Did liberal-bashers cost Garofalo her sitcom?

[MORTARDUDE]

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Did liberal-bashers cost Garofalo her sitcom?

June 5, 2003

BY BILL ZWECKER SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST Advertisement


Is the ghost of Sen. Joe McCarthy alive and well in Hollywood? That is certainly on the minds of many outspoken liberals in Tinsel-town these days. The latest conspiracy theory focuses on the just-announced axing by ABC of very vocal anti-Iraq war activist Janeane Garofalo's new sitcom, ''Slice o' Life.''

Though the alphabet network had given Garo-falo and Universal Tele-vision a thumbs up on the show for next season, network execs changed their minds, telling Daily Variety and other industry outlets it was ''the direction of the series story line'' that led to the dumping of ''Slice''--just days before the show's pilot was scheduled to be taped in Vancouver, British Columbia.

A source close to Garofalo tells this column the actress and comedian was furious by the last-minute change and believes it's yet another example ''of a network bowing to the perceived power of the Bush administration. ... Janeane is convinced her politics and all the hate mail the right-wing lobby stirred up during the war is what is behind all this.''

An ABC spokeswoman denies that, saying this was a decision based strictly on the artistic merits (or lack thereof) of the show--with Garofalo's politics ''never coming into the decision-making process whatsoever.''

For the pilot, Garofalo would have played an unwilling segment producer assigned to come up with corny feature pieces to run at the end of a TV newsmagazine show.

This is Garofalo's second recent TV stumble. A potential HBO project was also shelved.