. That’s fine. For many administrations, because of oil, the American government and the house of Saud — it’s the White House of Saud. It is one and the same. Republicans, Democrats, it doesn’t matter. That’s not really a problem. What is the problem is when security issues get hidden from us. Nine-eleven, there is obviously a Saudi connection, the majority of the hijackers are Saudi nationals, and there were two Egyptian nationals, I believe …
And a Lebanese man. His poor family kept insisting for weeks afterward that he couldn’t be one of them because he was so Western, he drank, he had a girlfriend …
Some theories say that it wasn’t religion for them, it was a political action, due to the sanctions on the Iraqis, the military bases in sacred areas in Saudi Arabia, and the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. These are not religious per-se issues. Osama bin Laden may be a religious fanatic, [but] not all of the middle-class, educated hijackers were fanatics like Osama and, I don’t know if this is true, but not all of them knew they were going to die. I’ve read that some thought they were hijacking planes for real.
And that they were going to go somewhere, land somewhere?
And make demands. Supposedly only a few of them, who actually drove the planes, knew that it was a suicide mission. Not all of them knew that, and I guess if you hedge your bets, the less who know something like that, the better chance you have of pulling it off.
Wow, I’ve never heard that before.
I have no idea if that’s true or not, that’s just one of a million things you read on the Internet. But it’s not ridiculous. It’s not ridiculous that you could get middle-class, educated guys who are not religious fanatics to say, “Yeah, I’ll hijack a plane,” but may not be willing to kill all those people and themselves in the process.
This administration, all the shills that work for them in the media, and there are many. Many, many, many. [They] are people who would prefer that we do not have a democracy. And we don’t anyway, we never do, we have a managed democracy, with a self-censoring media. A self-censoring media! That is the ultimate! In a country we could theoretically have a free press; you have men and women who work within the corporate media who choose to self-censor. Now the worst offenders obviously are Fox, followed closely by MSNBC, who think it’s a good idea to outfox Fox. For the ratings. Which to me is like saying, “I’d like to outrape that guy. He was so violent, and I’m gonna fucking outrape that guy.” That’s how nasty a goal it is for MSNBC by hiring Joe Scarborough and Michael Savage. You know, they deliberately sought out right-wing windbags, provocateurs who are not tethered to the truth in any way, shape, or form. They don’t let facts get in the way of a good rant. MSNBC actively sought that out.
Michael Savage hasn’t been allowed back on the air after he said that horrible thing about wanting gay people to get AIDS.
No, [but] he’s on the radio still and he writes books. Why was he hired in the first place? They didn’t know he was a right-wing nut? Michael Weiner? Self-hating Jew? So to say there’s a liberal bias in the media is hilarious and the only way you could say that is again, I’ll use the three types of personalities. One you’re an absolutist on gun control and reproductive rights. You’re an absolutist, meaning you are absolutely for guns, no questions asked and absolutely against reproductive rights. Then, you would say yes, there is a liberal bias in the media, because they always leave [those] as sort-of open issues. Two, you’re very stupid and you’ve never seen the news. Three, you’re a liar. Those are the only three ways you could say with a straight face there is a liberal bias in the media. There is no other way you could say it. Because clearly, if there was a liberal bias in the media, 60% of Americans wouldn’t have thought Saddam was involved in 9/11.
Did you read the Katha Pollitt column about how infuriating all the criticism is that Howard Dean’s wife has had over not being a stage wife, choosing to continue with her work as opposed to traveling with her husband?
It was so great !
It was great, and completely on point. She’s the perfect example of an American woman, an excellent role model. They’ve had a long, happy marriage, she has a great career, why is there a problem that she doesn’t drop everything to just smile and stand behind him on the road?
That’s exactly right. That Katha Pollitt “Subject To Debate” from The Nation should be mandatory reading. That’s absolutely right. And the fact that the excruciating Diane Sawyer grills Dr. Judith Steinberg Dean ,and I think she had 97 questions and 90 of them were negative.
How is this possible, that in the year 2004 we have to endure that nonsense? And that’s what people have to start [asking] in their personal lives, and if they have access to public forum as I do, say that the time for trying to explain things is long past due. It has to be stated emphatically that that is not acceptable. The Diane Sawyer interview of Dr. Judith Steinberg Dean was unacceptable. And sexist. And excruciating.
And you don’t even have to be pro-Dean or pro-Democrat; all you have to do is to believe in some journalistic ethics, some minimum standard for journalism.
But there are none! Everything is permitted. Here’s another thing that people like Laura Ingraham and right-wing pundit Sean Hannity, what have you, Joe Scarborough, pretend that Hollywood is a problem. Now the reason they do this is so they don’t have to do their job and do any reporting. It’s very simple and it’s easy. And it’s a time-waster and it’s a time distracter, to distract you from the incredibly incompetent president they support. Let’s talk about Hollywood, let’s talk about how Hollywood is ruining the news, let’s talk about how Hollywood is subverting your children, let’s talk about how Hollywood is degrading culture. Now, none of this is true; what is degrading culture and what is bad for families is globalization, unfair tax policies, unemployment, environmental degradation, soaring budget deficits …
God, the recent figure, what is it, 200 billion, 400 billion …
It’s like 500 billion.
And that’s the deficit, not the debt. That number shouldn’t be anywhere near the word “deficit.”
Yeah, and guess what, it’s bad for families. Tom Green isn’t, [the deficit] is bad for families. So, what news-tainers do, like Bill O’Reilly and his ilk, is they tell you about Eminem and Tom Green and how they’re destroying your family values and society. Now this is a neat trick, yes another neat trick that the Republicans use so that you follow that red herring, and you don’t notice that corporate crime and right-wing Republican policies are destroying your families livelihood and that your children will be paying this deficit down for years to come and it will put them at a disadvantage for their future. You know, they have to start at a negative. They’re not on a level playing field. They start with a great monkey on their back, of paying down this deficit. And they also start with a degraded public school system because there’s not enough money for the public school system it’s all going to the military and to Pentagon contracts and to a bloated Pentagon environment that is debauched and degraded. This particular administration is not about you and me. It is crony capitalism and profiteerism, that is the basic lifeblood of this party, of this particular Republican Party, the right wing of the Republican Party. That’s it. And some of the religious fanatics in the party, like George Bush and John Ashcroft and some of the judges that he hires, some of them believe that the end of days is nigh.
They don’t really particularly care for the existence of Israel.
Oh no, they don’t like the Jews.
No, their anti-Semitism hasn’t suddenly been cured, but they are very in favor of keeping the bloodshed going there because it’s a surefire way to bring Jesus back. And then they get to go to the kingdom.
They get to float up and the rest of us can burn. So I think they think “let’s smash and grab and take all our money with us when we go when we float up and the dirty Jews that don’t convert burn.” Yeah, so some of the nimrods believe that the end of days is nigh, so to quote Ed Helms from The Daily Show, you don’t trash a hotel room unless you know you’re checking out tomorrow. [T]hat’s their philosophy. But then you just have the nonreligious just corporate profiteerists who don’t believe the end of days is nigh but they do believe in smash [snaps] and grab [snaps]. It’s called business as usual. That any powerful body in any nation in this world seeks to extend their power and entrench their power. That’s what this is about, it’s not a conspiracy, it’s not like “Skull and Bones” and secret meetings with the Masons. It’s fucking business. It’s business, business, business, and who can make the most money and that’s it and everybody else be damned. There’s, to me, a real neo-Nietzschian aspect to it, of a deliberate misinterpretation of the superman: the ubermensch. Meaning, yeah, there are some people in society that are more powerful and smarter and they deserve it. And then, the rest of the herd can go fuck themselves. But Nietzsche’s real superman was, [that] there are people that are smarter, [and] more powerful, and then it is your responsibility to lift the culture to give back to help. But a lot of people like to forget that second part, which is what the neo-cons have done deliberately. They’re more in the Ayn Rand, Hannah Arendt school of “ahh fuck you, stupid.”
If you can’t pull yourself up …
Right. It’s a moral failing, [and] you must deserve it. If you are a lesser-than, you must deserve it. That’s their thinking. And I think a lot of them are real “white makes right”–ers. They would never admit that, but I think there’s a lot of racism left over in the Republican Party from the break during the days of civil rights in ’64. [A] lot of them fear the Black man, and when I say the Black man, I mean anyone of color. That’s the underpinnings of the conservative party, from the Emancipation Proclamation to the year 2004; you just change the black man’s face every once in a while. And it’s a Latin[o] man, it’s a woman with a head scarf, it’s a Palestinian, it’s a Pakistani, it’s somebody who goes to a mosque, it’s fear of that person. There are some people who deep down identify with that, and they would like to see segregation. That’s their unconscious wish.
It’s really easy to fuel general fear, with all the hype about “sleeper cells,” like your next-door neighbor could be part of a terrorist network. I don’t know if it’s intentional to make people suspicious. I don’t think it went into effect, but I know they wanted to start a volunteer corps of people to report on their friends and neighbors.
Operation TIPS. Oh, that’s a good idea. Yeah, I want the New York Post reader and the Fox watcher to give me a tip, and today on the Internet, Osaka has nukes. The guy on dialysis in the cave has nukes and we can’t find that 6-foot-5 guy on dialysis. Why would we be able to see him with any clarity? Everybody is 6-foot-5 and on dialysis over there, for chrissakes.
He has got a couple of his sons with him in the cave, who come and go as they please and he seems to have access to details of all the current events. So if they have the directions and Internet or cable access, how remote can it be?
And haven’t people interviewed him from other publications? So they know where he is, right? I had heard that a guy from Newsweek did an interview with him, so if the guy from Newsweek knows … But like I said, he’ll be rescued, not rescued, captured — why I said rescued is because it rescues George Bush — during either the Republican or the Democratic National Convention, or if another Halliburton story breaks. Because the Halliburton scandal broke on Friday and lo and behold Saddam was captured on Saturday. And ask yourself this, why would Saddam be in a place where he couldn’t get out of? He was being help hostage by what is it, the KPU, the Kurdish whatever? They were negotiating for the $25 million reward.
So what’s a girl to do to get past the façade? What’s the “starter kit” on getting active, learning more?
First of all, register to vote. First and foremost. Secondly, start subscribing to alternative news sources. Magazine-wise, that could be Mother Jones, The Progressive, The Nation, In These Times, Ms., Venus … there’s magazines that give you news outside of the mainstream news source. Start listening to Pacifica Radio — and NPR, to some degree. Which some people would argue that that’s not the greatest either, but it’s better than corporate radio. Read more. A lot of people set aside an hour for the gym, they floss, they get facials. This is as important as that. For every hour you put to the gym, you put an hour to reading about your government and your world from outside news sources. Get on the Internet and check out salon.com, buzzflash, check out blogs, check out The Guardian online. If you go to alternative bookstores, you can find flyers for talks that go on all the time. If you go to [NYC’s] St. Mark’s Books or Shakespeare & Co., look at the flyers on the corkboard. There’s going to be a talk here or there, like Arundhati Roy is talking at the 92nd St. Y or September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows is giving a talk on the stonewalling of the 9/11 investigation and how you can get involved in that.
You can join Moveon.org, you can join Act For Change, you can join various online activist organizations that show you every day how to easily write to your congressman. Find out who your congressman is, find our who your senators are, write to them. Find out how you can write to ABC, CBS, NBC, and ask them questions about why certain stories aren’t covered. Ask them why Jerry Falwell and Ann Coulter are legitimate news sources and Greg Palast and Noam Chomsky are not. Ask them why you don’t see the same news on network TV that you do when you have a dish. Ask them those questions. Ask them why you don’t see any footage of suffering Iraqi civilians and Afghani civilians, ask them why you don’t see American soldiers actively speaking to the press, why don’t you hear about Military Families Speak Out, why don’t you hear about bringthemhomenow.org. Why don’t you hear stories from these people? Why don’t we have coverage of the funerals? … In the way that you floss, this should be a part of your day, because it is the most important thing you can do for yourself.
WRITER'S NOTE: The publication date on Garofalo's collection of essays on pop culture and politics, For Those About To Salute, We Will Rock You, was recently pushed back. Garofalo says that with the current political situation, it would be premature to issue essays before some resolution. “With Iraqgate and the findings of the 9/11 Commission coming, I don’t want a book that’s already passed its expiration date."
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