Who Cares What Janeane Garofalo Has to Say?

The Onion A.V. Club has an interview with Janeane Garofalo where, among other things gets into her ridiculous alternative career as a political pundit talking head on various TV programs.

Okay, I've never really found Garofalo very funny as a comedian. I have enjoyed some of the more dramatic stuff she's done, particularly her recurring role on "The West Wing". But what I can't stand is celebrities who think they have valid opinions on politics. Okay, her opinions aren't invalid, but what special knowledge or expertise does she have that qualifies her to be someone who goes on MSNBC or Fox to espouse her views? I probably have about as a strong a grasp on politics as she does, but I would never get a spot on TV expressing my opinions. How is her status as a political pundit any different than the right's love affair with Joe the Plumber? That's a serious question. The only difference is that Joe the Plumber was not a celebrity prior to his short-lived career as a political pundit.

The A.V. Club interview just serves to further the legitimacy of this kind of celebrity narcissism. And that's all it is honestly. Okay, her politics has some relevance to her career as a comedian because she more or less gave up stand-up during the Bush years because "there was so much stuff that broke [her] heart" and she couldn't find the funny in it. Sean O'Neal also lets her repeat the "stolen election" canard. Does anyone do interviews that challenge their subjects on facts? Okay, O'Neal is a celebrity interviewer and not a political reporter. But Garofalo asserts right there in the interview that the media just let the "stolen election" issue of 2000 go. Not to reopen old wounds, but several media outlets conducted independent recounts of the Florida votes only to find that if Al Gore had gotten the recounts he was suing for, George W. Bush would have won anyway!!!

By the way, she's also really disappointed in the Obama administration because he hasn't turned out to be the Great Liberal Savior that the left was wishing for after the Dark Years of the Eeeeeeevil and Dastardly George W. Bush. Wow! So Garofalo has discovered, but not acknowledged, that running a country is not as simple as waving a magic wand and giving everything to the right people and making the wicked suffer. It's actually about taking in relevant intelligence and information and coming to the best possible decision for the country as a whole. Perhaps Obama has appeared to be such a disappointment because once he entered office and was shown the actual intelligence by his military advisers he had a bit of an awakening and realized there's a hell of a lot more to the world than Janeane Garofalo led him to believe.