AVC: You did spend last year as a very visible target of right-wing hate because of that comment you made about teabaggers.
JG: But I don’t know if it’s on anybody’s mind. It’s on the teabagger-type mind, but I don’t know if it’s on normal people’s minds. Does that make sense? The teabagger thing and the right-wing thing—they pick easy targets, and a female in the entertainment industry is low-hanging fruit. It’s very easy to mock and marginalize people in general who are in the entertainment industry, for some reason. But then definitely there’s the double standard and the misogyny that goes through it as well. They’ve got no problem with Will Ferrell or Alec Baldwin or Viggo Mortensen, but they tend to take issue when a female says something. It’s just an easier person to bully. And they just love making mountains out of molehills. It’s just a fact. If you don’t recognize the racist element in the teabag movement, you’re either dishonest, or you’ve never seen the teabag movement, or heard of it, or been acquainted with it in any way.
AVC: You’ve also been called out by name and invited to tea parties by people like Deroy Murdock and other African-Americans within the Tea Party—people who probably don’t know you from anything else—ostensibly just so they can prove to you that there are minorities involved, so therefore they aren’t racists.
JG: But not really. They’ve put that out on their side. They have never really invited me. They claim that they have, but they really haven’t. And having said that, I would never go. They will always say, “I invited so and so, and she declined,” when they’ve never gotten in touch with me. [Laughs.] But then also, a lot of the things they say I say, I’ve never said. They just make things up whole cloth. There’s a fake Facebook me. There’s a fake me Twittering. Sometimes, when it was at the height of right-wing nonsense picking on me, there would be a fake me writing letters to the editor. Just totally not even something I’ve ever said, that will then become part of the echo chamber. But they also pretend they’ve asked me lots of things they’ve never asked me.
AVC: I’m glad you mentioned that fake Twitter account. I was wondering if you were aware of that.
JG: I am aware of it. There’s unfortunately nothing I can do about it.
AVC: Well, you could get your own verified Twitter account, just to get your name back.
JG: I would, but why would I do that?
AVC: Just to take it away from this guy, I guess. He has like 6,000 followers.
JG: I don’t even know why somebody’s Twittering as me. I don’t understand it, and I wish that it would stop. But there’s nothing that can be done. It’s so terrible.
AVC: And there are some blogs that have actually quoted from it as though it’s a quote from you.
JG: Oh God! Would you do me a huge favor, and in this article please reiterate that that is not me?
AVC: Sure, although I think it’s pretty obvious when you look at it that it’s just a guy using it to promote his own Internet radio station—like it’ll say something about teabaggers, then “Oh, and I really love this radio station!”
JG: [Laughs.] I didn’t know that. That is so awful. Where is his account and stuff?
AVC: It’s just “Janeane Garofal” without the “o” at the end.
JG: Ah! Janeane Garofal! That’s so weird that somebody would do that.
AVC: Well, that’s what happens when you don’t have a web presence.
JG: I guess so! But please, like I said, if you could do me that huge favor and make it clear that that’s not me.
AVC: You mention in your special—and there’s been footage of folks like Fox News’ Griff Jenkins doing this—that after the teabagger comment, people would ambush you with video cameras after your shows. Does that kind of thing still happen?
JG: Yeah, occasionally. Not as much as it used to. It used to happen quite a bit. Now it’s just every so often, and there’s a lot of people that call in and pretend when I’m doing a radio interview. Like, say I’m doing stand-up in Baltimore or something, and the club sets up different press things that you do to promote the show, like a few morning-radio shows, what have you. There will be ambushes on that, where it’ll be a right-wing show, but they’ll pretend that it’s not, or they pretend that they want to talk about the stand-up show. But they don’t. They do a gotcha thing. Like I said, it’s just low-hanging fruit. If they were serious about their politics or had any integrity at all, they wouldn’t give a shit at all about me. But since it’s just blood sport for them, and since they don’t really care about issues, they do pranks on me. Or sometimes I’ll go to a town, and they’ll cancel my hotel reservations. They’ll find out where I’m staying and cancel it, or prank phone call the room.
AVC: Or send you a bunch of pizzas you didn’t order?
JG: It’s never been pizzas. That would be good. No, just calling and hanging up, or when I check in, they say, “Oh, Miss Garofalo, we were told you canceled.” It’s just kind of something that happens a lot, and like I said, it just shows me that they’re not serious about it. Because why would you spend time on that if you were truly interested in honest policy or the effect politics has on society?
AVC: Last year, Lou Dobbs accused you of being hypocritical for encouraging people to protest during Bush’s administration, but then dismissing the Tea Party protests. How would you say the situations are different?
JG: First of all, Lou Dobbs is ridiculous. Secondly, there was plenty to protest for the Bush administration. Protesting the color of a man’s skin is not a worthy protest. That’s what the teabaggers are about. The first Tea Party protest was scheduled for Inauguration Day. So what were they upset about? Which part of the job he was doing before he even did it were they upset about? Secondly, if they claim to be upset with government corruption, government takeover, crazy spending, where were they from 2000 to 2008? Right? And why weren’t they protesting the stolen elections?
And Lou Dobbs is a very anti-immigrant guy. His credibility is nil as far as I’m concerned. Like I said, I would never join the Tea Partiers, because I don’t have a problem with the color of Obama’s skin. I don’t have a problem with immigrants. You know what I mean? I do have genuine problems with policy and government corruption. Sure I do. And I speak very candidly about that, regardless of who’s in office. But since the Tea Partiers are ridiculous, why would I urge anyone to participate with them?
AVC: One more: While you were in the thick of protesting the Iraq War, you were quoted as saying “a lot of people who like to wrap themselves in the flag, hide behind Jesus, and be aggressive—some of those people are not intellectual powerhouses. So that’s why they cleave into very us-vs.-them, black-and-white visions of the world.” Do you not think calling all teabaggers “racist rednecks” encourages its own us-vs.-them mentality?
JG: Well, I would say two things to that. First of all, “redneck” is a state of mind, not a person. So the “racist redneck” thing is a state of mind, not a geographical location. So I don’t mean to imply that it’s just Southerners. And if you don’t recognize the racist underpinnings and the emotional reactive response you’re getting from these teabaggers because we have a black president, then you are either being dishonest, or you’ve never seen the teabaggers. And also, like I said, if they were so concerned with this stuff, then the year 2000 starting with the stolen election would have been a great time to present themselves. That’s A.
Secondly, when I talk about people wrapping themselves in the flag and hiding behind Jesus—that’s an anti-intellectual thing to do in the political process, because legally, allegedly we have a separation between church and state. That’s a legal precedent that’s never observed. When people are trying to do something that’s not in your best interest, they will wrap it in the flag and hide behind Jesus, which is a corrupt thing to do. I’ve got no problem with religion if you’re going to use it for the good, like Gandhi or Martin Luther King. But that’s rarely the case when it comes to politics. It’s usually used as a con. It’s just not an intellectual thing to do. I’m not saying that the person is stupid. I’m just saying that in the political process, how is it relevant? How is it relevant to what goes on in the halls of government to bring up questions of religion? Like the flag-burning nonsense the people used to divert attention from something. Or even when Obama just did the British Petroleum speech, and he did the Fisherman’s Prayer. How in the world is that relevant to anything that anybody needs to know or hear about this corporate corruption? Or about what can be done about it, or how this happened? What would be more important to know is why does Ken Salazar still have his job? I don’t need to know about this prayer. [Laughs.]
It’s an anti-intellectual pursuit, and it’s usually used as a way to pander to people to divert their attention. I don’t know how else to answer you besides saying the teabaggers—do I know every single one of them? No. Can I see that there’s a lot of racist bullshit going on? Absolutely. Would it have been welcome to see more of these “anti-government” types around after the stolen election? It would have been good to see it. I wouldn’t have liked to see them with their immigrant-bashing and their stupid signs.
But let me ask you a question also: What makes you think—and I ask this in general, or of anybody who asks this question—what makes you think the teabag movement isn’t racist?
AVC: It’s not that I totally disagree with you, but I suppose the presence of minorities in their videos and such is their way of showing that they aren’t racist.
JG: And I would say those people suffer from Stockholm syndrome. [Laughs.]
AVC: And I do worry that characterizing the entire movement as racist is dismissive enough to make it one of those “us-vs.-them” situations that you were so against before—in a way that it almost hinders the argument.
JG: I don’t think it does. I think what hinders the argument is when people are afraid of hurting the feelings of racists and people who are genuinely—some of them—out of their minds. They demand to see Obama’s birth certificate. They claim that he wants to kill our grandparents with his health care. They want to be able to carry their guns into every public place. Why do we need to coddle these people? And in this case, I guess it is an “us-vs.-them,” in that I don’t see how people who demand to see his birth certificate, and people who don’t want health care, and who come armed to town-hall meetings—there is a distinct difference between that kind of citizen and another kind of citizen. It is technically us-vs.-them. [Laughs.] And actually, they would probably be proud as punch to say that. They seem to love to have an enemy. They love the idea of fighting against some system.
I think what actually isn’t helpful is that so few people seem to be willing to really discuss this. I don’t know why in this country we coddle corporate criminals, war criminals, and racists. People walk on eggshells around them, and yet they will say a word like “liberal” as if it’s pejorative. Or somebody who wants unions or reproductive justice, they will treat them like there’s something wrong with that person. Does that make sense? People seem to be more frightened of upsetting a war criminal or a racist and more willing to disparage a very nice guy like Dennis Kucinich. Does that make sense? They seem to feel fine picking on him for some reason, but then it’s, “Oh God, don’t say anything about Glenn Beck.” Or about somebody who speaks at the Tea Party conference and says veiled racist things. They don’t really want to come out and point a finger at that guy, but they’re willing to make all kinds of jokes and cavalier comments about somebody like Dennis Kucinich or Harry Reid. I don’t understand why that is. But anyway, could I be any more more long-winded?
If that’s what the Democratic Party has become. I’ll never vote for them again, ever.
