Cher: 'I don't know why anyone would want to be a Republican'

While on the red carpet at the Declare Yourself inaugural ball last month, Cher, who was once married to Sonny Bono (who later became a Republican Congressman), said that she didn't understand why anyone would be a Republican because eight years under Bush "almost killed me".

“I try to be charitable and there are some really good Republicans, but I just don’t understand how anyone would want to be a Republican. I just can’t figure it. I don’t understand,” the Oscar-, Grammy- and Emmy-award winning entertainer told a reporter. “If you’re poor, if you’re any kind of minority –- gay, black, Latino, anything. If you’re not a rich –- I don’t know. If you’re not a rich, born-again Christian, I don’t get it.”

This is not the first time that  the 61-year-old Cher has been in the news recently. Last week she and other celebrities went to City Hall to protest the proposed new elephant exhibit at the Los Angeles Zoo.  And Thursday she announced that she was coming out of retirement to take over for Celine Dion at the Colosseum at Las Vegas’ Caesars Palace staring May 6.

Update: Video of Cher taking on the GOP after the jump

-- Tony Pierce

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Photo: Cher shows her famed umbilicus to reporters at a press conference with Sonny Bono in 1975. Credit: Marianna Diamos / Los Angeles Times

Comments

[steve rodriguez]

Cher, I love my country and care about its future, therefore I am a Republican!!!!

[Steve]

The reason people are Republicans is someone needs to clean up the mess you ignorant democrats create. Someone has to make the money for you fools to piss away.

[MissButterfly]

The late Sonny Bono said in his book that Cher thought the Presidents' heads that are carved on Mt. Rushmore were done by nature - must be some precision erosion that did that!
She's got Democrat intelligence!

[Edgar Wolfe]

As a Republican I'm beginning to agree with Cher. Being a democrat seems to mean you don't have to pay your taxes.

[BillNM]

When will Cher and other superficial thinking celebrities wake up and realize that it is the government against the people and it doesn't make a d*** whether a Rep or Dem is in office?

[Linda]

According to Cher's logic, I must be a freak of nature. I am neither rich, nor a Christian. I do however, fit nicely into almost all of her minority categories. I'm a female Hispanic lesbian, only egads, I'm a registered Republican. She said it best. She just doesn't get it. And never will.

I wish she would elaborate on how exactly us Republican's "almost killed her." What a freakin tool. Keep your charity Cher, I don't need it.

[aaron choi]

To Steve Rodriguez:

lrn2history.
American politics has always gone in a cycle from Republican idiocy to Democrats having to come in and make major reforms to clean up the Republicans' mess, while the Republicans piss and moan. Then the GOP uses the severity of those reforms as a way to appeal to the public. You throw away the money in pointless projects (Bridge to Nowhere, anyone?), we raise taxes to get the money back. Then you advocate lowering taxes. The cycle repeats.

Also, I like how all the comments that have been approved by the moderator so far have been decidedly of one viewpoint. Well played.

[The Party's Over]

Cher was the shallow pretentious stupid one. She is the one who should be a Repubican.

[steve rodriguez]

To Aaron Choi:

I suppose that you are for the hope and change that the second coming of the Clinton Admin. will bring!

[Cynthia Taylor]

Right! Could it be because the world view on Republican administration is negative. What a mess 8 years has done to our county! I say forget about party lines and think about what you can do for America.
No one cares anymore, we want just/fair government.
Look at China, they are developing infrastructure big time.
I think Republicans and some Democrates lack the sophistication of looking outside of Washington D.C. to what is going on in the world around us. God Bless America.

[Don R.]

"This is not the first time that the 61-year-old Cher has been in the news recently."

I know you are making cut backs, but did you get rid of all your editors? "first time ... recently". A fifth grader could tell you that sentence is awkward.

"The 61-year old Cher has been in the news recently ..." or something like that.

[Ryan]

I'm gay and a minority a republican at that, when people decide to have values they realize there more republican something Cher will probably never come to know.

[lel2007]

Well of course Cher can't understand why anyone would want to be anything other than liberal, her old hippie brain has been stewing in pot for years.

[J.K.]

I have no sense of logic, morality, or reason, and never take responsibility for my actions, always deferring blame, and I am corrupted by fear, hatred, greed, and selfishness, thus I am a Republican.
My party once had the moral high ground way back in the 1860's, before our souls were surgically removed from our corpses by soul-selling and power-hording tactics, and the resulting degeneration that made my party into the Bush-Cheney-Rove-Rumsfeld blaze of glory it is today, Amen.

[Cher tickets]

So glad I got to see Cher show in May the week of her 64th birthday, yes 64 really. But you would never know it! She is AMAZING!!! Looks and sounds fabulous. Was so much fun!!

[DEFENDER OF ISRAEL]

I DONT KNOW WHY ANYONE WOULD WANT TO LOOK LIKE CHER! LIKE A FREAKISH ALIEN! SHE OBVIOUSLY IS SPOON FED WHAT TO THINK BY THE GOD-HATER CLUB! THE THEOPHOBES!