Celebrities are angry liberal bedwetters. Everybody knows that. But when one of them is honest with themselves, and makes a serious effort to get to know red state America, they deserve praise. Right?
Which brings us to Sarah Silverman. Silverman has a new show on Hulu, “I Love You, America,” in which she travels the country meeting and joking with folks in flyover country. It airs every Thursday and the first season has ten episodes.
In a recent interview in Entertainment Weekly, Silverman displayed a humility and understanding of conservatives that hopefully will rub off on the rest of Hollywood. Excerpts:
You’ll also be traveling the country for field pieces. What places are you visiting?
I just went to Mineola, Tex. Eighty-seven percent of the town voted for Trump. It’s a tiny town, just a handful of 2,000 people. I had dinner with a family in Louisiana who voted Trump and had never met a Jew.
How’d that go?
It was delicious, but it really made me sick after. [Laughs] I’ve never had so much Velveeta cheese in my belly! But it was interesting. I fell in love with this 7-year-old named Blaize who just broke my heart. He and his grandfather, who is five years older than me, talked about how Blaize got one of his guns taken away because he shot it too close to a little girl. This 7-year-old has a shotgun, a BB gun, and a rifle. And I’m not judging it. It’s a different culture.
Was Donald Trump’s election what put this show into motion?
Yeah. I mean, I can go back before Trump and kind of understand the country, the direction the country had been going, but yeah, for sure. The night Trump was elected, for instance, I remember thinking to myself I need to get a gun. And I need bottled water and canned food. Then I thought, oh, this is how a whole bunch of people were feeling when Obama was elected, and although I can’t relate to that on any level I can now understand that feeling of not feeling safe or feeling like you need to protect yourself from the government. So although I can’t at all relate to Obama’s election instigating that, I now have to understand what that feeling is. I was suddenly able to.
And also, his election was enlightening to me in a lot of ways that night because leading up to that election I think a lot of us were like, “What? The Republican Party has got a real identity crisis going on, you know? They’re going to have to figure out who they are.” And at the end of election night I realized we were looking in a mirror, Democrats, while we’re saying all these things. We had our smug smiles wiped right off our faces and until you’re able to look at yourself in a micro way or a macro way and see how you need to change you can’t expect anyone else to change.
Silverman also said, “It’s very easy to get divided when you don’t see people’s faces and you don’t feel the warmth of their skin.” She added, “As much as comedians are enmeshed in the liberal-bubble universe, we’re also the one form of show business that travels the country – all reaches of it — and whose job it is to connect with people no matter how different-minded. We are both Marvel and DC. It’s inherent in our nature.”
Give her a chance?
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