Sarah Silverman in the official video for her new song and show, ‘I Love You, America’; Photo: Hulu/YouTube
In her new song “I Love You, America,” comedian Sarah Silverman laughs at and gets angry about hot-button issues in the United States.
Dabbling in songwriting is not a new thing for her— she often incorporates music into her show, The Sarah Silverman Progam. She’s written such poetic “classics” as “Poop Song,” “AIDS Ballad,” and “Blind Woman Blues.”
In her new song, which shares the name with her new political variety show on Hulu (premiering October 12), she presents a sort of BOSS-ian American anthem, singing “I love you, America from sea to shining sea, from the East Coast to the West and whatever’s in between.”
Throughout the song, she points out issues in the U.S. through satire. At one point, she sings how she loves “Mexicans, Haitians, Koreans,” before realizing that she’s putting people in boxes and dumbing them down to their ethnicity.
She touches on police brutality when she sings to a white police officer that she loves him. Then she stops and goes on a tangent. “Well, yeah,” she says. “That’s easy for me to say. I mean, I can walk into any encounter with the police and assume they’re going to serve and protect me. That’s my luxury.”
She walks by Retta from Parks & Recreation, stopping her to ask how she, a white woman, can be a good ally for people of color. “Seriously?” Retta responds. “Take a class or something. I’m busy. I’m not all black people. I’m just me. I’m just Retta.”
Toward the end of the video, she sings things like “I love you, liberal bubble; I love you, racist South” and mentioning how much corn the U.S. grows.
She ends the video with a serious message, citing how some people criticize her — i.e. the “Hollywood elite” — for using her platform to talk about political and social issues. “How you vote for these rich fucks that lie to your faces and then systematically rape you of your rights and your job and your health care, and then you call me Hollywood elite?”
Definitely some harsh words spilling over with opinion. Silverman must have prepared herself for the comment section on YouTube.