FEATURE | summer 2003

Shock and Jaw
Climate of a New Blacklist? Garofalo Says No Thanks

by Ellen Hawkes

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At 5-foot-1, Janeane Garofalo is a small target, but she looms large in the crosshairs of conservative television talk show hosts, radio shock jocks and rabid right-wing websites. While the U.S. marched to war, the actor and stand-up comedian opposed a preemptive attack on Iraq, urging diplomacy and cooperation with the United Nations instead. Given the military victory in Iraq and the triumphalism that permeates the airwaves, was she sorry for earlier predictions of the war's dire consequences? Not by a long shot.

"Why should I apologize?" she said when we spent an afternoon together at a coffeehouse near her Greenwich Village apartment. "We have more looting than liberation. We protected the Ministry of Oil but not the treasures of the National Museum. We have photographs of a statue brought down and an Iraqi kissing a soldier, but meanwhile where are the weapons of mass destruction, where is democracy? So, no, I'm not apologizing, and I'm not letting them shut me up."

For the complete scoop, read "Shock and Jaw: Climate of a New Blacklist? Garofalo Says No Thanks," in the June 2003 issue of Ms.

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