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ABC Cancels Roseanne After Racist Tweet
If you’ve ever encountered Roseanne Barr on Twitter, you know she is a bit … off. She regularly shares insane musings, personal attacks, and conspiracy theories that would make Alex Jones think the chemtrails finally got her. Roseanne’s always been this way, regularly attracting attacks from the left, right, and center. (Remember the conservative reaction to her ugly rendition of the National Anthem?) On Tuesday, she stepped in it big time with a tweet so bad that ABC cancelled her hit sit-com reboot hours later.
What did she say this time? Earlier Tuesday morning, in a now-deleted Tweet, Roseanne took aim at former Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett, identifying her by her initials:
She later claimed it was a joke and apologized, but the internet is forever (as the above screen-cap shows). Racism can’t be deleted as easily as a tweet.
https://twitter.com/therealroseanne/status/1001471669641216005
Roseanne’s co-stars registered their disgust:
I am hurt, embarrassed, and disappointed. The racist and distasteful comments from Roseanne are inexcusable.
— Emma Kenney (@EmmaRoseKenney) May 29, 2018
I will not be returning to @RoseanneOnABC.
— Wanda Sykes (@iamwandasykes) May 29, 2018
And in just a few hours, ABC pulled the plug on their biggest surprise hit.
Many Twitterers on the right claim that Roseanne was victimized by a politically correct mob just because she supports Donald Trump. If they fired her over Tweeting “I’m on the Trump train,” they’d have a point.
Instead, she was canned because she said a black woman was half-ape. Roseanne was fired for being a disgusting racist.
And, as a result of her idiotic idea to document her racism on Twitter, she got her entire cast and staff fired along with her.
For Roseanne’s part, she now says she’s quitting Twitter. Probably should have done that last night.
Published in Entertainment, Politics
She and I sometimes exchanged tweets. I actually quit tweeting with her 6 weeks ago, as she likes caustic insults so very much. Its her main “go to” role in her interactions with the public. I love her show and I love her talents, but I don’t know if there is any way for her to step out of this mess. It’s not just that her Valerie Jarrett comment is a caustic comment – it is going to be seen as very racist by the PTB. And as we all know they were waiting for her to slip up.
The “good” news is that this will break astounding new ground in journalism. Expect many new, brave, and original never-before-seen columns on how the era of Trump has “normalized” racism in America. I wish there was some market where I could go long the use of “normalized.”
Racism is boring, but it still holds an appeal for some.
There is “no millions of conservatives.” Period. Wake up. It was the split voters – some 42% of all voters – who got Trump in office. Certainly Trump’s election had nothing to do with the “real conservatives” like the National Review editors and the rest of the NeverTrumper conservatives.
BTW, This group of “real conservatives” were considered an anomaly by those who considered themselves to be “real conservatives” after Reagan was elected. Those “real Conservatives” had their articles and research considered by Insight magazine, as they went on and on about how ending tariffs would be a death knell for middle income Americans who needed jobs that paid well. And those folks turned out to be right.
Things evolve. And as tired a slogan as it may be, the more things change, the more they remain the same. On edit: Most of the “real conservatives” that were concerned about tariffs are probably pushing up daisies by now. While Trump remains in the Oval Office due to his understanding that some Americans would like those jobs back.
She also ran for president in 2012 for the Peace and Freedom Party and her running mate was Cindy Sheehan. She called for rich bankers to be put into re-education camps and executed if the re-education didn’t take. In 2009 she called Israel a Nazi State for fighting against Hamas.
Roseanne is not a conservative, liberal, progressive, or any other recognizable label. Today she loves Trump, two years from now she might be backing Bernie Sanders, next cycle maybe Ted Cruz or Kim Jung Un. She is all over the board.
She’s funny, talented, and kinda nuts. She’s a loose cannon, which is basically what she played on TV, though much effort went in to restraining her.
She’s not the only entertainment star who is into whacko conspiracy theories.
It’s just that she both supported Trump and said the unsayable.
She broke a bunch of people’s rice bowls. Oh well. That’s show biz
She’s ignorant, too: If you’re going to accuse Valerie Jarret of Islamist ties, at least recognize that her connections are to Shiite Iran, not the Sunni Muslim Brotherhood.
I agree. But that’s why I don’t quite the pushback.
Comedy can be outrageous — and insulting.
(Well, that used to be true.)
That was something she said in her on time — not on her show. (That sort of defense didn’t work for John Derbyshire either.)
Comedians are supposed to be monitored 24-7 now like caged animals?
I remember when I went to see a Richard Pryor routine as a somewhat young boy. I remember that he made joke about the president (Ronald Reagan) looking like a male body part. I didn’t think it was funny, but he said it. People laughed. I would never have thought to tell him that he is not allowed to have certain opinions.
I used to work with an older guy who I usually got along with. He was religious. He went to mass every week even if he was in the middle of a remote hunting trip. However, I remember that he thought that the funniest thing in the world was a youtube video of a short black kid getting in an argument with a perhaps Asian shop keeper lady, if I remember correctly. I saw no humor in the video at all, but he thought this was the funniest thing in the world. Humor means different things to different people. When a person says “humor” some men think of the Three Stooges or Benny Hill while some women think of Sex in the City or Ellen DeGeneres.
I wanted to be a political cartoonist at one point many years ago. One famous political cartoon stirred a lot of outrage and made national news. It was two panels. It the first panel was an Olympic stadium with a Nazi flag that read, “Berlin, 1936”. The second panel was an Olympic stadium with a Georgia flag (90% of which at the time and in the cartoon was the Confederate Battle flag) that read, “Atlanta, 1996”. The political cartoonist got death threats. I guess that’s when you know you’ve really made it — when you start getting death threats. People see things differently.
Comedians have to be able to cross the line, but the Leftist politically-correct, First Amendment-hating, popular culture does not allow that today. Sad.
As evidenced by the Twitchy link I put up earlier. Olby’s values are Disney values, obviously.
Didn’t racist jokes used to be known as ethnic humor?
Perhaps because the left is all about punishing people for every stray thought, if those thoughts can be considered double-plus ungood thoughts.
Meanwhile, Keith Olbermann returns to ESPN in spite of his long history of vile tweets.
I have no interest in defending Roseanne’s comments. However, I will join in pushing back against the left’s totalitarian impulses. I may not agree with what Roseanne says, but I will defend her right to say it. And yes, it’s her employer’s right to fire her for what she said. But there’s clearly a double standard when we look at the vile things lefties Tweet out and remain happily employed by media corporations.
And who is being branded a racist? A woman who lacks a propensity to think before she hits send on her tweets. Who had African Americans on her show as a “usual thing” and also any and all in the LGBT crowd back in the 1980’s.
She was the very first woman to say “Harvey Weinstein is a pig.” Decades ago. For which she was shunned by Hollywood big wigs. (In case any here wonder why she didn’t get very far in terms of movie contracts.) And then all the 1980’s, early 1990’s starlets who told her in secret,whispering to her at red carpet events that she was right – they didn’t have the “time” to do it publicly. Yet once it became a 2017 fashion: somehow the same actresses bravely announced #MeToo without ever mentioning how they wouldn’t support Roseanne’s early statements at all, because money/career/fame trumped their aspirations to do the right thing back when Rosie was doing it.
Political organizations like Media Matters stalk those who they dislike. Then they run to mom and dad (their employers) demanding that the evil ones be fired.
This sort of thing happens several times every year. It happened to Laura Ingraham and maybe Sean Hannity earlier this year. It happened to Rush Limbaugh a few years ago who claims that the thousands of protesters were traced to being about 10 retired people with computer modems.
I seem to remember that a brand of coffee pulled its support for the Ricochet podcast under pressure. It happens everywhere. Wake up!
Isn’t it interesting that no one is accusing Roseanne of Islamophobia?
Oh, I don’t know. I was told 3 days ago that David French was right when he said the NFL went too far in fining a team where the player kneeled for the national anthem (an amazing display of disrespect that is seen by many more people than see Roseanne’s tweets.)
People said that here.
Some people (@jamielockett) specifically said that David French is right.
I eagerly await French to apply his logic to this Roseanne debacle. That should be entertaining.
FWIW, I don’t agree with David French on the NFL protest issue
I’ve been awake since 5:30 am, but thanks.
Me either.
Well, they could kill her off, change the name of the show, and bring in Sandy Duncan.
I think Ricochet’s Rob Long was involved with something similar with his previous show last year.
…
I’ve noticed that there really is a Never-Trump/anti-Roseanne split here. (And I was never that pro-Trump until Neil Gorsuch showed up.)
Roseanne was about the only show in the last few decades to feature a poor to middle-class white family in Middle America. I live in an area that is in some ways very poor, the 2nd poorest Republican congressional district in the country, if I remember correctly, although I think only about a dozen congressional districts in the country were more pro-Trump in 2016.
I thought her show was great. It didn’t grab me at first look in some ways decades ago, but she fought to make her show stand out and demanded better comedy writing. I had some friends who really like her show and The Drew Carey Show. I think they felt that most comedy writers had never been outside of Manhattan or Hollywood.
Is there a difference between political protest and overt racism when it comes civic dialogue?
How about Leah Remini? I heard she’s free.
Too soon?
Fascinating to read the fallout from Roseanne’s co-stars, writers and production executives.
They’ve worked with the woman for two decades. They spent a decade in the writers room with her. Gives you some insight into a person’s character.
Was this latest joke an unfunny, racist mental fart? Or a window into her deeply ugly character which they’ve lived with in the writers room for years?
If the former, why can’t a genuine apology, perhaps followed by an episode which deals with the fallout from ugly racial speech be penance enough?
If the latter, why all the talk about values?
The problem of race is deepened and compounded by dishonesty and phoniness.
This episode won’t help.
Rarely watched the show. Prefer the genius of Goodman and Metcalf apart from Roseanne.
Mentioning African-Americans in the same breath (tweet) as primates has a couple of hundred years head start on the reprehensible scale.
Neither do I – but his contention is that all true conservatives should agree with him. There were plenty in the other thread who did. Just trying to thread the needle (and live up to my name).
Channing Dungey? Now, that’s funny!
I thought it was funny. During the OJ trial Billy Crystal was a guest on a show Dennis Miller hosted. Referring to Johnny Cochran, OJ’s lawyer, Crystal remarked Sammy Davis Jr. and another black male celebrity (I forget who) had a child. It was hilarious then. Now, a comedian can’t make a crack like that. Why? PC! I see by some of the comments that PC has dulled the sense of humor of conservatives along with the rest of society.
I doubt insult comics like Don Rickles, who did joke about race, could survive today. That is as long as they kept the jokes away from protected classes. In which case they would be Stephen Colbert, but not Don Rickels. That’s a comedic, cultural loss, not the bad taste some of you make it out to be.
Never been a Roseanne fan, but on closer inspection, the description of VJ is not entirely inaccurate.
I’ve been awake since about 9:45 pm Memorial Day. I win.
I don’t see a needle to the thread as Mr. French was talking about the way citizens interact with one another in a culture of civic engagement that fosters free speech. At no point did Mr. French or anyone who agreed with him argue that the NFL didn’t have the right to do what they did. Only that the broader culture we’re breeding, started by the left but taken up by the right, fosters silencing opponents over engagement. (If asked I would say that players should stand for the anthem and that they are being disrespectful dopes for not doing so, I wouldn’t want to force them to stand though.) If you believe that Ms. Barr was engaged in some sort of civic duty with her tweet and that we should be engaging with these statements in order to shape policy then state that case. To me it looks like a crazy woman fired for saying something racist and crazy.
Since the left calls everything they disagree with “racist” and since Jarrett occupied a senior White House Position – (and since the Left depicted President Bush as a monkey) I have a difficult time deciding. In such cases I would default to the political protest.