You know, I can't seem to even work up much outrage over the self-satisfied and foolish exchange between Janeane Garofalo and Keith Olbermann that occurred a few days ago on his new show. He probably has, what, ten or twelve viewers, and watching these two lackluster and depressed-seeming individuals having such a lackluster and inane conversation left me understanding why, as well as feeling almost sorry for them. (I am not a viewer, by the way; I just saw the clip.)
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Garofalo referred to the "inherent" racism of the Tea Party, something Olbermann would not, of course, challenge her to support with any evidence, and went on to opine that Herman Cain was probably being paid by someone--Karl Rove, perhaps--(this provided an unintended moment of hilarity, at least for me) to run, in order to deflect those charges of racism. One wonders if Ms. Garofalo, prior to appointing herself a political expert, did a lot of drugs or something, because the total 'out there-ness' of her speculations was made even more bizarre by the apparent seriousness with which Olbermann treated them. I kept waiting for them to burst out laughing and say "Got ya!"
But no, this was for real, it seems, and it wasn't enough for Garofalo to besmirch Mr. Cain's integrity so thoroughly, she couldn't resist further insulting him with another jab at the Tea Party by suggesting that he perhaps had a touch of "Stockholm Syndrome." (That is the name given some decades ago by a psychiatrist to the phenomenon of captives beginning to sympathize with and defend their captors.)
I won't get into the ridiculousness and absence of any kind of logic that characterized Ms. Garofalo's ramblings, because they're just not worth a lot of attention (and the lack of response from pretty much any quarter suggests maybe 10 or 12 viewers is an over-estimate) but one example will give you the general idea. After the host and his guest snicker over a couple of pictures of Michelle and Marcus Bachmann going down on corn dogs (har-har, very high-brow show!) there is a picture of Rick Perry with his foot up on a hay bale at the Iowa State Fair. Asked her opinion, Garofalo announces the racism of the Tea Party is confirmed by the fact that she doesn't see any black people. Hey, Janeane--it's IOWA! If it was an SNL skit, it would have been funny.
Vladimir Lenin noted that "a lie told often enough becomes the truth," and that appears to be the strategy behind the constant repetition--sans hard evidence of any kind--of the charge of racism against the Tea Party and all its members. (I am assuming all my readers are bright enough to understand that I am not suggesting there are no individual racists in the Tea Party. There probably are, in the same way that there are individual racists in any group. The white union member demanding of a black Tea Partier whether he had any children he was "willing to claim" comes to mind.)
The people who knowingly push this scurrilous and unfounded slur are doing it because they want gullible and loosely-informed people to "know" it, in the same way they 'know' George Bush is 'stupid,' whether or not they can cite any reasons, and the way they 'know' conservatives don't care about the poor and downtrodden while 'progressives' do, even though they can summon no evidence or logical argument to support their convictions. Why are those things true? "They just are."
So anyone--self-identified Tea Partiers for certain, one assumes, but anyone else as well--who has decided that Obama hasn't done a good job and doesn't deserve to be reelected, is a racist. But someone like Janeane Garofalo who attacks not only Herman Cain's integrity by suggesting he's being paid to run for president, but suggests his mental health is compromised, isn't?
It's always been a problem for aggressive Progressives who are spreading the racism canard, that the Tea Party loves a black man--Herman Cain--so much. So, they're reduced to attacking him to try to explain it. It smells of desperation, and I'm afraid we should just resign ourselves to 14 more months of it.
Again, I think my readers are all intelligent enough to understand that using Bachmann and Rick Perry in the above examples is not an indication that I support them. My candidate, Mitch Daniels, never got in the race, and I am simply watching, right now. The point is that this low-down strategy of denigrating anyone who wants 'change' in 2012 as a racist--whether done crudely and overtly or slyly--has no place in a campaign, regardless of who the Republican nominee turns out to be. That said, things don't look good for Obama, and I don't expect these ugly aspersions to go away. No matter that a lot of people who voted for Obama the first time but won't be voting for him again can't suddenly have turned into racists, logic isn't important to desperate people. Maybe, though, more and more people will begin to see their accusations for what they really are.
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