Sandra Bernhard recently expressed what many Americans are starting to recognize but are too afraid to voice.
Asked if she believes she will see the election of a woman president in her lifetime—days after Kamala Harris’ defeated presidential bid—the 69-year-old comedian and actress answered with an unequivocal no.
“After this, I do not,” says Bernhard. “They will not run a woman again anytime soon, I can tell you that much. No fucking way.”
As difficult as that might be to hear, Bernhard hopes her new Easy Listening tour, coming to Sweetwater Music Hall on Tue/10, will be the proverbial teaspoon of sugar to help harsh truths like these go down.
In the show, she time travels back to the early ’70s, when the then-teenager, alone in her bedroom (decked out with her astrological wallpaper, hippie bedspreads, and a turntable stereo system) first began exercising her feminist power.
“Oh, it was everything,” she says. “I could control the narrative of my young life. That was very impactful and inspirational because I could close the door and read a book and listen to Ladies of the Canyon, Blue, or Tapestry. I had my world, and back then, people couldn’t invade it.”
If she wanted to interact with a friend, she’d call them on her rotary dial phone and invite them over. Back then, says Bernhard, people were socializing with people they knew rather than mean-spirited strangers or malignant Russian bots over social media.
The future entertainer may not have personally known the singers—legends like Joni Mitchell, Carol King, Tina Turner, Dusty Springfield, Aretha Franklin, and Laura Nyro—who were killing her softly with their songs in her formative years, but after hearing them so eloquently address her concerns, she felt like she did.
“It opened me up to knowing that my feelings and emotions were accurate,” says Bernhard. “How I perceived the world as a young woman and what I wanted from it was shared by these masterful artists who heard, understood, and enveloped me. How incredible that I grew up in a time when I was embraced by great women whom I didn’t know but who knew me.”
The comedian, famous for punctuating her highly topical stand-up with songs, is particularly excited about highlighting a newer voice, Lana Del Rey, in her show by singing one of the “Summertime Sadness” artist’s tunes.
“I think Lana Del Rey is a really important voice for young women, and I put her in the stratosphere of some of our other great female performers,” she says. “I admire Taylor Swift and am glad she is out there for women, but what she says isn’t necessarily impactful. My daughter, who likes artists more akin to what I grew up on, doesn’t think so either.”
In her five decades as a performer, Bernhard has certainly raised the bar for storytelling in stand-up, spinning wild, enveloping tales in such one-woman shows as 1988’s monumental Without You I’m Nothing, featuring a memorable skit, set in San Francisco, about the pressures placed on young women to marry before it’s too late, backed by an easy-listening Burt Bacharach medley.
Subsequent comedy albums I’m Still Here… Damn It! (1998) and I Love Being Me, Don’t you? (2011) were both recorded in San Francisco.
One of Bernhard’s many fortes has been delivering social criticism in an encouraging—never off-putting—manner, which she continues to do to good effect on her ironically titled Easy Listening tour.
“Now that we’ve been hammered politically, there’s nothing easy about anything,” says Bernhard. “We’re not sitting around listening to Perry Como in a coma. We’re being pummeled by strangers over social media. But I will give you as much easy listening as possible because I’m running the ship. You’ll walk out reinvigorated and re-incentivized because a stupid person hasn’t beaten you up.”
Bernhard is disappointed by the beating Harris has taken from progressives and conservatives after losing the election. She believes the Democratic nominee deserves praise for running a phenomenal campaign that was inclusive of everyone.
Instead of finger-pointing, she wants Americans to wise up and face the fact that it’s pure prejudice that kept the VP from winning the presidency.
“This is a country that is racist, misogynistic, angry, and selfish,” she says. “The population doesn’t want to fucking share a slice of bread with their neighbor. That’s the fucking mentality. They hate women and Black people.”
With this in mind, she’s also doubtful about getting through to the far right about a woman’s fundamental right to an abortion.
“If they didn’t get it this time with the messaging of Kamala Harris, who the fuck is going to get that through to them?” asks Bernhard.
Still, she doesn’t think things are as dire as they might appear right now.
Believing that many of Trump’s campaign promises for his second presidential term are pure bluster meant to play to his conservative base, she doesn’t think he’ll deport one million undocumented immigrants or make any more attempts to take away women’s abortion rights and health care because the first is bad for the economy and the second will lose Republicans votes.
What most concerns her now is the possibility of things not improving under a second Trump term.
“He is an addled, demented, fat fucking piece of shit, who should have died and disappeared and floated down the stream like a turd,” she says. “I don’t think things are going to get any better in this country for the next four years. So we must reassemble and, as artists, do our work and, as human beings, be extra kind to the suffering until we can assess the reality of what’s happening.”
What gives the “Roseanne,” “American Horror Story,” and “POSE” alumnus hope is a handful of projects she has in the hopper, for which she was blessed to work with some very smart and talented women.
She’ll appear with Margaret Cho and Kristen Schnall in Disney’s season 2 of “Percy Jackson and the Olympians”; the film Babes and season 2 of Netflix’s “Survival of The Thickest” opposite Michelle Buteau; and make a cameo in Josh Safdie’s upcoming film Marty Supreme, alongside Fran Drescher.
Coming “home” to perform in California, where she’s lived at various points in her career, is another uplifting moment.
“When you drive up the coast, there’s nothing like California,” says Bernhard. “It’s a magnificent state. San Francisco is a jewel and one of my favorite cities. I know it needs help, but you can’t take away the natural beauty and sophistication of San Francisco.”
Trying to maintain an equal amount of optimism for the nation’s future, she’s hopeful that a Democrat—maybe California Gov. Gavin Newsom—will win the White House next.
“I know the pendulum–swinging in this country,” she says. “I know the bright, shiny objects that people veer to. I don’t know who that will be. Will it be Newsom or somebody we don’t even think of yet? But a lot of people are about to get fucked—and let’s hope we can extricate ourselves from it.”
SANDRA BERNHARD Tue/10, Sweetwater Music Hall, Mill Valley. Tickets and more info here.
