Politics & Power Quote by Sandra Bernhard

Bernhard’s triple “I’m very much” lands like a comedic drumbeat and a preemptive rebuttal at the same time. She’s not offering a nuanced position paper; she’s staking out a persona in a culture that loves to punish women, comics, and outspoken Jews for having one. The repetition is doing the work of armor: emphatic enough to sound like conviction, slightly over-insistent enough to telegraph that she knows these labels are treated as liabilities in the public arena.

“Humanist” is the strategically soft lead-in, a high-minded umbrella that signals decency without specifying policy. Then she snaps into “pro-choice,” the phrase that instantly sorts audiences, invites hecklers, and tests whether “tolerance” actually applies when the subject is women’s autonomy. The closer, “politically correct,” is the sly pivot. By the time Bernhard was a fixture of late-20th-century American comedy, “politically correct” had become a weaponized sneer, shorthand for prudish policing. She reclaims it by saying it plainly, almost deadpan, as if to ask: what’s so scandalous about not being an asshole?

The subtext is showbiz survival. In entertainment, sincerity is often treated as uncool unless it’s packaged as confession or irony. Bernhard refuses both. She makes her politics part of the act’s spine, not a detachable statement for press junkets. The intent isn’t to soothe; it’s to signal solidarity and to dare the listener to admit what they really mean when they mock “PC.”