I’ve never liked Roseanne. I’ve always loved “Roseanne.”
I’m guessing many other viewers feel the same way about Roseanne Barr, the blunt, loose cannon comedian, as well as about her eponymous hit TV show that was canceled Tuesday by ABC-TV.
Similar to our country’s blunt, loose cannon president, Barr once again couldn’t control herself on Twitter. She posted a racist tweet, which she later claimed was a “bad joke” in “bad taste.” How we interpreted that tweet says more about us than about her.
Barr’s tweet linked former White House adviser Valerie Jarrett, who is black and was born in Iran to American parents and served under President Barack Obama, with the Muslim Brotherhood and another racial slur used against African-Americans.
If you don’t know it by now, look it up. You tell me, was it racist or just another joke by Barr?
She has a history of writing racial, misinformed, inappropriate posts on Twitter, including one in 2013 about Susan Rice, another black woman and former Obama administration official.
Again, was it racist in nature or just another joke?
Earlier this week, she attacked liberal billionaire George Soros and former first daughter Chelsea Clinton. Why? Who knows. It’s like trying to decipher why Trump sends early morning tweets.
Barr has been prone to believing all sorts of conspiracy theories, including one that tweeted “Soros is a Nazi.” (For the record, Soros, who is Jewish, hid from his own government during the Nazi occupation of Hungary in World War II and was not a Nazi collaborator, according to the Washington Post.)
When Chelsea Clinton responded with a tweet of her own regarding Barr’s incorrect information, Barr shot back with a tweet: “Please forgive me! By the way, George Soros is a nazi who turned in his fellow Jews 2 be murdered in German concentration camps & stole their wealth-were you aware of that?”
Again, do you shake your head in disbelief or do you instead clamor for Barr’s right to publicly believe such lies? Her beliefs don’t surprise me. What stunned me was ABC-TV’s swift response to Barr’s tweet about Jarrett by canceling her show. It cost the network millions of dollars in profits.
This “attitude of accountability” seems to be the new corporate culture in America, whether you like it or not.
On the same day Barr was punished for her racist tweet, Starbucks closed all of its 8,000 U.S. stores to provide “unconscious bias” training to its 175,000 employees.
Did you shake your head in disgust about this, or did you applaud the company’s efforts, costing millions of dollars in profits? Your reaction to this issue, and to Barr’s tweets, can serve as a barometer of your own “core values” regarding our country.
Corporate America, including ABC-TV and Starbucks, consistently note its core values regarding intolerance for any racial and bigoted remarks or actions by employees. Barr was an employee of ABC, so she was fired.
Would you be fired from your job if you made similar remarks publicly? Or would it be swept under the rug and laughed off as a joke, albeit with serious overtones, as it has been for decades in the workplace?
Trump hasn’t defended Barr, yet, but he called out ABC-TV for its apparent double standard on condemning Barr’s remarks but allowing public attacks or jokes against him, the conservative right and Christians.
On Wednesday and Thursday, Barr remained defiant about her previous tweets.
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“I’m not a racist. I never was & I never will be,” she tweeted in one of more than 200 tweets since her show was canceled.
In another tweet, Barr even blamed Ambien, a sleeping aid, for her “silly mistake” of a joke about Jarrett. “It was 2 in the morning and I was on ambien,” she tweeted.
Sanofi, the company that produces Ambien, rattled off its own tweet in response: “While all pharmaceutical treatments have side effects, racism is not a known side effect of any Sanofi medication.”
Touché!
As one of my readers noted, Barr hit the “white supremacist trifecta” by calling Jarrett a racial slur with a dash of religious bigotry and ignorance.
However, her fans, including many of my readers, are defending Barr and her right to free speech.
“It was just a joke,” one reader told me on voicemail.
“America is too sensitive,” another reader emailed me.
Barr insists her tweet about Jarrett was not racist, but merely “insensitive.”
The thin line between insensitive and racist can appear invisible in these situations.
In less than 140 characters, Barr may have ended her career in mainstream television entertainment. More importantly, that tweet about Jarrett may have permanently ended one of America’s most popular TV shows. And one of my favorites.
“Roseanne” was topical and refreshing, but mostly it was funny.
In the show’s initial heyday, from 1988 to 1997, Barr was a pop culture icon, a voice for millions of struggling Americans who felt voiceless. In the show’s reboot earlier this year, it continued with a similar theme while tackling tough issues. I loved it.
That’s why I planned on writing a column on the similarities between “Roseanne” and “All in the Family,” which aired in the 1970s.
That show, with actor Carroll O’Connor portraying the bigoted, narrow-minded character Archie Bunker, also tackled the social issues of its day, from politics to religion to, yes, racism.
If Archie Bunker met Roseanne Barr, they would hit it off wonderfully, I’ll bet. Still, it doesn’t make Barr any less of a meathead for her tweets. We should use them not to judge Barr, but to judge ourselves and our country’s core values.
Barr is expected to be a guest Friday on “The Joe Rogan Experience” podcast, where she will likely continue her angry diatribe against her critics and her lame defense about her tweets.
I won’t be tuning in any longer to Roseanne Barr. She’s just another 65-year-old insensitive racist in our country.
But I already miss “Roseanne.”
Twitter@jdavich
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