Cher Begs Voters Not to Choose Bush
Nov. 1, 2000 -- She dislikes politics and says she’s not a registered Democrat.
But Cher is so panic-stricken at the thought of Texas Gov. George W. Bush leading the free world that she’s delayed the London recording sessions for the follow-up to Believe so she can do whatever possible to keep him out of office.
“Has everyone lost their f---ing minds? Doesn’t anybody remember the illustrious Reagan-Bush years when people had no money and no jobs? What has happened to people’s memories? It’s like they have Alzheimer’s or something.”
Shocking the ShockerThe ageless Oscar-Grammy winner was on the phone to Wall of Sound from her Malibu, Calif., home Friday to discuss her stark 1994 CD Not Commercial, which she is just now releasing independently on the Internet at cher.com.
Though she wrote it six years ago, the issue-oriented Not Com would seem to fit her mood of the moment. She had much to say about this introspective album — and why it sat on the shelf so long — but she was intent on talking politics first.
“I don’t like Bush,” she said of George W. “I don’t trust him. I don’t like his record. He’s stupid. He’s lazy. Some woman said to me she was voting for him because she liked his dad, and I said, ‘Good, because that’s what you’re getting.’ If somebody’s claim to fame is that they signed a law so that you can carry a gun to church — oh, give me a break.”
That the polls are even close — that there’s even a question in voters’ minds between Bush and Vice President Al Gore — has flabbergasted the usually unshockable superstar.
“If you’re black in this country, if you’re a woman in this country, if you are any minority in this country at all, what could possibly possess you to vote Republican? If you think the president is an ass, fine — after four years you can vote him out. But the Supreme Court — that’s 30 years! The Jerry Falwells of this world will be right in your back pocket. You won’t have one f---ing right left.”
One Scared Diva
Long outspoken on equal rights, gay rights and abortion rights, Cher directed the final segment of HBO’s critically acclaimed 1996 abortion trilogy If These Walls Could Talk, in which she also had a pivotal role as a clinic doctor.
“I’m passionate about this because I’m just so scared,” she said. “I want people to know what’s at stake. I’m so nervous about this election, I was supposed to go to Europe in September to work, but I just can’t leave.”
Since summer, when she visited the Democratic convention, Cher has appeared at several Democratic fund-raisers, including a Gore gala in New Jersey, at least two events for Hillary Rodham Clinton’s New York Senate run, and one to raise money for a Clinton presidential library. She has also mulled the issues on CNN and was expected to speak on several radio shows as campaigning grinds down to the wire.
“I’m supposed to go out and talk to people this week and tell them that if you vote for Ralph Nader that’s all well and good, but a vote for Nader is a vote for Bush.”
She said she stays in touch with the issues, partly just by talking with people wherever she goes.
“I have been traveling this country for 37 years,” she said of her wide-ranging career. “I know what’s going on more than many of these [politicians] know. I don’t want to see what happened years ago, happen again. The idea of old people eating dog food doesn’t appeal to me. Call me old-fashioned. I just don’t like it.”