‘Racism is Part of the Fabric of Our Country’: Lib Actress Explains Difference Between Attacking Bush & ‘Disrespecting’ Obama
During a panel discussion on Current TV’s “Joy Behar: One Week Only *Until the Fall,” actress Janeane Garofalo, whose last major movie role was in a cartoon about a mouse that cooks, explained that the only reason people criticize (“disrespect”) President Obama is because they’re racist, America is racist, and the whole world is racist.
Oh, and according Garofalo and Behar, when people criticized (“disrespected”) President George W. Bush, it was totally different because, like, no one did it to his face — and it wasn’t racist.
“I’ve have noticed there is a certain amount of disrespect for President Obama that I haven’t seen before,” Behar said.
“Well, he is black,” Garofalo said matter-of-factly.
“Is that the reason?”
“For the racists in the Republican Party, the conservative movement and the racists in the country, yes.”
Blogger Craig Crawford pointed out that when George W. Bush was president, he was harshly criticized as well. Garofalo would have none of that because, you see, President Obama is black and therefore criticizing him is obviously racist — because we’re a totally racist country.
“Don’t even try to conflate this,” Garofalo said.
She continued:
This is different and the denial of the racism is bizarre to me. You know, racism is part of the fabric of our country and many other countries since the beginning of time. It would be odd if there was no racism going on now. If you track the Southern Poverty Law Center and other — ACLU and other institutions who track hate crimes — racist, racists, hate mail all of this kind of stuff was it has spiked through the roof since he announced he was going to run.
Behar returned to the point about criticizing George W. Bush.
“When Bush was in office and I was doing stand-up, I was all over him and I would make cracks about him all the time. But if I was sitting with him, I would not be disrespectful,” Behar said, explaining that it’s better to “make a crack” behind someone’s back than say it to their face.
“I think that that’s the difference,” she continued, “It’s like, ‘yeah, we can talk about them anyway we want’ when we’re talking about them because this is a free country and this is my first amendment. But you have a certain amount of respect for the office and for the person when he is actually in the room with you.”
We assume she gave this talk to comedian Stephen Colbert after his speech at the 2006 Correspondent’s Dinner.
“That’s where they’ve gone over the line,” Behar concluded.
Watch [via The Daily Caller]:
“There’s a big difference between criticizing George Bush and criticizing the things he did and criticizing Barack Obama,” Garofalo agreed.
“George Bush was certainly very criticism-appropriate for a lot of things he did. Barack Obama has done a lot of things I would criticize as well. This is different,” she added without really explaining why it is — it’s just racist, okay?
“And I don’t understand why so many people are reticent to discuss race in this country. We are not a post-racial society,” she added.
“No, not yet,” Behar said. “Not in our lifetime. There‘s no country in the world that’s post-racial yet, I don’t think.”
“Until the human condition changes, we won’t be,” she added, apparently channeling the spirit of Biggie Smalls.
Front page photo source: The Guardian/Rex, (H/T: Fox Nation)
This story & its headline have both been updated.
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