Posted by
RME KRNL on Wednesday, April 29, 2009 3:05:22 AM
(ADVISORY: This is long and some of it is sarcastic, so you might want to leisurely read it with a glass of wine or something. And if you're a conservative, please send it to some of your liberal friends. After all, they deserve a good read with a glass of wine, too.)
Janeane Garofalo, comedian, actress, left-wing political activist and failed liberal TV talk show host, appeared on MSNBC's Countdown show for an interview by Keith Olbermann (Monsieur Pomposity d' Blowhard and Cornell Agriculture School grad) about the April 15th TEA Party demonstrations which occurred in cities across the country and were attended by an estimated 300,000-plus "ordinary Americans."
After Olbermann opened with the following (which I'm sure he thought was deucedly clever and witty), he invited Ms. Garofalo to join him (two peas in a pod if ever there were any). Excerpts follow, with my comments in brackets:
Olbermann: Congratulations, Pensacola tea-baggers. You got spunk. And despite the hatred on display, few of you actually violated the penal code. But tea-bagging has now petered out. It ain't what it used to be. And when you co-opt the next holiday, Fourth of July, try to adopt a holiday food that does not invite double entendres, like, you know, franks and beans.
[Uh, "...hatred on display," Keith? What facts -- yes, I know they're inconvenient sometimes but you really should back up what you say with them once in a while -- do you have for that, beyond maybe one or two protesters with signs asking about Obama's as yet still undisclosed real birth certificate? And, why is that anyway? Obama could do that at any time, of his own volition, just as he could finally release his college and law school admission and performance records. What does he have to hide? Oh, sorry, I don't want you labeling me as a "hater" too. Back to your clever commentary. "...few of you actually violated the penal code." Aside from your use of "penal" perhaps being an inaccurate allusion to a male body part, actually, Keithster, despite there being hundreds of thousands of protesters at many different protest venues throughout the whole country, there have been NO factual -- there's that pesky word again -- reports of ANY codes, legal or otherwise, being broken. The TEA Party protests were much more peaceful displays of our national rights to assemble and free speech than, say, gays trespassing into churches and disrupting religious services, Code Pink shouting down speakers with whom they disagree, or PETA advocates committing assault and battery by throwing red dye on people wearing fur. "But tea-bagging has now petered out." Oh, I'll bet you were especially proud of that nifty, little double entendre, huh, Keith? What a clever man you are! And, finally, "...when you co-opt the next holiday, ...try to adopt a holiday food that does not invite double entendres, like, you know, franks and beans." Actually, you're straining a bit here, Keith, because tea is a drink, not a food, and even though it might invite double entendres, that doesn't mean that such a clever man as yourself must necessarily engage in them, does it? I mean, you are smart enough to avoid the obvious, however tempting, aren't you? Or so you would have us believe, at least. Oh, and also, here's where your college Ag school English courses may have let you down a little bit, because when you say "...try to adopt a holiday food that does not invite double entendres, like, you know, franks and beans," I'm unsure if you're advocating that franks and beans would, or would not, invite double entendres -- like, you know, what do you mean? Well, more than enough on Mr. Olbermann. That's already the most I've even thought about him in months.]
Garofalo: You know, there is nothing more interesting than seeing a bunch of racists become confused and angry at a speech they're not quite sure what he's saying. It sounds right to them, and then it doesn't make sense, which -- let's be very honest about what this is about. It's not about bashing Democrats. It's not about taxes. They have no idea what the Boston Tea Party was about.
[And there's nothing more liberally biased and inflammatory than labeling a bunch of people you don't even know as racists, Janeane. And, by all means, let's do be very honest about what this is about: You don't know what you're talking about. You were right, however, about it not just being about bashing Democrats. It was about bashing Democrats and Republicans alike. And it was very definitely about taxes. Didn't you know the "tea" in TEA Party protests was an acronym for Taxed Enough Already, or did that little factoid elude your intellect? And you also have no idea what the TEA Party protesters may or may not have known about the Boston Tea Party. You weren't at any of the protests, nor did you talk to any of the participants, much less quiz them on American history.]
Olbermann: That's right.
Garofalo: They don't know their history at all. This is about hating a black man in the White House. This is racism, straight up. That is nothing but a bunch of tea-bagging rednecks. And there is no way around that. And, you know, you can tell these type of right right-wingers anything and they'll believe it, except the truth. You tell them the truth and they become, it's like showing Frankenstein's monster fire. They become confused and angry and highly volatile.
[No, Janeane, you, and other liberals like you, want to make the TEA Party protests about hating a black man in the White House and about racism, so you can discount the protest and the protesters, who, the facts are, were a mix of Democrats, Republicans, Independents, conservatives, liberals, moderates and Libertarians -- ALL angry to one degree or another, yes, but about profligate government spending, growth and taxation without (proper) representation. Does that last phrase sound familiar? It should, with all you claim to know about the Boston Tea Party and all. The Brits unfairly taxed the American colonists without listening to them, so the Americans felt they had no effective representation, that they weren't being heard, much less listened to. And it's a very similar thing with the TEA Party protesters, who have watched the Obama Administration and their so-called Congressional "representatives" vote for more and more taxing and spending, with which the people they are supposed to represent disagree.]
Olbemann: Mm-hmm.
Garofalo: That guy caused in them feelings they don't know, because they're limbic brain. We've discussed this before. The limbic brain inside a right-winger or Republican or conservative or your average white power activist. The limbic brain is much larger in their head space than in a reasonable person, and it's pushing against the frontal lobe, so their synapses are misfiring.
[Now, as you might conclude from the title of this article, this is my favorite part of Garofalo's MSNBC rant -- the "limbic brain" argument. It seems to be a subject on which she fancies herself quite the expert, despite the fact that I can find no biographical data on Ms. Garofalo ever having graduated from college or having taken a psychology, psychiatry or sociology course, much less having a college degree of any kind, except perhaps an honorary (imaginary) one in psycho-babble. (She did attend Madison High School in Madison, New Jersey, subsequently graduating, Class of '82, from James E. Taylor High School in Katy, Texas, after being transferred her senior year. She also studied History at Providence College, a Catholic college in Rhode Island.) What she says sounds good and impressive and therefore persuasive, but she just doesn't know what she's talking about. The closest I could come to her psycho-babble limbic brain argument was this: Merriam-Webster Online does not define "limbic brain" per se but does define the "limbic system" as: "a group of subcortical structures (as the hypothalamus, the hippocampus and the amygdala) of the brain that are concerned especially with emotion and motivation." Well, Janeane, as I have written before, since liberals generally feel and conservatives generally think (just listen to the way each of them talks and you will hear it), I could make the counter-argument that since the limbic system relates to governing emotion (feelings), the "limbic brain" is more likely a liberal, rather than a conservative, "malady." And my counter-argument sounds just as plausible as your limbic brain argument does.]
Garofalo: As long as those things are in the collective conscious and unconscious, the Republicans will have some votes, Fox News will have some viewers. But what else have they got? If they didn't do that, who's going to watch, you know what I mean? They've got, they have tackled that elusive clam -- clam, I said "clam." You know, the clam demo, the 18 to 35 clam demo. Klan, Klan, with a "K," demo. But, you know, who else is Fox talking to? I mean, what is it? Urban, older white guys? And the women who suffer from Stockholm Syndrome again. There's a lot of Stockholm Syndrome, is what I'm saying, ultimately.
[Gee, there's so much of Garofalo's blatant misinformation and lack of factual substance (otherwise known as BS) packed into this little paragraph that I hardly know where to begin. "...the collective conscious and unconscious"? Who are you pretending to be now, Janeane - Freud, Jung, Nietzsche, who? "...Fox News will have some viewers. But what else have they got? If they didn't do that, who's going to watch, you know what I mean?" Well, no, I don't know what you mean, and you obviously don't know what you're talking about - again, either. First of all, what was all that "...clam demo...Klan, with a 'K,' demo" stuttering about? Were you just having a limbic brain overload and your mouth was simply working faster than your brain? Whose "synapses were misfiring" then? Secondly, I want all female Fox News viewers to know that Ms. Garofalo apparently thinks you cannot think for yourselves, that you only watch Fox News because of the psychological disorder known as the Stockholm Syndrome, which can be defined as: "An extraordinary (psychological) phenomenon in which hostages begin to identify with and grow sympathetic to their captor." It was named for an episode that occurred in Stockholm in August 1973, when an armed Swedish robber took some bank workers captive and held them for six days, after which many of them identified with him and defended his actions. So, while Ms. Garofalo is obviously a free-thinking, outspoken, liberal woman, all of you female Fox News viewers are simply conservative female drones who are held "captive" by Fox News because you have the psychological disorder known as the Stockholm Syndrome. Anyway, here are some more of those, as "Al the Goracle" would call them, inconvenient truths. So far as Fox News, or FNC, goes, TVNewser, an independent outfit which tracks such things, reports the following (I excerpted two random samples):
- For Sunday, April 19, in the much desired 25-54 age demographic, Total day: FNC 245, HLN 149, MSNBC 149, CNN 148, and Prime time: FNC 268, MSNBC 178, CNN 168, HLN 162.
- For Wednesday, April 22, in the much desired 25-54 demographic, Total day: FNC: 391, CNN: 185, HLN: 157, MSNBC: 125, and Prime time: FNC: 667, HLN: 310, MSNBC: 301, CNN: 268.
TVNewser again, as of April 28: "Fox News beat CNN and MSNBC combined in every hour from 6am to Midnight in both total viewers and the 25-54 demo for April 2009. FNC had the top 11 cable news programs in total viewers and 12 of the top 15 in the demo. FNC is the #2 network in total viewers on all of cable. From 9am on, every program grew by more than 60% in the demo. The 5pm hour, now occupied by Glenn Beck, is up 212% in the demo and up 128% in total viewers. Your World with Neil Cavuto is up 102% in the demo and up 60% in total viewers. On the Record with Greta Van Susteren is up 75% in demo and up 55% in total viewers. Also in demo, FOX Report is up 75%, Special Report 70%, The O'Reilly Factor 74% and Hannity 64%. (The) Fox & Friends (morning show) has now been #1 for 90 consecutive months, Studio B with Shepard Smith for 80 consecutive months and The O'Reilly Factor for over 100 months."
So, Ms. Garofalo, the FACTS are that Fox News has more than just "some viewers" and FNC consistently garnering the most desired demographic, as well as total viewership overall, answers your question about "who's going to watch" - and it's not just "urban, older white guys" as you would seemingly like to believe. In FACT, according to TVNewser's monitoring, FNC not only is being watched by a pretty diverse audience, it is, as one might say, literally beating its competition's brains out in the process.]
Ms. Garofalo is bicoastal, living in New York City and Los Angeles, two places which I am sure keep her aware of the real pulse of America, and has this as one of her many personal quotes: "Our country is founded on a sham. Our forefathers were slave-owning, rich, white guys who wanted it their way. So when I see the American flag, I go, 'Oh my God, you're insulting me.' That you can have a gay parade on Christopher Street in New York, with naked men and women on a float cheering, 'We're here, we're (a rhyming word beginning with "q" which Townhall.com won't let me use in this quote)!' - that's what makes my heart swell. Not the flag, but a gay naked man or woman burning the flag. I get choked up with pride."
Well, er, okay then, Janeane. I think we know pretty much where you're coming from now.