Janeane Garofalo: The Right’s Vilification of Tina Fey for Her Palin Mockery Arose out of Misogyny

posted at 2:53 pm on April 7, 2011 by Howard Portnoy
[ Double Standards ]   

This is way beyond the pot calling the kettle black. In fact it’s downright Bizarro World-esque.

Tuesday night, failed radio host and liberal mouthpiece Janeane Garofalo appeared on embattled NPR’s All Things Considered to review Tina Fey’s new memoir Bossypants.

As Tim Graham of Newsbusters reports, “Garofalo spent most of the review in a rut of self-pity.” And yet, there was a comedic highpoint, albeit one that wasn’t intended by Garofalo as a joke. It was when she discussed Fey’s rather hostile impersonation of then-vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin while still a cast member on Saturday Night Live.

Evidently in the book (which I intend to read the minute I have finished removing my own spleen with a warm spoon) Fey reflects on having become a “target of ill-founded wrath” for her Palin routines. Although Garofalo fails to mention the source of this wrath, the logical assumption is that it came from conservatives, who viewed Fey’s crude sendup as an extension of the mainstream media’s systematic effort to diminish Palin as a serious contender for a job that would place her “a heartbeat away from presidency.” (Interesting that the MSM appears never to given a second thought to the prospect of Joe Biden occupying that position or fellow dullard Nancy Pelosi being two heartbeats away.)

Anyway, the money part of Garofalo’s review occurs during her personal ruminations on Fey’s wrathful treatment:

Regrettably, it’s always been easy to marshal cultural hostility toward women, especially in politics, where double standards and misogyny tend to dominate the conversation.

So Tina Fey, in Garofalo’s world, was a victim of “cultural hostility toward women” whereas the butt of her cruel mockery—which precipitated the anger toward her—is not?

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