The Wisdom Of Cher

Cher has opinions on everything, from Palin to aging to her transsexual son Chaz. Oh, and Dr. Pepper. A few of our favorite soundbites?

For a lifelong rule-breaker, there’s something deeply comforting about Cher. Not just because she’s immortal, but because she’s so consistent in her wackiness. Plus, she gives great quote: while other stars are surrounded by publicists and canned rhetoric, Cher is nothing if not open. It must make a fun change for puff-piece writers. As puff-piece readers, we were thrilled to find quotes like the following in Vanity Fair:

Sonny and I still aren’t in the [Rock and Roll] Hall of Fame, and it just seems kind of rude. Sonny was a good writer, and we started something that no one else was doing. We were weird hippies before there was a name for it, when the Beatles were wearing sweet little haircuts and round-collared suits…. We influenced a generation, and it’s like: What more do you want?”

If I woke up tomorrow in a guy’s body, I would just kick and scream and cry and fucking rob a bank, because I cannot see myself as anything but who I am-a girl. I would not take it as well as Chaz has. I couldn’t imagine it.” While Cher remains a proud mother, she admits to Smith that she still gets confused: “She’s a very smart girl-boy! This is where I get into trouble. My pronouns are fucked. I still don’t remember to call her ‘him.'”

“I got so obsessed with [C-SPAN] that it was kind of interfering with my life. Sarah Palin came on, and I thought, Oh, fuck, this is the end. Because a dumb woman is a dumb woman.” On the subject of Arizona governor Jan Brewer, Cher says, “She was worse than Sarah Palin, if that is possible. This woman was like a deer in headlights. She’s got a handle on the services of the state, and I would not let her handle the remote control.”

I think Meryl [Streep] is doing it [aging] great. The stupid bitch is doing it better than all of us! But I don’t like it. It’s getting in my way. I have a job to do, and it’s making my job harder.

I would be willing to pay a lot more taxes, because I make a lot more money, but I don’t want to give them more to just fuck things up more. It really should fall on people like me to get together and do things to help the people in this country.

And as if it needs saying, in the cover shoot — in which she’s in a weird Burlesque-themed Snork costume and surrounded by young studs — she looks eerily ageless. Which, again, is comforting. The song “Welcome to Burlesque?” Not so much.