Roseanne Barr: She's Slowly Going Blind and Has No Plans to Vote for Hillary Clinton for President

Outspoken comedian-activist and former presidential candidate talks to the Daily Beast about suffering from macular degeneration and Hillary being "the same old s--t"

By Natalie Finn Apr 20, 2015 11:51 PMTags
Roseanne BarrFrederick M. Brown/Getty Images

Roseanne Barr is trying to do whatever she can to keep her mind vivid as her eyesight fails.

The comedian-activist and onetime presidential candidate told The Daily Beast in a new interview that she's suffering from glaucoma and macular degeneration, a condition that will ultimately cause her to go blind.

"It's something weird," she described her narrowing vision. "But there are other weird things. That one's harsh, 'cause I read a lot, and then I thought, ‘Well, I guess I could hire somebody to read for me and read to me.' But I like words and I like looking. You do what you have to do. I just try and enjoy vision as much as possible—y'know, living it up. My dad had it, too."

While her affinity for smoking marijuana isn't new, Barr explains that it truly does ease the pressure from the glaucoma. "It's a good medicine for a lot of things," she said.

Meanwhile, as she struggles with losing her sight, the Roseanne star is keeping her wits about her—and that includes refusing to let politicians pull the wool over her eyes.

The onetime presidential candidate sounds, to put it mildly, unenthused about Hillary Clinton's latest bid for the White House.

"I think she's a Democrat just like they all are," Barr mused. "She seems like every other Democrat. I would not like to see her win. She's the same old s--t. I'd like to see me win. I don't see how she can win, but it will be interesting to see how the process goes—although its kind of offensive that the American people for 21 months have to live through the mudslinging that goes on between the two parties, which I think is just a tactic to prevent government from doing anything about any of our problems. It just elongates the election process. It's like a traffic jam. That's how it works: blaming and mudslinging."

Yana Paskova/Getty Images; Erika Goldring/Getty Images

And with Barr not calling herself a "feminist" anymore, per se ("I'm tired of words. Now I just describe myself as a thinker"), she doesn't even care about Clinton winning as a symbolic victory for women.

"Symbolically'? What does that mean?" she fired back. "I would rather see the first intelligent, honest American president. I don't care what's in their shorts. I don't care what it looks like down there at all. The thing I did like Hillary for was that she was the first candidate who ever listened to what women said, because she had to."

But now, Clinton "is standing as a Democrat so she's a Democrat, and I don't see much difference between them and the Republicans. They both get paid by the same guys. They do the same thing, they want the same stuff, more business."