by Shayne Winslow
Evolution is an interesting thing. Anthropologists can show the evolution of mankind through its slow but steady metamorphosis from a furry ape-like creature to a biped dubbed Homo Sapien who donated his DNA to every carbon based human you meet.
I have been indulging in a little anthropological experiment recently and have been observing the evolving career of a member of the Homo Humorous species, Janeane Garofalo.
Billed as a paragon of sarcasm, Ms. Garofalo has reinvented herself over the past several months, going from a rarely working actress and comic to the mega-mouth for the liberals fomenting over the Bush Administration and using the war in Iraq as a platform.
While other celebrities with more impressive resumes were making their opinions heard at organized rallies against the war and against the president, Garofalo was getting herself booked onto shows like The O'Reilly Factor to grandstand for the cameras.
When asked about these forays onto the "right wing" shows, she stated, "I painfully felt that the anti-war movement was being ignored... it became abundantly clear that no one was getting on TV talking about this..."
What I found in direct contradiction to that was the fact that there was a list of who's who in Hollywood when it came to the celebs showing up on television to protest the war and the president's position on Iraq. Martin Sheen, Susan Sarandon, Tim Robbins, James Cromwell, Danny Glover, Harry Belafonte, Sean Penn and Mike Farrell come to mind immediately, all of whom were getting plenty of air time for their "in the streets" protests as well as their public service spots against the war.
Ms. Garofalo stated on several occasions "I'd like to think that I work very hard not to be uninformed..." Yet considering the massive amount of news coverage that her esteemed thespian colleagues were getting, I wondered exactly what Ms. Garofalo did to make sure she was up to speed when it came to current events.
Clearly Ms. Garofalo was not watching the mainstream media if she believed that there was no coverage of anti-war protests.
After several heated appearances with Bill O'Reilly, Garofalo was a hotter commodity than she had ever been and was invited to appear on a host of shows on which she was lauded as "'so brave" to speak out about her feelings regarding the war and the President. Ah, the smell of shameless self promotion in the guise of humble, peace activist...
Then the whispers began circulating that ABC was looking to develop a show as a vehicle for Garofalo. She was ebullient, self assured and boastful. In more than one interview she was asked about the people writing angry letters to ABC and its parent company, Disney, in regard to her show. Her gloating response was to mock the protestors. In fact, when WABC Radio's Steve Malzberg contacted Garofalo to interview her about her upcoming TV show and the complaints ABC was getting, she turned down the invite but boasted that "the show was going forward despite the tidal wave of complaints received by the network" and went on to daringly state, "boycotters are welcome to keep giving me tons of publicity."
Well, Ms. Garofalo got her wish. The American public that was standing firm behind President Bush and gave him a 70% approval rating were tired of hearing her hyped up, motor mouth diatribes attacking the president, making bald face lies and dire predictions.
ABC realized that the outspoken comic with the rapid-fire delivery and pseudo-intellectual vocabulary had bitten off far more than she or the network could chew. The American public was calling her on her statements and when she would not answer or prevaricated, the novelty of her activism shriveled.
ABC realized they would waste money developing a show around Ms. Garofalo when the American public would not watch it and announced they'd scrapped the project entirely. Now that the news is out, Garofalo, who is no longer ebullient, gloating or boastful, has gone on the offensive yet again, this time accusing the president of putting the kibosh on her show. Bill Zwicker of the Chicago Sun-Times interviewed a "source" close to Garofalo who told him that she "was furious by the last minute change and believes it's yet another example" of a network bowing to the perceived power of the Bush administration... Janeane is convinced her politics and all the hate mail the right-wing lobby stirred up during the war is behind all this."
I find all this fury curious considering that in an interview with Jennifer DiNovella in The Progressive just last month, she was asked if she had lost work because of her anti-war position and she stated: "I have. And that's irrelevant to me."
Perhaps the most impressive part of her delusion is that she believes that it would require the efforts of the president and his administration to get her show shelved. Lost in the chaos of her own self-propelled shooting star is the simple truth that celebrities rely upon the audience's patronage. When the audience doesn't show up, the show can't go on and her insults alienated her audience.
Ms. Garofalo forgot that the people that she has been bombarding with her rants and rhetoric for months have been listening and have had enough. While she has been exercising her First Amendment right to promote her acting career under the mantle of "reluctant" political activist, the American public has been, by Ms. Garofalo's own invitation, exercising its right to speak out. What she refuses to accept is that it isn't the American government but the American people who are responsible for what has happened. The same American public that she called idiots and fools were clearly able to see through her attempts at acting like an activist and decided they'd seen enough.
As with the seasons, the evolution of Janeane Garofalo's career is circular and she is once again moving toward the obscurity from which she emerged. It is my hope that when she comes out of her next hibernation she will find herself basking in the warm light of the real world and not the alternative universe that she has been occupying for a very long time.
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