Tuesday, October 23, 2007
Sandra Bernhard, Caustic as Ever
I've always liked Bernhardt, she possesses a razor sharp sincerity, combined with emotional vulnerability, a willingness to say what a lot of us think, but are afraid to say ourselves for fear of social rejection. If you like Bernhardt, you should click on the link, and read the article in its entirety, it is a good profile of her.Rather than revisit past lives in her latest show, however, Bernhard has her sights firmly fixed on other women, primarily ones she deems to be underperforming. That means Laura Bush and the US president's daughters. As she says in Everything Bad and Beautiful: "I can't believe that this woman is as stupid as she pretends to be... We have a first lady who goes to Africa and tells the people 'to practice abstinence', that 'Aids is an affliction'. Honey, please. Those two daughters – are they practising abstinence? I want to see their gynaecological records, because if they're not they don't get any birth control, they don't get any morning-after pill, and if they contract an STD, too bad. If you live by the sword, you die by the sword you show-ponies..."
"It was hands off the Bush girls for the past seven years," rationalises Bernhard now. "Nobody could say a word about them, they've stood for nothing, they've said nothing, they are flatliners. Their mother is a flatliner – Laura Bush has done nothing to define this country, she's done nothing as a woman."
Labels: Bush, Sandra Bernhardt
