sandra bernhard says that at heart, she is really just a low-key housewife. <u+201c>only i<u+2019>m a performer who is incredibly witty and famous,<u+201d> she adds with a laugh. though best known for her cutting one-liners and bawdy sense of humor, it is the stuff of daily life, from folding laundry to buying paper towels, that now features most prominently on her radio show and in her comedy. she has long skewered celebrities as part of her act, and ms. bernhard, 61, is still doing that<u+2014>but it isn<u+2019>t her focus these days. she finds that it isn<u+2019>t as fun now that so-called <u+201c>celebrities<u+201d> are everywhere. <u+201c>when i first started out, a celebrity was warren beatty or meryl streep,<u+201d> she says. <u+201c>now it<u+2019>s <u+2018>the real housewives of new york<u+2019> and donald trump. <u+201d> today, she thinks that many people get into entertainment because they want to be famous rather than for reasons of artistic expression. <u+201c>i think that<u+2019>s a bad place to enter the creative world,<u+201d> she says. her hourlong radio show, <u+201c>sandyland,<u+201d> which airs five days a week on siriusxm, features interviews with people in sports, music and arts. in one new monthly segment, she conducts her interviews on the subway. in the first installment, she talked to singer debbie harry and her fellow blondie co-founder chris stein about their band, politics and family. the other passengers in the car mostly either read or looked on without comment. <u+201c>seeing celebrities on the subway doesn<u+2019>t really surprise new yorkers,<u+201d> she says. in her live shows, she talks about her nontraditional family, including her girlfriend, sara switzer, and their 18-year-old daughter, who just started college. <u+201c>something within my day-to-day life<u+2026>can bring something a little more human and off-center to the show,<u+201d> she says. <u+201c>i love being funny, but telling jokes was never my strong suit.<u+201d> ms. bernhard grew up in flint, mich. her mother was an abstract artist, and her father was a proctologist<u+2014><u+201c>so that<u+2019>s how i see the world,<u+201d> she has said in her shows. when she was young, ms. bernhard says, other children often made fun of her looks. she used to curse the whole way to school and escaped by listening to music and comedy. instead of going to college, she went to israel to work on a kibbutz, as her three older brothers had done before her. there, she recalls, she helped to clean slaughtered kosher chickens. after returning to the u.s., she headed for los angeles at age 18 to try to become an actress. her first job was as a manicurist, and at night, she frequented nightclubs and gay discos<u+2014>a vibe that inspired her performances. her first roles were guest-starring turns on shows such as <u+201c>the richard pryor show<u+201d> (1977). she played an obsessive fan in martin scorsese<u+2019>s 1982 satire <u+201c>the king of comedy,<u+201d> but she is best known for her work in television, including a recurring role as one of the first openly lesbian characters on tv on <u+201c>roseanne<u+201d> in the 1990s. over the years, she has also performed her own comedy shows, such as <u+201c>without you i<u+2019>m nothing<u+201d> (1988). <u+2018> i love being funny, but telling jokes was never my strong suit. <u+2019> she also gained attention for being openly bisexual at a time when it was more taboo. in the 1980s, she was rumored to be dating madonna. their relationship has been a source of material for ms. bernhard ever since. she has said, <u+201c>we were pulling everybody<u+2019>s chains, creating a media frenzy. we were friends.<u+201d> today ms. bernhard lives with ms. switzer in manhattan. they began dating 17 years ago. although ms. bernhard is a strong believer in marriage equality and regularly supports gay rights fundraisers, she and ms. switzer have no plans to marry. for the past two years, she has incorporated the question into her comedy. she jokes that her accountant once called to ask her, for tax purposes, if she planned to get married. he told her that she could have saved $6,800 the previous year by getting married. she answers with a deadpan tone, <u+201c>that<u+2019>s not enough of a return on my investment. i<u+2019>ll just stay single.<u+201d> she worries about the dilution of entertainment these days<u+2014>and the increasing distractions of the internet and social media. <u+201c>people don<u+2019>t have a chance to sit with their feelings and sit with their thoughts,<u+201d> she says. in her business, she has found that patience is important. over the years, she has had to wait for projects to come through and pitched ideas again and again. <u+201c>if you learn one thing<u+2026>being in this business, it<u+2019>s patience,<u+201d> she says. <u+201c>it hasn<u+2019>t been easy for me, but i<u+2019>ve gotten better at it.<u+201d> in the end, she remains an optimist. as she has said in her performances, <u+201c>i don<u+2019>t think i could do my work if i didn<u+2019>t believe there was some kind of hope for humanity.<u+201d>
sandra bernhard<u+2019>s new targets - wsj
alexandra wolfe