Comedian and political activist Janeane Garofalo, appearing on Countdown with Keith Olbermann, recently said this about support for Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain:
“Herman Cain is a — is probably well liked by some of the Republicans because it hides the racist elements of the Republican party, conservative movement and Tea Party movement, one in the same. You know, people like Karl Rove like to keep the racism very covert. And so Herman Cain provides this great opportunity so that you can say, ‘Look, this is not a racist, anti-immigrant, anti-female, anti-gay movement. Look it, we have a black man’”.
For Garofalo to say that Republicans, conservatives, and Tea Party members are racist, anti-immigrant, anti-female, and anti-gay is name-calling. It’s name-calling of the same order as when people say that Democrats, liberals, progressives (and people like Garofalo) are authoritarians and communists who are anti-business and want to destroy the private sector.
More, Garofalo resorts to ascribing hidden motivations to Republicans et al: their racism is “covert”. I’m not denying that there’s such a thing as hidden motivations, sinister or otherwise. But because they’re hidden, how do you prove that others have them? How do those others disprove that they have them? We can do the same thing to Garofalo, saying that she’s a closet communist who wants to have Republicans liquidated in gulags: of course, she’ll deny it, but that’s what anyone would do if they’re trying to hide their “true motives”, right?
We could even do the same thing to Democrats as a whole: they are also racists, they’re just even better than Rove and Republicans at keeping it “covert”! And, of course, you could always ascribe covert, altruistic motivations to someone, and that would be hard to disprove, too. (But, politically speaking, where’s the fun?)
It’s easy to demonize someone — anyone, including Garofalo — by attributing hidden sinister motivations to them. But, unless you produce hard, unambiguous evidence of evil intentions (I don’t know, an entry from their Daily Journal of Evil, or a receipt for payment of dues to The Guild of Calamitous Intent), it’s just baseless name-calling.
Garofalo hasn’t provided real evidence for her allegation. She’s just derisively caricaturing her political opponents. And Olbermann was wrong to provide her with a platform to broadcast such invective.