Yes, I actually did it, and I have the very-well received documentary to prove it! People who thought my run for The Presidency was some kind of desperate publicity stunt or was in any way less than serious are what we call, these days, Low info voters. I have five adult children and five grandchildren whom I want to survive and thrive in this great country, and my desire to grab the handle of this drifting ship of State was serious as a heart attack. I don’t have to search around for the cause of most of our ills and I’ll cut right to the chase; I lay them at the door of Patriarchy. I describe Patriarchy as the vile and rigid gender-driven system by which just over half of the human race has rudely and summarily been told to wait in the other room. It may be that the ‘over half’ part is explained by the fact that men have always been inspired to kill each other in more massive numbers, not that they’ve ever neglected to murder women for reasons more varied than warfare. It may have been ‘natural’ during the infancy of our species for the biggest ape and his pals to make and enforce the rules, but given our present levels of knowledge and technology, brute force, while it may still prevail, doesn’t have to be nor should it be the basis for who sits in the driver’s seat. We’ve brought the world to the brink of destruction, where it’s teetered for far too long, and a fundamental change in our way of looking at and running things needs to happen, BIG time!
It’s sad to think how many people will hear my words and say, “Are you kidding, Roseanne? Look at Campaign 2016: A woman stands poised to take over the most powerful position in the world! Aren’t you happy and grateful for the epic progress this represents?” Sorry, but Hillary Clinton doesn’t represent a big breakthrough or a departure from patriarchy for me, or for anybody who really gets it. She’s largely where she is as a result of her husband’s influence, and we know, now, that a lot of the Clinton years have been whitewashed. Her record as a Senator and then Secretary of State do not impress a whole lot of us who’ve given them a fair but thorough going over. She admits she made a grave mistake by voting for George W. Bush’s horrific disastrous Iraq War, but she went on to push for disastrous regime change in Libya, a policy that Barack Obama has called his biggest mistake in eight years as President! Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi were classic dictators, but both nations they ruled with the proverbial iron fist looked like theme parks compared to the hellish chaos we inflicted and still enable. So, to Hillary Clinton I say having a vagina doesn’t ALWAYS disqualify you from membership in the Good Old Boys Network. OK, this goes right to the heart of what I’m talking about, but it’s so important I’m giving it its own new paragraph.
We need enormous change when it comes to our glorification of violence in The United States. It’s true that our nation was born of a violent revolution and that we fought one of the most destructive and bloody civil wars in history, but we’re supposed to be evolving and progressing. From the disturbingly widespread near worship of guns to the glorification of military power that has us used to cheering fighter jets roaring over football fields while troops in uniform spread an enormous flag covering the playing field, it’s beginning to look a lot like fascism. Not only do we spend more on hardware and technology that kills people than the next half dozen countries in line (combined!) we lock up more of our citizens than China, which has nearly four times our population! And, so much of this is the manifestation of patriarchy, born of the idea that men wield the power because, basically, they have always wielded the power. We can’t build on this threatening, unstable foundation. It must be deconstructed, and my mention of how many of our citizens are locked up brings me to my next point, because I am about solutions. Far too many of those who are locked up are in prison for non-violent drug-related convictions. My battle-cry “Yes, We Cannabis!” was no gimmick. It isn’t mostly about so-called recreational use of marijuana; it’s a serious political statement about the hypocrisy of disrupting, if not ruining peoples’ lives for possessing an herb with proven medicinal benefits. States that have decriminalized or outright legalized pot have not only NOT descended into chaos, they’ve actually shown positive progress in key areas that matter. The rest of the nation should follow the lead of Colorado, the State where my kids were born and where I got my first real breaks in the world of Comedy, which is after all, really the art of making people think and then laugh. And, speaking of thinking and laughing: I’m glad that people are enjoying the film that documents my run for The Presidency of these United States, and I hope many more will, because it truly is about more than me, and I’m going to wrap this up, now.
The real reason anyone gave me a look and had any interest at all in what I do, including my run for President, is because of what I’ve publicly represented for more than three decades, now. I’m a woman who came from a working class family and my parents were second-generation Americans whose parents before them had family, neighbors and friends killed in The Holocaust. I saw the struggles that working class people dealt with, especially ME, and I turned all my insights and talents toward creating a show that let millions of Americans (and, then, people all over the world) that they weren’t alone and that we could find ways to laugh at it all without kidding ourselves about the ongoing struggle. That struggle, to me, is about creating a world where there’s more laughter and less struggle. I’m still inviting everyone to join me!