MSNBC Host's Curious Guest Choice

GAROFOLLIES

Janeane Garofalo Emerges From Cave, Knows Nothing




On this glorious Thanksgiving day, the Radio Equalizer thanks Air America's Janeane Garofalo and MSNBC's Keith Olbermann for providing top-quality holiday entertainment.

Only Olbermann would have the nerve to choose the likes of Garofalo to provide alleged "insight" into columnist and former CNN commentator Robert Novak's recent troubles.

How about credibility, does this matter at MSNBC? What does this actress and would-be political activist know about Bob Novak?

In a seven-minute Countdown segment, Garofalo provided no insight, factual material, research or anything that even suggested she had particular expertise regarding Novak. It was pure hot air.

Top top it off, they actually had the nerve to wonder how he'd survived for so many years on television. Could it be Olbermann who is not long for television?

Somehow, Novak's insight gained from decades inside the Beltway counts for nothing, but Garofalo should be taken seriously?


With Janeane clearly having done absolutely no show prep (they're obviously used to being pampered by producers and writers at Air America), she filled the segment with repeated references to "partisan right-wing hacks" and a lengthy, irrelevant tirade against the FOX & Friends morning show.

Can anyone explain the relationship between FOX & Friends and Robert Novak? There isn't one, it was filler because Janeane didn't know what she was talking about.

Because there's so much leftist anti-Novak hatred out there, it's hard to find a decent biography on the man, with Wikipedia providing a typically biased example here. However, it does shoot down Garofalo's "partisan hack" allegations right away, pointing out he's always been a registered Democrat and disagrees with Bush Administration policies on a number of key issues.

The Political Teen has the full video segment, while Brad Wilmouth at NewsBusters provides a transcript, here is an excerpt:

Keith Olbermann: "Let's start with the scuffle, or, as they would call it in the circles of his favorite basketball team, 'no harm no foul.' Do you buy this story? Could this really just have been passenger rage or might there be something darker behind this? Could that have been Joe Wilson or Pat Fitzgerald or James Carville or Bob Woodward's source trying to start something with Robert Novak?"

Janeane Garofalo: "No, but there is definitely something darker behind this. Bob Novak, or I like to refer to him as Nosferatu because he, although he's less likeable than Nosferatu, but he, like a lot of partisan hacks for today's Republican party and today's conservative movement, which is neither republican nor conservative, they seem to be operating by a lot of dark forces or inner tensions or just cantankerousness that is evident in the way that they do business with politics. And everything with them is a zero sum game.

So I believe that Bob Novak, spiritually, like a lot of other right-wing partisan hacks, are always on the verge of punching somebody or always, they always behave as if they've just been cut off in traffic. That's spiritually where they are all the time, and they have an anger management problem that, that, then they just pretend is Republican or conservative politics."

Olbermann: "So that raises the, I mean, that brings us back to the broader point that I mentioned at the beginning of this segment. How in the world has all of this CIA leak story unfolded without Robert Novak getting indicted or reprimanded or fired or just mentioned?"

Garofalo: "Well, probably because Karl Rove is the one who leaked the information to him like Karl Rove used to leak information to him during the governor's race in Texas about the Bush campaign. And I would think that Karl Rove is protecting himself, and so Bob Novak is protecting him. Or Bob Novak is just so unpleasant that they would rather avoid dealing with him than follow the letter of the law."

Olbermann: "Let him go rather than drag him here and have him testify."

Garofalo: "Yeah, he's just so unpleasant. It would be like dealing with Ann Coulter. You know what I mean? I think that people would rather see justice miscarried than actually have to talk to Ann Coulter or something like that."

Olbermann: "Lord knows I would vouch safe for that latter point. It appears that the newspaper column that he does is going to continue, but his TV career is not. He had stormed off the set at CNN shouting 'BS,' only he didn't do the abbreviation, at James Carville in August.

And he's not been on the air since. And even the New York Post reported two weeks ago that he's not going to be on the air again. His contract apparently expires in the new year, and they're just going to let it fade out. So he did lose the TV gig. On the other hand, the gig he lost was at CNN, which is in kind of flux at the moment. So is losing a gig at CNN a punishment or is it a reward?"

Garofalo: "It's neither. Actually, a punishment would be if you're forced to go work at Fox and Friends morning show. That would be a cruel and unusual punishment, almost inhumane."

Olbermann: "Punishment is watching Fox and Friends."

Garofalo: "That is bad enough."

Olbermann: "There you go."

So why are we so thankful for her rants here at the Radio Equalizer?

Because Janeane's recently been hiding in her cave, emerging only for radio shows and one television guest stint, she hasn't been providing the fodder we've come to expect. A quiet Garofalo is boring.

Watch here for a substantial upcoming piece on the subject.

As for Novak, I don't believe conservatives have done enough to defend him from attacks that are increasingly vitriolic. What political novices such as Garofalo don't realize is that he's long been the go-to man for leaked information from both Republican and Democrat operatives.

Without his column and appearances, there is much we wouldn't have learned about the status of candidates, campaigns, administrations and policies. With Novak in low-key mode these days, political coverage is missing this type of old-fashioned hard work and effective insight, exactly how he's made his mark over the past 50 years.


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Garofalo image from The Political Teen