Sarah Silverman’s Astrology

Dear Friend and Reader,

Last week, just before the final presidential debate, I posted Sarah Silverman’s latest video, The Great Schlep,В yet another example of her comedic genius. In it, she threatens to blame “the Jews” if Barack Obama isn’t elected, because elderly Jewish folk in Florida are not supporting his candidacy.В 

This year, she won an Emmy for her music video, “I’m Fucking Matt Damon,” detailing her (fake) affair. Silverman premiered the video on Jimmy Kimmel Live, her then-boyfriend’s talk show.

She’s famous for more than a couple of online videos. Presently, she’s best known for The Sarah Silverman Program which first aired on Feb. 1, 2007, and is the type of show where you’re only comfortable laughing if there’s no one in the room to see you.В 

What makes Sarah Silverman so funny and outlandish? I took a look at her natal chart to find out.

Born on Dec. 1, 1970 in Bedford, New Hampshire, Silverman is a Sagittarius with a Capricorn Moon.В Sagittarius is ruled by Jupiter, described by Jonathan Cainer as “the planet of hope,” which makes SagittariansВ buoyantВ and optimistic: if anything gets them down, they have a tendency to bob back up to the surface fairly easily. They don’t half-ass anything, and you can see this in Silverman’s irony-to-the-point-of insulting, bigoted or even gross humor. Her slapstick, poop and fart jokes, for example, are all Sagg.

This combined with her Capricorn Moon makes for the perfect Comedy Central performer. Capricorn indicates high intelligence and motivation, big achievers that are “mischievous and adventurous,” Cainer writes.

Eric notes that she has Venus in Scorpio, which he describes as seeming “complicated as all fuck but I bet she is a PERV.” While we can only guess about her private life, it is easy enough to observe these traits through her public life and caricatures of herself that she presents, as a borderline stupid, say-anything, Jewish-American princess. In The Sarah Silverman Program alone, she has seduced a black God, been arrested for sexually assaulting her dog and become a lesbian for a day.

While she’s been highly praised of late, some responses to Silverman have been less than positive. The New York Times for example, recently had this to say about her:

…more often than not the caricature calls attention to Ms. Silverman’s habit of raising incendiary subjects, prejudice say, without performing a full excavation. Often she seems like someone, initially so full of bravado, running away from a scary scene in a movie. Ms. Silverman’s comedy is not Chris Rock getting deep into the mire, with revelations about social and marital hypocrisy. She is simply letting you know that she is the kind of woman with the gumption to say, ‘I tell my niece every time she loses at tag, an angel gets AIDS.’

While I see where they’re coming from, I think The Times missed the point. It’s not the responsibility of a comedienne to address every social issue with a follow-up public service announcement or the tying-up-loose-ends style that is seen, at times, at the end of aВ South Park episode.В At some point, someone needs to check and see if AIDS is funny yet.

Sometimes just throwing the issue out there is enough. Silverman’s responsibility is to make us laugh, often combined with a cringe, and that’s one task she solidly follows through on.

Yours & truly,