Smacking down Progressives of Pallor
by Michelle Malkin
Creators Syndicate
Copyright 2011

Is there anything more condescending than a porcelain-skinned Hollywood liberal who attempts to show her presumed solidarity with minorities by referring to them as “people of color”?

Yes, there is: Two porcelain-skinned liberals attempting to show their allegiance to “diversity” by attacking “people of color” who happen to disagree with their radical politics.

Such an exchange took place on a little-watched television show on Al Gore’s obscure cable network Wednesday night. I am spotlighting the diatribe for you not because the speakers involved hold any sway with the American electorate, but because paternalistic racism is so prevalent among the media-entertainment elite.

And it’s about time someone knocked these self-appointed Saviors of the Oppressed off their high horses.

Actress Janeane Garofalo — a former comedian turned Republican-bashing sourpuss — appeared on the Current TV talk show of disgraced former MSNBC host Keith Olbermann. Because she has no actual career achievements or noteworthy projects to discuss, the pair turned to one of their favorite topics: bashing the tea party movement, with an ample dish of vast-right-wing-conspiracy-mongering on the side.

Garofalo singled out GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain, a black businessman and grassroots favorite, because he is a “person of color.” According to the starlet, Cain launched his 2012 bid “because he deflects the racism that is inherent in the Republican Party, the conservative movement, the tea party certainly. (In) the last 30 years, the Republican Party has been moving more and more to the right, but also race-baiting more.”

She certainly knows about baiting. For the past six years, with gritted teeth and throbbing veins, she has indiscriminately attacked Republicans as “racist,” “rednecks” and “partisan hacks who are always on the verge of punching somebody or always behave as if they’ve just been cut off in traffic.” Projection for breakfast, anyone?

From the safety of her Tinseltown cocoon, she has lashed out bitterly at tea party activists as “teabagging rednecks” and assailed their fiscal conservative activism as “f***ing redneck d**chebaggery. Unmitigated d**chebaggery” — all while complaining about the lack of civility in politics. In 2009, Garofalo ignored a personal invitation from Texas tea party activist Katrina Pearson and other black conservatives to attend one of their rallies and meet reality.

The last thing progressives of pallor want to deal with, you see, are “people of color” who think for themselves, refuse to be hyphenated Americans and reject left-wing orthodoxy on everything from entitlements to bailouts to Big Labor, immigration, social issues and racial preferences.

All of Garofalo’s and Olbermann’s non-white friends and colleagues (however few that may be) think the same slavishly homogenous thoughts they do about preserving the welfare state, coddling union thugs, opening up the borders and whitewashing the eugenics-grounded abortion racket. There couldn’t possibly be minority conservatives who think otherwise. And if they do, the progressives of pallor comfort themselves, such aberrant creatures must only be able to embrace free-market principles because they were brainwashed, paid off or born stupid.

Thus did Garofalo float her nefarious theory that Cain “is being paid by somebody to be involved and to run for president so that you go, like, ‘I love that, that can’t be racist. He’s a black guy, a black guy asking for Obama being impeached.’ Or ‘it’s a black guy who’s anti-Muslim. It’s a black guy who is a tea party guy.’” What puppet-master could have engineered Cain’s candidacy, according to Garofalo? “The Koch brothers or Grover Norquist or any anything. It could even be Karl Rove.”

Er, never mind that Beltway establishment King Rove has trashed self-made outsider Cain and belittled him as a mere “talk radio guy.”

Garofalo forged ahead with her identity-politics smears: “There may be a touch of Stockholm syndrome in there, because anytime I see a person of color or a female in the Republican Party or the conservative movement or the tea party, I wonder how they could be trying to curry favor with the oppressors.”

I’ve heard more than 20 years of this oppressive windbaggery from do-gooder liberals who treat my unhyphenated American brothers and sisters and me as treacherous puppets for The Man. Their smug refusal to acknowledge free will, individual choice and true diversity of thought confirms that race-obsessed liberals remain the most unrepentant and odious racists of all.

***

More Progressives of Pallor…

A mighty pale newspaper

The indelible whiteness of MSNBC.

White anchor at indelibly white network decries “white tribalism”.

GOP-bashing Associated Press goes bean-counting…Now, let’s turn the tables on the AP; Update: Your final AP Bd of Directors bean-count.

Let’s make a holiday gift guide for New York Times executives.

I think you will get a kick out of my latest, Unhinged-themed column: “Who are you calling angry?”

Intro:

Janeane Garofalo, left-wing actress-turned-Air America radio host, is a miserable woman. Last week before the holidays, she turned up on cable TV. No, not to count her blessings but to rant against conservative journalist Bob Novak, author Ann Coulter, and the Fox News Channel. She didn’t have anything better to do for Thanksgiving?

Accessorized by a permanent scowl (hard to believe she was once considered a comedienne), Ms. Garofalo accused conservatives of having “an anger management problem. Without a trace of irony, the frowning Garofalo griped about “right-wing partisan hacks who are always on the verge of punching somebody or always behave as if they’ve just been cut off in traffic.”

This, dear readers, is a classic case of liberal projection. Like CNN executive Jonathan Klein, who derided Fox’s audience as full of “angry white men, and those men tend to be rabid,” and liberal comedian Bill Maher, who also railed that “Republicans need anger management” and are possessed with a “vein-popping, gut-churning rage that consumes the entire right wing,” Ms. Garafolo crossly blames the Right while denying the pathological wrath and fury that characterize the unhinged Left.

Who are you calling angry, Ms. Garofalo? You want political road rage? Let’s start with Al. Take your pick: Sharpton. Gore. Franken. Yearrghh!

Now, open your eyes:

It isn’t out-of-control conservatives tossing Molotov cocktails at police officers in San Francisco, burning American soldiers in effigy, and smearing blood and feces on the walls and windows of military recruitment centers across the country to protest on behalf of peace.

It isn’t rage-blinded conservative professors who embrace fragging (the murder of American soldiers by their fellow soldiers on the battlefield) as a legitimate anti-war tactic.

It isn’t vengeful conservatives torching SUVs, condo developments, and research facilities, and targeting biotech and pharmaceutical company employees and their families to protest on behalf of the environment.

It wasn’t mad conservatives sporting “F*** Bush” license plates, punching cardboard cutouts of the president, and vowing to secede after losing the 2004 presidential election…

Read the rest here.

Along similar lines, check out psychiatrist/blogger Dr. Sanity’s excellent post on the Dems’ Wonderful World of Denial and Lorie Byrd’s trenchant reality check.

***
Background:

Video of Garofalo projecting at The Political Teen.
Brian Maloney on “Garofollies.”
Newsbusters’ Brad Wilmouth has complete transcription.

Al Franken’s liberal radio network, Air America, is now scraping the bottom of the barrel for investors. Having taxed the patience of deep-pocketed liberal sugar daddies, Air America execs have cooked up a new campaign to hit up their own listeners for cash donations.

My investigative blog partner Brian Maloney and I received multiple forwarded e-mails of the pitch being sent to Air America fans. Brian has the amusing scoop:

In what appears just short of outright panhandling, a desperate Air America Radio is now begging listeners for cash donations.

From a mass email pitch sent Wednesday afternoon, Air America supporters were taken to a webpage where a direct solicitation is made.

Resembling an online PBS or NPR pledge drive, the site offered paltry “benefits” for cash “gifts” to the liberal talk network. Is Air America unintentionally a not-for-profit enterprise?

For $50, they’ll send three “official” bumper stickers, while $100 gets a “stylish” tote bag thrown in. The sucker who has everything might choose the $250 version, including the above and an on-air thanks from one of Air America’s talk hosts.

Another option: send “any amount”, for which they’ll be “grateful”. Only you can prevent the next Boys & Girls Club financial raid. Send a buck, save midnight basketball in the Bronx.

Heh.

***
In related news, the Gloria Wise Boys & Girls Club has been kicked out of of the Boys & Girls Club over its shady financial entanglements with Air America.

Air America’s ratings are still in the tank.

And via Newsbusters, unhinged Air America hostess Randi Rhodes is comparing Hurricane Katrina evacuees to Holocaust victims. (Other deranged Rhodes rants here and here.)

***
Update: Ankle Biting Pundits are soliciting your proposals for the next Air America fundraising schemes…

We want your ideas as to what Air America will do next to try and raise money. We have visions of Al Franken holding a squeegee on Park Avenue and Janeane Garofalo reaching into pay phone coin returns dancing in our heads.

Captain Ed:

I love the notion that by sending AAR $50, listeners get “FREE STUFF!” Only a liberal hack would buy that argument. It’s the same argument that they swallow when arguing that government should provide services for “free”.

If con men want to find the easy marks in town, just look for the cars sporting the bumper sticker that boasts, “I’m building Air America Radio”.

After 15 days of silence, the New York Times has filed a thin little report on the Air Scamerica/Air Enron fiasco. But you need a magnifying glass to find it. Go the the NYTimes.com homepage. Nothing there. Click over the National section. Nothing there. Find your way to the NY/Region section. Scroll way down past the featured stories.

Aha! There it is:

Bronx Boys Club’s Finances Investigated

The article is a rehash of everything blogs and a sprinkling of MSM outlets have already reported. Underwhelming. Entirely expected. And wholly inadequate given the paper’s massive previous coverage of Air America.

Send your thoughts on the NYTimes’ slothful reporting to ombudsman Byron Calame (public@nytimes.com).

Update: Check out the Times’ Dowdification of Al Franken’s quote about what happened to the money.

The NYTimes reports:

“I don’t know why he did it,” Mr. Franken said, according to a transcript of the broadcast made by the Department of Investigation. “I don’t know where the money went. I don’t know if it was used for operations. I think he was borrowing from Peter to pay Paul.”

Here’s what Franken actually said (via audio at Brainster’s Blog and transcript
at Brian Maloney, who busted this story wide open in the blogosphere the Times sneers at):

I don’t know why they did it, and I don’t know where the money went, I don’t know if it was used for operations [softer, especially fast], which I imagine it was. I think he was robbing Peter to pay Paul.

The omission of those five little words matters because Al Franken’s actual statement suggests that the money was in fact stolen from poor kids to pay Air America’s bills–a speculation that the Times attributes to “conservative-leaning blogs,” but not to the Times’ favorite liberal talk show host who said it himself.

(Hat tip: Reader Michael V.)

(Boldface added to the word “they” at 10:48 am eastern time. Thanks to Patterico for calling this to my attention.)

Mr. Calame, care to explain the omission?

Update II: Leon H. at Macho Nachos...

The good news is that the Times was only behind the Arizona Republic, the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, The Oregonian, the Washington Times, the Sun, the Post, the Daily News, the Opinion Journal, Investors Business Daily and about a zillion blogs (with no editors!) on this story that almost exclusively happened within the confines of New York. It also makes you wonder, given the fact that papers from across the country beat them by several days, why this story was carried in the local/regional section.

Lance McMurray at RedStateRant:

“What, were we expecting The NY Times to use it’s power to do some investigative journalism on Air America? I think we all knew better but had hoped that journalistic integrity would trump partisan newsroom politics.”

Captain Ed:

The worst part of the report is the lack of investigative vigor displayed. There isn’t a fact written that hasn’t been on the blogs for at least 48 hours. Well, it’s a start. Knowing the Times, it’s probably a finish, too.

One of Ed’s commenters, RBMN, notes:

the New York Times should let the FBI know that “robbing” is the same thing as “borrowing.” Imagine all the misunderstandings at our nations banks, and how much time that could free up for the FBI.

Our work continues…

More: Reader Kristinn Taylor points out that the Times quietly removed one sentence from its article late last night, less than two hours after this post was initially published:

Original version:

New version:

The Times does not acknowledge or explain the edit. For the record, I have never stated that someone at Air America stole the money to pay the network’s bills. Obviously that is a possibility that ought to be investigated. Another possibility is that former Air America chairman Evan Cohen pilfered the money for his own use, though it should be stressed that Cohen has neither been charged nor convicted of a crime. The headline of the post referenced in the original version of the Times article included a question mark, which (as even the Times acknowledged) means I was asking a question.

There are of course some people who have stated unequivocally that the money was stolen. One of them is Air America defender Bill Press, who asserted on Your World with Neil Cavuto that the Boys & Girls Club money was embezzled by Cohen. Al Franken has implied that Cohen stole the money, but has also stated several times that he doesn’t know what happened to the money. (He told the New York Sun “he did not know whether the hundreds of thousands of dollars apparently lent to the radio network by a Bronx social-service organization had indeed been relayed to Air America” and, as noted above, said on his radio show that “I don’t know where the money went, I don’t know if it was used for operations, which I imagine it was.”)

***

The New York Sun reports that the city Department of Investigation began its probe 19 months ago–5 months before Piquant LLC bought Air America’s assets from the previous owners in May 2004. So did the city disclose the investigation to Air America’s managers before or after the Piquant buyout? And did Air America’s managers first find out about the questionable loan from a “forensic” accounting investigation, as Al Franken has asserted, or from the city?

See also Captain Ed’s post, “Air America: Gloria Wise Not An ‘Appropriate Source’?”

***

A reader informs me that this morning’s USA Today includes a brief item on the loan scandal in its print edition. Can anyone confirm this? I can’t find anything online. [Update: I'm told the item actually appeared on Wednesday August 10 in the Nationline column on page 3A, written by Mark Memmott.]

***

To celebrate the Times’ inaugural article about the Air America / Boys & Girls Club loan, let us remember its fawning coverage of the liberal radio network during the spring of 2004:

- On March 11, 2004, the Times Business section introduced Air America in a story titled “Liberal Talk Radio Network To Start Up in Three Cities.”

- On March 21, 2004, the Times Magazine ran a 7,659-word cover story about Al Franken titled “Al Franken, Seriously So.” The reporter, Russell Shorto, said that everyone he talked to “agreed that Al Franken has excellent prospects for success in talk radio.” He also reports that “Franken’s political views are more eclectic than you might imagine.” Riiiiight.

- On March 31, 2004–the day of Air America’s debut–the Times ran a 1,403 word puff piece on page E1. The reporter, Jaques Steinberg, said Air America host Jeaneane Garofalo is merely “poking fun” at Karl Rove when she accuses him of pursuing ”the elusive 18-25 Klan demo” as if accusing a high-ranking White House official of pandering to one of the most vile organizations in America is akin to telling a lighthearted knock knock joke.

- On April 1, 2004, media critic Alessandra Stanley followed up with a 752-word review of Franken’s first day on the air.

- On April 2, 2004, the front page of the metro section carried a 755-word article by reporter Clyde Haberman about the “debut of all-day Air America,” which had occurred the previous day.

***

Someone posted a note to the Public Editor’s Reader’s Forum about the Times’ incorrect Al Franken quote.

***

Naturally, Brian Maloney has more. Among other things, he notes that the Times left out key facts related to the manner in which Air America is reimbursing Gloria Wise.

***

Ann Althouse raises the possibility that the Times quote is correct. “Franken has a long talk show, and he does ramble on and repeat himself,” she notes. “Maybe he said both things.”

She has a point. It looks like audio files for all of Franken’s recent shows are available here. Franken first spoke about the loan scandal on the air on Monday. I’m asking for volunteers to listen to that show and all of Franken’s shows since then (i.e., Monday through Thursday). If eight people volunteer, I’ll assign two people to listen to each show. Please let me know if you’re interested.

Update: See here for response from NYC’s Dept. of Investigation to NYTimes’ erroneous reporting on the transcript.

***
Previous:

Air Enron: Heads roll, victims shafted
Air Enron: No letting up
Air Enron: Franken speaks again
Air Enron: Elite media blackout contd.
Air Enron: quotes of the day
Air Enron: Spitzer steps in
Air Enron: questions, questions
Air Enron: the blame game
Air Enron: thumb-twiddling MSM
Silence of the race hustlers
Air Enron: Al Franken speaks
Air Deadbeat: the saga continues
The Air America loophole
Air America is scrambling
Air America: Don’t blame us
Air America: Stealing from poor kids?!

The ABC’s Middle East Correspondent, Mark Willacy, is in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad.

Mark Willacy, we’ve heard reports about the high voter turnout, but now there are reports of how some voters have taken on the insurgents in order to vote, you know, the people are fighting back.

MARK WILLACY: That’s right, Tony. The Iraqi police have investigated a case in the village of al-Mudhariya, which is just south of Baghdad. The villagers there say that before the election insurgents came and warned them that if they voted in last weekend’s election, they would pay.

Now the people of this mixed village of Sunni and Shia Muslims, they ignored the threat and they did turn out to vote.

We understand that last night the insurgents came back to punish the people of al-Mudhariya, but instead of metering out that punishment the villagers fought back and they killed five of the insurgents and wounded eight. They then burnt the insurgents’ car. So the people of that village have certainly had enough of the insurgents.

Read the rest here.

Guess Chris Matthews, Ron Reagan, and Janeane Garofalo would sneer that the whole thing was staged…

(Hat tip: Kevin McCullough)

Update: Behold the pile-on…

Jeff G. on the trail

Captain Ed schools Garofalo

Ace gets serious