Lets' say that you wanted a nice steak for supper, but your freezer is empty. So, you head out to your local butcher's shop, expecting him to be able to provide you with a nice cut of beef to cook for your evening meal. When you get there, however, he sits you in a chair, throws a cape around your choulders and proceeds to give you a haircut (and a bad haircut at that; after all he's a butcher, not a barber).
Would you be surprised and shocked? A little irritated, even? I would. That's how I feel about celebrities who use their notoriety and fame as a platform to talk about their own political ideologies. I don't like it when they do that. I'm not interested in what they think about the president or the government, I'm more interested in watching them act, listening to them sing or tell jokes or whatever it was that made them famous in the first place. I don't want their political opinion, I just want to be entertained.
Janine Garofalo is one such celebrity. Not content with being funny (and that's a matter of opinion too; I never found her particularly hilarious), Ms G feels that we all should listen to her political POV too. She's very vocal about her dislike of the US and it's policies. For example, she has this to say about GOP supporters:
'What you have now is people that are closet racists, misogynists, homophobes and people who love tilted playing fileds and the politics of exclusion identfying as conservative'.
Hmm. And the Democrats are sooooooo much more tolerant, huh? There are the folks who crap their pants over any display of Christianity in a public place; who, if they had their way, would remove any and all signs of God or Christ from the entire US. They're tolerant, yeah...as long as it's not white, Christian or Republican.
She doesn't like Old Glory either, apparently. Or the founding fathers.
'Our country is founded on a sham: our forefathers were rich slave owning 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 Christoper Street in New York, with naked men and women on a float cheering 'we're here, we're queer!' - 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.'
I get choked up too when I read comments like that. My choking is a result of bile rising and irritating my throat, because comments like that really do sicken me. People like Garofalo seem to forget that the very same amendment that allows them to spout off anti-American propaganda also allows folks to be openly patriotic and to practice Christianity publicly. They seem to think that the First Amendment is a door that swings one way....the liberal way. I don't have to like what JG has to say, but I will defend her right to say it. Doesn't mean that I can't consider her a silly cow for saying it though.
Recently JG said to Bill O'Reilly that if she were proved wrong about the Iraqi conflict she'd crawl through broken glass to apologize to President Bush:
O’Reilly: “If you are wrong, all right, and if the United States -- and they will, this is going to happen -- goes in, liberates Iraq, people in the street, American flags, hugging our soldiers, all right, we find all kinds of bad, bad stuff, all right, in Iraq, you gonna apologize to George W. Bush?”
Garofalo promised: “I would be so willing to say I’m sorry, I hope to God that I can be made a buffoon of, that people will say you were wrong, you were a fatalist, and I will go to the White House on my knees on cut glass and say, hey, you were right, I shouldn’t have doubted you. But I think to think that is preposterous.”
THAT would be the one time I'd make an exception and pay to see Ms Garofalo in action.
