IS ED SCHULTZ RACIST? “I mean, what about ‘big black cloud’ says Barack Obama to you?”

Yeah, but Janeane Garofalo is a bigger racist. “She’s basically the Bob Hope of brainless left-wing race-baiters. . . . Even as a conspiracy theorist, she’s terrible. But good enough for ‘Countdown,’ I guess.”

UPDATE: Reader Brian Gates objects:

Calling Bob Hope just an “old performer” who ran through a routine, presumably on the basis of tv appearances he made in his 90s, is like judging Michael Jordan’s basketball talent from tapes of his fantasy basketball camp. You know the difference between Bob Hope and Janeane Garafalo? Bob Hope was an American icon, the only person ever named an honorary veteran of the US Armed Forces for decades of USO tours that have won praise from everyone from John Steinbeck to Bill Clinton, a man who could sing with Bing Crosby, dance with Jimmy Cagney, and act opposite virtually every leading lady of Hollywood’s Golden Age including Katharine Hepburn, Jane Russell, Lucille Ball, and Hedy Lamar, and who had the confidence and talent to ad lib an entire episode of the most-watched tv show in America, a man whose show business career spanned seven decades – and Janeane Garafalo’s a racist.

PS A few weeks ago I happened upon a 1941 Bob Hope movie called “Louisiana Purchase”. It’s a thoroughly Republican picture, with several anti-Roosevelt lines. The best joke comes when the female lead has just completed the typical Hollywood transformation from dowdy to knockout. Several guys are in her hotel room drooling over her, and an African-American hotel employee walks past the open door. He does a double-take and walks away shaking his head, saying, “If she were black, she’d be beautiful”. That’s what guys like Bob Hope were doing for racial humor back when members of Janeane Garafalo’s party were enforcing segregation and anti-miscegenation laws across the country.

Good point. And she’s certainly carrying on that racist, Jim Crow tradition today — as is Ed Schultz.