Not long ago, I had posted some sort of a comment [on Twitter] about gun control, and, oh honey, the creeps and the cretins came out of the fuckin’ woodwork, and I was like, ‘No. I’m done.’ Why do I have to put myself in harm’s way? If these people want their guns, they want their shit, they want to go out there and shoot it up and kill each other … I’m sorry they’re killing innocent people, that’s what’s outrageous to me, but you can only spread yourself so thin. And it’s so absurd now, it’s so intense, it’s so deep, it’s so crazy, and everybody can weigh in, and everybody’s nuts, and everybody’s off the fuckin’ rails, and I’m just tryin’ to stay out of the shit, and go quietly about my fuckin’ shit in the venues where I feel safe, where people come to hear it, and so be it if that cuts down on some of my free-wheeling style. It doesn’t really, though, because I’m still freewheeling in my shows, which is the only place I ever was anyways. I don’t wanna be freewheeling on the internet. I don’t know who’s out there taking the shit in.

 

MS: I’m fascinated by your relationship to black culture. Many white people, our voices will drop when we even say “black,” we can barely utter the word [Sandra laughs], but you have, in your shows, used the n-word or variations of it. For instance, in a 1998 show, when taking Mariah Carey to task for being what you have referred to as “disingenuous” regarding her racial identity, you say: “Mariah Carey is trying to backtrack on our asses, gettin’ real niggerish up there at the Royalton hotel suite with Puff Daddy and all the greasy, chain-wearing black men. ‘Oh yeah, Puff, I got a little bit of black in me, I ever tell you about that?’” When a journalist questioned your use of the word, you respond that Paul Mooney gave you “carte blanche to use the word,” that you are a “card-carrying white-black girl,” and that because of your “huge black following,” “it’s like a black person saying ‘niggerish.’” It’s extremely bold—and some would say downright audacious—for you to go there as a white woman. You’re basically claiming that you’re down enough with black culture that you have permission to enter such volatile territory.