Sarah Silverman’s Message to Your Grandma: Vote Obama
Dave Itzkoff
As she prepares to launch a new season of her eponymous show, Sarah Silverman, the acerbic, anything-for-a-laugh comedian, has once again insinuated herself into e-mail inboxes with a Web video.
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It’s still a big if, but if Barack Obama emerges victorious on Election Day, with the swing state Florida in his win column, a modicum of credit may be due Sarah Silverman.

In recent days Ms. Silverman, 37, the acerbic, anything-for-a-laugh comedian, has once again insinuated herself into e-mail inboxes with an online video called “The Great Schlep” (thegreatschlep.com). In it she urges young Jews to encourage any grandparents who live in Florida to vote for Mr. Obama and to withhold visits to their bubbes (grandmas) and zaides (grandpas) if they don’t comply.

“The people that vote there are the elderly Jews, and they’re not voting Obama because his name is scary,” Ms. Silverman said in a telephone interview. “But who has more power with them than their grandchildren?”

With its mix of sarcasm and sincerity, “The Great Schlep” may come as a surprise to Ms. Silverman’s fans. After all, she is a comedian known for her vulgar music videos; her superlatively silly Comedy Central show, “The Sarah Silverman Program” (which returns on Wednesday, before moving to its regular Thursday-night time slot); and her appearance in the documentary “The Aristocrats,” in which she facetiously claimed that she had been molested by the talk show host Joe Franklin.

But to Ms. Silverman these provocative comedy bits are all reflections of a consistent sensibility, one that trusts her audience will know when she is totally kidding and when she is only sort of kidding.

“I like being aggressively stupid,” she said. “I either say what I think, or the opposite of what I think. And hopefully the absolute power of both transcends.”

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