Roseanne Barr is Racist (plus Tweets)

by | May 31, 2018 | Freedom of Speech, Tweets, USA | 20 comments

Roseanne Barr Tweets

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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20 Comments

  1. Yakaru
    Yakaru on 1st June 2018 at 12:04 am

    I was surprised to see someone think that “only Status Quo worshiping slaves” would be upset by Roseanne Barr. There really aren’t that many of them left these days.

    Reply
    • Heather Hastie
      Heather Hastie on 1st June 2018 at 6:52 am

      I liked Status Quo in my youth, but I never came across any of their “worshipping slaves”. I suppose they existed?

      Reply
  2. Mike
    Mike on 1st June 2018 at 2:35 am

    I, like you Heather am a big Fan of The Big Bang Theory, fyi a spin off called Young Sheldon,is equally as funny. As for Ms Barr I cannot add to the revulsion already displayed about that Tweet.

    Reply
    • Heather Hastie
      Heather Hastie on 1st June 2018 at 6:56 am

      Yeah, we had Young Sheldon too. The first season didn’t seem to last for long, but I know I missed 2-3 episodes. Very funny! I’m sure it will be back BBT must be popular here because they’re playing reruns for about the fourth time in Prime Time, as well as the latest series.

      Reply
      • Mike
        Mike on 2nd June 2018 at 12:52 am

        We have the same problem, endless repeats, some of them worth repeating, the rest just dross. It’s bargain basement programming and a con, especially if your paying for it.

        Reply
        • Heather Hastie
          Heather Hastie on 2nd June 2018 at 6:52 am

          BBT and Sheldon are both on the most watched free-to-air channel here.

          I like repeats when it’s of shows I like, so I don’t feel able to complain about the stuff I don’t even though some of it really annoys me. On some of the pay channels I like being able to enjoy shows from my youth all over again. There are a lot of great British shows from those days it’s good to see again.

          Reply
    • nicky
      nicky on 2nd June 2018 at 5:21 pm

      Never heard of Roseanne Barr before, but I liked The Big Bang Theory.

      Reply
  3. Randall Schenck
    Randall Schenck on 1st June 2018 at 6:47 am

    I’m not any kind of legal expert or constitutional lawyer but don’t really think any of it is free speech. From history I know the bill of rights are protections for the people from the government. I do not believe the NFL or ABC would be government. Many people here in the U.S. seems to think everything involves free speech or that they can be as obnoxious as they want in any setting. So I think ABC can fire Roseanne anytime and for anything. Very likely doing something like she did in public is in the contract she signed and goes into length about terminations. Remember Charlie Sheen?

    Regarding the NFL, national anthem debate, the NFL can probably get away with what they are doing but only if the players are not solid on this. Demonstration is often this way and it is all about leverage. If the players want to, they can shut the league down on this issue. Frankly, I wish they would but probably won’t happen. Money, Money.

    I don’t do face book or twitter or any of that stuff so I may not be as up to date as some. I recall, Roseanne Barr started out as a stand up comic and I probably saw her on Johnny Carson a few times. She mostly did safe and clean comedy about being a domestic goddess and made fun of everyday life. The TV shows I know almost nothing about and did not watch them. Maybe Trump would like to pardon her, since he is on a streak to pardon everyone. Anyway, she wants to live like a Trump, she can also die like a Trump. They can all have a great time on twitter.

    Reply
    • Heather Hastie
      Heather Hastie on 1st June 2018 at 7:09 am

      A tweet from Charlie Sheen is one of the hundreds Roseanne has retweeted in the last couple of days. He excoriates her comment, and says something about getting back on Two and a Half Men. She takes it as support for her, but I don’t think he meant it that way. I’ll try and find the tweet later.

      I agree with all you say about freedom of speech too. The interpretation of the far right is they seem to think they should be able to say anything they want without consequences. They don’t seem to understand the limits it places on government and think not having prayer in schools is some kind of punishment of Christians. I could go on, but you know all this stuff better than I do.

      Reply
      • Randall Schenck
        Randall Schenck on 1st June 2018 at 7:54 am

        I recall when reading some history book a long time ago concerning Truman who was upset at someone at the time. His Secretary of State, Dean Acheson, attempting to calm Harry down advised – Think of free speech in the first Amendment as a restriction on government, not incitement to the people.

        Reply
    • ratabago
      ratabago on 1st June 2018 at 1:20 pm

      When Trump tweeted this, amongst others, back in October 2017 he made NFL player protests a First Amendment issue:

      “Why is the NFL getting massive tax breaks while at the same time disrespecting our Anthem, Flag and Country? Change tax law! ”

      The explicit threat in this makes it an attempt by a representative of government to restrict speech. Not just my opinion, but also that of real lawyers, for example:

      https://www.forbes.com/sites/marcedelman/2018/05/30/why-nfls-ban-on-player-protests-invokes-first-amendment-concerns-but-canceling-roseanne-does-not/#1d1e8cc35c5c

      I think it’s worth pointing out that the NFL teams don’t get a tax break, it is the NFL League Office that has tax exempt status, but have not filed for tax exemption since 2015 according to PolitiFact. But these facts don’t matter to Trump when he is trying to construct a personally advantageous “consensus truth”, for want of a better term.

      When you get to the heart of it the comparison between Barr and NFL player protests is just another shallow false equivalency.

      Reply
  4. Mark R.
    Mark R. on 1st June 2018 at 6:48 am

    That tweet of the interspecies love was actually used on an Android commercial here in the states. Including the song. It is one of my wife’s and my favorite commercials. I agree…if it doesn’t make you smile, nothing will.

    I also agree with Mike above, Young Sheldon is a hoot. Especially when he goes after religion. “God is Light”…Sheldon replies, “so God is a photon?”

    Reply
  5. Miss Ironfist
    Miss Ironfist on 1st June 2018 at 7:53 am

    Leave it Donny T to make it all about him. Jerk. Lamentably, his presidency seems to have fuelled and even condoned, to some extent, racism.

    Reply
    • Heather Hastie
      Heather Hastie on 1st June 2018 at 9:31 am

      So much for the president being a behavioural examplar, or being there for all USians.

      Reply
  6. Randall Schenck
    Randall Schenck on 2nd June 2018 at 11:46 am

    So if you are correct…sue Trump for free speech violation. Looks more like good old Trump extortion and he does that nearly everyday. The place that makes the rules is the NFL (owners) and that is not government. However, the issue with who owns the field, the city, the county, etc. that is interesting. So if the fans or players at a high school game decided to not stand, that would be free speech as well. Public school ground.

    Reply
  7. nicky
    nicky on 2nd June 2018 at 5:31 pm

    And of course Trevor Noah’s take is great.
    Shit your pants racist, indeed.
    Thanks for the clip.

    Reply
    • Heather Hastie
      Heather Hastie on 3rd June 2018 at 9:13 am

      I forgot to include that clip when I first posted this, so for those who haven’t seen it, it’s worth checking out.

      Reply
  8. nicky
    nicky on 2nd June 2018 at 5:39 pm

    Icounted eleven kittens in the heap.

    Reply
    • Heather Hastie
      Heather Hastie on 3rd June 2018 at 9:16 am

      I got 12. There are a couple of heads that are periodically hidden that are easy to miss, especially one at top right.

      We’re probably both wrong and there’s 15 or something!

      Reply
      • nicky
        nicky on 3rd June 2018 at 5:15 pm

        🙂

        Reply

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