I wasn’t going to write about this. But, there are heaps of cool tweets today and I need a topic. The stuff I’m writing already is too long to head a Tweets Post, so Roseanne Barr it is.

I didn’t watch her show way back when. It didn’t appeal. I tried one episode a few months ago of the comeback, but I didn’t find it funny or enjoyable, or anything else. So that was it. Give me Big Bang Theory any day.

I’m pretty sure that everyone who is likely to read what I write thinks the tweet that got Roseanne Barr into trouble is disgusting. In case anyone hasn’t caught up with it yet, here it is in all its glory infamy:

Screenshot Roseanne Barr tweet

vj is, of course, if Valerie Jarrett, who was a senior advisor to President Obama in the White House and still works closely with him.

ABC did the right thing and immediately cancelled the show. Before they’d even done that at least one senior staff member on the show resigned in protest. Several cast members have come out against the comment.

That first tweet is gone now.

Roseanne apologized and gave reasons made excuses for her behaviour. She put the blame on the sleep aid Ambien® and the fact that it was Memorial Day! Those tweets are gone too for obvious reasons. Now we have these two instead:

 

The makers of Ambien® made an hilarious response: that racism wasn’t a side effect of any of their medications.

While trying to find Roseanne Barr’s tweets, I went through her Twitter account for the last couple of days. She hasn’t written much herself, but she has retweeted a huge number of tweets that support her, and the mood in many of those tweets is ugly. A lot of her defenders clearly have no problem with that initial tweet.

The most reasonable among them like Ben Shapiro are calling this a free speech issue, comparing it to football players kneeling for the national anthem. But it gets much, much worse. (You can look at Roseanne’s tweets here.)

Well, that’s because it’s not a First Amendment issue. Apples and Oranges. Ben Shapiro should know better, but I’ll get to that in a bit. First a few examples.

There are trends. Anti-intellectualism is one:

 

And there are conspiracy theories:

 

 

I suspect this one is a Russian proxy or similar.

 

As with many conspiracy theories, the logic is lacking.

 

There’s minimization too:

 

This guy goes on for about fifteen minutes. Some of his comments about the authoritarian left are accurate, but he acts as if everyone who does not support Roseanne is part of the authoritarian left. There’s constant whataboutery, and comparing of apples with oranges.

Lionel (of the above tweet) thinks this is a turning point in US society. His belief is that people will look back at the firing of Roseanne and see that it was the moment that the left went too far. This is where conservatives began winning again apparently. (Apparently it wasn’t when Trump won the election after all!) There’s a new hashtag on the far right: #WeAreWinning.

And everyone knew it would happen, but it was still a shock when it did: President Trump managed to make the whole thing all about him.

 

 

Then Roseanne decides to get back into it:

 

 

 

There will always be people who see what they want to see, and believe what they want to believe. That will continue to be the way here too:

 

And then Roseanne retweeted this:

 

And this:

 

And this:

 

And this, which means we’ve gone full circle:

 

But let’s be clear. This is not a First Amendment issue. No one is telling Ms Barr what she can and can’t say. The NFL, on the other hand, is telling their employees that they cannot protest. Legally, I would assume they have a right to do that because the players are their employees. I think they are wrong to take that stance however, and note that one of my own more popular tweets in recent days has been this one:

 

With all the criticism of the identity politics tactics of the authoritarian left, you’d think the authoritarian right would eschew such tactics. However, all of a sudden Ms Barr seems to be reclaiming her status as a Jew. Left-leaning media are playing an old clip of her dressed as Hitler and baking gingerbread children in the oven. So, her Twitter feed now has multiple tweets in support of Israel and she’s retweeting things like this:

 

The New York Times article that Barr tweets here is from a couple of weeks ago, but it’s pretty good. If the off-screen Barr was acting like the on-screen Roseanne, things would be different. But she didn’t.

 

Comparing Valerie Jarrett to an ape cannot accepted. If ABC hadn’t cancelled the show, there would soon be an advertiser boycott. This way they’ve cut all the drama off at the pass. Got the pain over quickly.

It looks like it might all work out for everyone anyway. ABC are looking at a new show for the ‘Roseanne’ co-stars, and a conservative media outlet is looking to pick up Barr.

And to end on a better note, Trevor Noah does a good job with the subject.

 

 

Now we need some nice stuff. No politics or anything else. Mostly cats and otters, but other animals too.

 

Other Animals Tweets

Being protective of his mum …

 

And if this doesn’t make you smile, nothing will …

 

 

Otter Tweets

30 May was World Otter Day, and there was plenty to celebrate the gorgeous creatures.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bird Tweets

 

 

 

 

 

Cat Tweets

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


 

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