Sandra Bernhard
SB: Honestly, because of the Internet, because of people’s stupidity, because of people’s either fake political correctness, or the right-wing fake concern about people using language that they would use in their bedroom (but in a derogatory destructive way), it’s not even worth saying certain things anymore because you just don’t want it taken out of context, and you don’t wanna defend it because the minute you have to start defending it, that means you’re explaining your work, and the work that I do can’t be explained, and I don’t wanna explain it. I’ve never used a word about anybody that didn’t have many, many layers and meanings and double-entendres, and that wasn’t laced with irony. So a few things that I might have said ten, fifteen, twenty years ago pre-social media, I wouldn’t even bother saying today. I’m like, I’m not gonna be your guinea pig. Fuck it. I just won’t.
MS: Because you don’t want to be put in the position where—
SB: ‘Cause I don’t wanna explain—I don’t wanna explain to the freakin’ stupid masses of people out there that are on that fuckin’ social media twenty-four hours a day, diggin’ around, lookin’ for shit, bored, lost, resentful, angry, tapped out, empty, haven’t picked up a book or listened to a good song maybe in their entire lives, and now they have a platform to go, ‘Blah blah blah.’ I don’t wanna fuckin’ know about it. I don’t wanna engage with these people. I don’t wanna defend myself to these people, so fuck these people; I’m not fucking putting myself in that position. No. Not long ago, I had posted some sort of a comment [on Twitter] about gun control, and, oh honey, the creeps and the cretins came out of the fuckin’ woodwork, and I was like, ‘No. I’m done.’ Why do I have to put myself in harm’s way? If these people want their guns, they want their shit, they want to go out there and shoot it up and kill each other … I’m sorry they’re killing innocent people, that’s what’s outrageous to me, but you can only spread yourself so thin. And it’s so absurd now, it’s so intense, it’s so deep, it’s so crazy, and everybody can weigh in, and everybody’s nuts, and everybody’s off the fuckin’ rails, and I’m just tryin’ to stay out of the shit, and go quietly about my fuckin’ shit in the venues where I feel safe, where people come to hear it, and so be it if that cuts down on some of my free-wheeling style. It doesn’t really, though, because I’m still freewheeling in my shows, which is the only place I ever was anyways. I don’t wanna be freewheeling on the internet. I don’t know who’s out there taking the shit in.
Bravo, Sandra.
The political correctness crowd and the news media don't get layers, they truly don't. The concept of multiple meanings, familiar to anyone who has studied poetry seriously for five minutes, is foreign to them. Humor is also outside their purview. So even when I have some sympathy with the socio-political aims of those who call political correctness fouls, I have to reject their methods as being overly blunt and entirely insensitive to nuance.
As Bob Dylan wrote in 1964, "Do not create anything. It will be misinterpreted." Worse now, though.
May I Kiss You On The Lips, Miss Sandra?
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