Politics is hilarious. Most politicians are no more than court jesters, performing for the audience shamelessly and with zero self-awareness.
Who could ever forget AOC pretending to weep at the gates of an illegal alien detention center? Or Nancy Pelosi kneeling while decked out in her best African kente cloth scarf, to pander to the “martyrdom” and memory of St. George Floyd? The sound of her creaking knees reportedly still echoes in the great halls of the Capitol.
Or failed VP candidate, the reported assassin aficionado Tim Walz, wandering around outdoors during the presidential campaign, trying to look like a hunter? Or prancing around the stage trying to look like a man? It’s all so transactional, and honestly hilarious, in a sad clown kinda way.
Not only because it isn’t funny -- it’s a laugh-a-minute riot -- but because they think people take them seriously, knowing full well there hasn’t been a sincere heartfelt emotion beating in their chests since the day they had their nameplates mounted on their Capitol Hill offices.
Before Donald Trump, the only person to take the comedy of politics seriously was Roseanne Barr, when she ran for president in 2012. Afterwards, she noticed, while watching Donald Trump on the campaign trail in 2016, that “Trump is doing standup,” and in that moment, she knew he would win.
This is just one of the many topics covered in her stirring new documentary, Roseanne Barr IS America.
Directed by prolific documentary filmmaker Joel Gilbert, this film reaches heights that are hinted at in some of his other films. Unlike his other works, Gilbert, understanding the power of a great narrative, took a step back and allowed Barr to tell her story unimpeded. It’s just her, a chair, and a camera, along with clips and b-roll footage.
Gilbert says, “I knew Roseanne was still hilarious and had the charisma to carry the film entirely on her own.” The final result is a film as raw and inspiring as she is.
Singlehandedly driving a narrative for a film is a task fraught with peril. It is not for the weak, and one imagines how few people could successfully pull off such a lift. But she does. And the film soars for it.
Her power resides in her ability to weave a compelling and relatable story. She is a gifted storyteller who seamlessly incorporates humor and insight into some pretty serious topics.
Roseanne approaches her story like she’s setting up a joke, and returns to themes continually throughout the film, as any good comic would.
Her delivery is not performative -- the viewer gets a sense they’re in the room with her having a conversation, without artifice or agenda, and this connection, beyond the story, tells perhaps more about Roseanne than her triumphs and trials.
She continually weaves stories together, brilliantly setting up context for deeper understanding, and delivers punchlines that are as often profound and insightful as they are funny.
Photo: Dan Fleuette
And through it all, we get insight to her deep faith in God. In the opening, she says, “since God has an incredible sense of humor, I was born as an Orthodox Jewish girl in Salt Lake City, Utah… of course.”
As with most people, we see the seeds of her upbringing that profoundly affect how she sees and interacts with the world. Feeling out of place surrounded by thin, tall Mormon girls, “I was fat, dark, and not pretty. I always was a stranger in a strange land. Kinda feeling like I was navigating at least two or three worlds all my life,” Roseanne leaned into those differences to be wholly and authentically herself.
The incongruity and contradiction that ruled her early life give greater context to her growth over time. She says she was raised as a “red diaper baby” by socialists, more enraptured by Trotsky than Stalin, but ultimately disenchanted with the way socialism (as always) played out.
The contradictions are only skin deep though. She ran from the animating forces that governs her life -- faith, God, compassion for others, and a deep connection with the “everyman” that underpins the very foundation of America.
Rather than shy away from this sense of alienation, she embraced it, and we watch as she channels this outsider mentality into the stratosphere of celebrity, success, and admiration.
Through long stints at comedy clubs and appearances on Johnny Carson, she was able to see the manifestation of a vision she had when she was three. At her grandmother’s house, she played around with a couple of mirrors and created a funhouse effect where she could see her reflection stretching out into infinity. In this, she had a vision from God who told her, “You will live and I will always be with you, and by the way, you will one day have your own show on TV and it will be the Roseanne show.”
The film then takes us on a deep dive into the horrors of Hollywood, where “they didn’t understand real families and hated middle America,” and where the greatest sin you can commit on a sitcom is to “tell a funny joke. They hate that.”
Following her show, she became somewhat of an activist in Hawaii, where she mobilized against pesticide giant Monsanto, the bane of farmers around the country, for their attempts to monopolize the food industry and in particular, their omnipresent weed killers that reportedly cause disease and death up and down the food chain.
This awakened in her a desire for a more direct pathway to talk about the things she cared about and was instrumental in her launching a presidential campaign in 2012, running against Obama and Romney.
The rest of the film delves into her growth in politics and frustration at watching the Democrat Party move further and further away from its traditional roots as the so-called champion of the working class.
We witness firsthand how Roseanne became another victim of the self-righteous leftist cancel culture, and her glorious re-rise as an essential and sustaining voice of sanity and common sense.
Through it all, we can see how in the words of Ronald Reagan, “I didn’t leave the Democrat Party, the Democrat Party left me,” applies to Roseanne.
Always the champion of the heart and soul of America, the working-class families that form its backbone, we see that Roseanne never really changed since she was a little girl, that the machine didn’t grind her down, and by remaining true to herself, she shows us the blueprint to do the same.
is a photographer, author, and filmmaker best known for his body of work with Steve Bannon and WarRoom. His national best-seller Rebels, Rogues, and Outlaws: A Pictorial History of WarRoom can be found on doitfluet.com
No AI machines were harmed in this writeup.