Comedian Roseanne Barr has filed paperwork to run for the President of the United States as a candidate of the Green Party. If you’re wondering what this will mean for the presidential race, you may stop now. Barr is really running symbolically, to get her point across, much the way Stephen Colbert did in South Carolina. Except Colbert actually had a lesson to teach us about why everything is wrong with campaign finance. Roseanne just has strong opinions on Twitter. Hey, maybe I should run for President.
Look, I don’t mean to discredit Roseanne Barr. I like Roseanne Barr. She’s an important female voice in comedy, and I find her entertaining. (She is a NY Giants fan to boot!) And in no way am I saying that she should not be involved in politics. For sure, she often has sound, right-minded things to say when it comes to politics. What I am saying, however, is that at least Colbert had a reason for doing what he did: He showed us how truly and weirdly corrupt campaign finance laws are right now thanks to the Citizens United ruling. The fact that anyone can just throw their hat in the ring is weird to me, especially when they know that they have no chance at all to win. Barr doesn’t even think she’ll be the nominee; the Green Party officially chooses the candidate to represent them in July, at their convention in Baltimore. With Barr now entering the race, there will be four candidates, including the presumed (by Barr herself) candidate Jill Stein.
However, the thing that separates a candidate like Barr with, say, a (former) candidate like current U.S. Senator Al Franken of Minnesota or former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, is that when someone chooses a microblogging site to espouse their platform and plans for first 100 days in office (including “Eurpeanstyle” healthcare and forgiveness of all mortgage and credit card debt, because that’s owed to the “FED,” and she’ll go ahead and get rid of that, too), it’s hard to take them seriously. Because their “campaign” looks like this:
Also, the campaign will include highly scientific polls from respected sites such as TMZ:
I will be really clear: I do not want Roseanne Barr to stop talking about politics. Shoot, sometimes I even agree with her. But if she was a really serious candidate, she would be handing her Twitter account over to her campaign and not using it to say everyone in Hollywood is gay. She might also consider not talking about the apocalypse that didn’t happen.
(via I Heart Chaos, Jezebel)
