March 19, 2003
|
Janeane Garofalo, Concerned American Citizen and Patriot
A BUZZFLASH INTERVIEW, Part II of II
See introduction in Part I.
BUZZFLASH: You mention in a conversation with the Washington Post -- and I'm quoting -- "These same corporate entities have an interest in war, have an interest in profiting from war. They represent corporate America. Corporate America dictates the news we are getting." Assuming that's a correct quote, what's the interest corporate America is pursuing in not telling the truth and not probing about Iraq, and basically being a megaphone for the White House/Karl Rove message machine.
JANEANE GAROFALO: I would say that the corporate entities -- and it's gotten worse after the 1996 deregulation -- the handful of corporations that own most of the media outlets have an interest in reflecting establishment views. There are probably fairly conservative corporate owners, and then you have guys like Rupert Murdoch, who are clearly right on target with Karl Rove. It's ratings to promote war or sensationalistic headlines -- if it bleeds, it leads. That's ratings, so that's just profit, just money talking.
But you also probably have corporations like G.E., who have a great investment in weapons manufacturing and in war. And they make millions and millions of dollars. There may be certain corporate players who sit on other boards; maybe they're in Viacom, and maybe they have an interest in Lockheed Martin. I don't know. But it seems that if they didn't have an interest in reflecting the views of the State Department, our news would show that. We'd have a very different dialogue in this country and we'd have very different news reporting. But I think it is clear to anyone who thinks critically about the news that the news is basically on the same page with the State Department.
BUZZFLASH: And, as you pointed out, most news entities and television stations are owned by larger corporate entities that are looking for tax breaks, looking for deregulation. And basically these are the same people who benefit from a very elite, upper echelon income bracket that benefits from Bush tax breaks and so forth.
GAROFALO: Right.
BUZZFLASH: Let me just ask you a couple more questions, and then I'll let you go.
GAROFALO: Sure. No, no, I love it. It is such a pleasure to be speaking to BuzzFlash; I have all the time that you need. And I don't mean that in a narcissistic way. I mean that in the fact that it is so difficult and so painful to deal sometimes with the mainstream media. Like I said, I've had some good interviews and it's been a pleasure to be involved in the mainstream media at certain points. And it's been a pleasure to be given access at certain times. But the downside has been so overwhelming that I think outlets like BuzzFlash are vital to this democracy. It's absolutely essential that outlets like BuzzFlash and Democracy Now exist.
BUZZFLASH: Well, we do our best. Thank you.
GAROFALO: You do, and you do a great job. And I think it's obvious by how many people watch and look and listen for BuzzFlash.
BUZZFLASH: What makes you so impassioned? Did you grow up in a house that was socially conscious?
GAROFALO: Not at all. Well, actually, that's mean to say. I'd say the primary influence on my life was and still is my father, who I'm very, very close to. But my father is like Bob Novak -- very right wing, and very conservative. When I was growing up, because my father's such a nice man and such a smart man, I just thought he was right about everything. But what I didn't realize is that he has the perspective of a very right-wing guy. And as you have more life experiences as you get older, and you meet different people and new people, and get exposed to different opinions, you realize like, oh, wow -- everything he's saying to me is not exactly right.
And now that he's a much older man, he's still a right-winger. But he actually is now pro-choice and in the Sierra Club, oddly enough. But I guess in his old age, he's gained some wisdom. But he's still very right wing, and he's still opposed to what I'm doing. And it just sort of fueled me. I'm the exact opposite product of what I was molded as.
BUZZFLASH: Well, most people -- actors or lawyers or doctors or street sweepers are not as involved as you are. I mean, you're taking time out of what is your profession.
GAROFALO: Well, they probably are. They just don't get as much exposure. It's not like I'm working on anything other than stand-up right now, so that's a choice I make. I mean, my stand-up is basically self-produced, and I must admit Clear Channel -- I've done Clear Channel tours, the "evil empire" -- but Clear Channel books myself and Mr. Show, and the Kids in the Hall, so it's great to be able to criticize the FCC deregulation while being booked by one of the all-time villains in that scenario. It's been really interesting to be able to be booked by Clear Channel and criticize them at the same time. But I've taken myself off tour. But it's not like a big sacrifice or anything.
BUZZFLASH: You're driven to do this. You see a great injustice and you want to try to prevent the train from crashing into the wall here. Is it just something that evolved for you?
GAROFALO: Well, I always have been active in feminist causes. And the more people bash feminism -- women included, which is strange -- the more motivated I become to fight for women's issues. Because being a feminist means that you believe in civil rights and social justice. The right has been able to redefine that word, just as they've been able to redefine patriotism. They've been able to redefine "fair and balanced" and "compassion." I think it's important that we get those words back -- you can't just take a word, redefine it and use it against people.
The media is supposed to be custodians of the facts and watchdogs of government. They have, for the most part, neglected to be either of those things. So, in the words of Jello Biafra, we have to "Become the Media" now. We have to do it. So it galvanizes me further. But then there are some nights when I can't sleep, and I think this is a disaster waiting to happen, this is going to be an unmitigated disaster. And the media and the White House are pushing us toward it -- just pushing and pushing and pushing the American people, and the Iraqi civilian population, and the Mideast in general, and that's why the world is so unhappy about this. They're pushing us toward the brink of disaster without fully informing people about what's waiting around the corner or what the possible worst-case scenarios are. We've been given, hey, if it goes off well, this'll be great. Of course it would. It would be great if it goes off well.
BUZZFLASH: Well, it might be given the appearance of going off well, even if it doesn't -- to the extent that whatever doesn't go off well -- civilian casualties, soldiers (as they were last time) just mauled in their trenches and buried alive in the first gulf war -- we won't be told about it.
GAROFALO: Right. It'll be sanitized. I'm sure that the Pentagon news will be sanitized by the Pentagon or by CNN's Atlanta bureau. But that's what I'm talking about. There's this sort of tacit agreement between some mainstream media outlets and the White House to sort of keep the public in a state of collective narcosis. And I think that if the war goes forward, and if it goes as badly as some people believe that it will, I think there should be some perp walks after this, where they take the people away in handcuffs. After all the saber-rattling and all the pushing, and all the misinformation, I believe that there should be some people in government, and some people in the mainstream media world, that should be slapped with criminal negligence and wrongful death suits for these young men and women who are on the ground in Iraq. And some of them with faulty biochem suits, some of them as devoid of information as anyone else, some of them walking into the heart of the Arabian world.
And then they're going to be asked to occupy Iraq for how many years? We don't know. At what cost? We don't know. These young men and women, who have the right to live and have the right to have their lives ahead of them, are not being supported and are being fundamentally disrespected by the hawks. Now I understand that they are trained very well to do their jobs and they're very good at their jobs. But there are times when they should be doing it, and times when they don't have to be doing it. And I think this is one of those times where diplomacy should be being utilized so they don't have to suffer.
Who's going to occupy Iraq for all these years? Hundreds and thousands of young men and women who are going to be watching their back 24 hours a day. And then you have the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which is not being helped at all by the hawks in the administration and Ariel Sharon. And then there's the Wolfowitz-Perle connection that you're not allowed to discuss, or else you're anti-Semitic. Anybody who does any research knows that there are ideologues in the administration who have been wanting into Iraq for years, regardless of 9/11. They have wanted into Iraq for so long, and have been pushing for so long, that they're just not being honest.
BUZZFLASH: According to Editor and Publisher, you were at a forum sponsored by The Week, with three journalists -- Eric Alterman, Arianna Huffington and William McGowan. They quote you at the end as sort of being impatient with the whole discussion, and saying that after the bombs start falling next week, no one is going to remember things said in this room. What did you mean by that? What was the cause of your impatience?
GAROFALO: My impatience was the same thing that makes me impatient in the media with these discussions of accusations of: "It's just the liberals who want such and such. No, it's just the right wing who wants such and such." The discussion we were supposed to be having was sponsored by The Week. I thought it went off very poorly -- and I'm a big fan of Arianna Huffington and Eric Alterman, a big, big fan. I was so pleased to be sitting next to them.
It just devolved into a shouting match, like it was the same type of childish fighting that happens all the time. And one guy stood up and said, "God bless the New York Post, lady." And then another guy stood up and said, "George W. Bush has provided the greatest leadership that this country has ever seen." Now come on -- you got to be shitting me ... you know what I mean? Nothing was particularly accomplished at that thing. I was so chagrined and so crestfallen that it had devolved into another degraded debate, which essentially got no one in the audience anywhere. Nobody really learned anything. Nobody was really more edified leaving it than they were coming in. And people were shouting and being mean-spirited. And then I said I want to bow out of this. And then the Daily News, I guess, reported that I'm quitting the anti-war movement.
BUZZFLASH: You meant you just wanted to bow out of discussions like that.
GAROFALO: About this type of fighting. And what I meant was when the bombs start dropping, no one will care who was on the left, who was on the right, who's an actor, who isn't, who's unpatriotic. Despair will not discriminate. Once this shit hits the fan, and as the economy goes further into the toilet and is further degraded, as social programs in this country are slashed and burned to funnel money to the Pentagon, as more people that are mentally ill get thrown off their medication plans, and more children are left behind in the public school education system, who cares? Who cares that we sat in Grand Central Station and debated: What liberal media? Like who cares that Fox and Friends ran ad nauseum that I lost my cool on the morning show?
It's already embarrassing. But it is so silly that people this close to the brink of disaster are fighting over the myth of the liberal media, and fighting over the right-wing agenda or any of these things, instead of discussing it like adults. And if the mainstream media wants to get serious about authentic debate, then, yeah, don't book actors. If the only voices for the war in the mainstream media were Ted Nugent and Bruce Willis, and every voice against the war was military personnel, it would be like "what are they doing to the anti-war movement." For the pro-war contingent, you'd have the same two people, plus Charlie Daniels. When they just book actors, it shows they're not serious or particularly respectful of the anti-war movement.
I was at the Code Pink march on Saturday. It was huge. In fact, it was so big by four o'clock in the afternoon, the police -- who had been very, very nice all throughout -- when it got bigger than they ever anticipated, started arresting people and getting tough. Now on CNN, I think they said 2,000 people were there. That's absurd, it was huge.
And another thing that galled me so much is there were so many children involved, which was wonderful. So many children were holding banners: "Books, not bombs." And they were shouting: "This is what democracy looks like." You had little girls, like 6, 7, 8 years old. And it was fantastic. And to disparage them is galling to me. You know what I mean? Like to categorize that Code Pink thing -- I heard some people saying: "They're just a bunch of communist nuts." That is ridiculous.
At one point, I was walking with some of the little kids, just because that's where I had wound up. And I was talking to some of the little girls, and this dork on the sidelines, who was kind of harassing the people marching, goes: "Why you hiding behind the children, Janeane?"
What? And you're actually going to shout disparaging comments into a group of children? That, to me, is so unfortunate. And unfortunately, his kind of bluster is sort of tacitly encouraged by some of the right-wing radio nuts, you know what I mean? Or like the Mike Savages -- here's a guy saying "turd world nations" and calling the Million Mom March the "Million Dyke March."
BUZZFLASH: Well, they've expanded the acceptability of discourse into threats, intimidation and vulgarity. There's no civilized standard left in television. And it's funny, because those people who do this on television -- the Savages of the world, and the Ann Coulters -- say they're upholding civility and integrity.
GAROFALO: Well, see, they know they're not. But their audacity is sort of amazing. I think that they know deep down that what they're doing is inflammatory, incendiary and not correct; it's not particularly acceptable behavior. But hell, you know, they keep moving the line in the sand. They just keep erasing one line in the sand for decorum.
And then these same people have a problem with political correctness. They can't stand political correctness, which, in my mind, just means civility, you know. And these are the same people who will fight tooth and nail against affirmative action and Title IX. That so offends their sensibilities that they'll go to the wall against it. And then you have Ann Coulter saying if you don't support the missile shield, you're a traitor. You should be tried for treason if you don't support a missile shield that science and logic prove doesn't work. There again, nobody holds their feet to the fire.
BUZZFLASH: Janeane, thank you so much for your time.
GAROFALO: Thank you.
A BUZZFLASH INTERVIEW
