Should celebrity activists shut up for now?

Janeane Garofalo and Bill Maher have both opposed the war with Iraq. But now that the fighting has started, they offer contrasting prescriptions for protest.

By Kerry Lauerman

Mar 21, 2003 | Bill Maher and Janeane Garofalo, both comedians and stand-up artists, often provoke people to try and shut them up. Maher's loaded comments in the wake of 9/11 caused such a furor -- along with an advertiser boycott -- that his show, "Politically Incorrect," eventually was dropped by a shell-shocked ABC. And Garofalo's appearances on the cable news circuit consistently criticizing the White House have made her the naughty celebrity poster child of the right, getting targeted by the New York Post as one of the celebrity "Saddam lovers" whose products we should boycott.

They've both been consistent critics of a U.S. war with Iraq: Maher from his new, advertising-free home at HBO, where his show, "Real Time with Bill Maher," airs live on Friday nights, and Garofalo from her act and on the road, where she's hit the ground as an almost full-time activist.

But they have distinctly different prescriptions for what to do now. When Salon talked to them both, not long after the bombs started to fall, Garofalo was planning a trip to the soggy protests in Time Square, while Maher, planning his show in Los Angeles, said that while "we can't shut up indefinitely if we think our country is headed in a horribly wrong direction," he doesn't think now is the time.

And they both had thoughts about what should happen on Oscar night. Their interviews follow, Garofalo first.

Next Page: Garofalo: Don't look at the man behind the curtain, look at Susan Sarandon!

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