Wednesday, May 30, 2018

That Other Roseanne Barr Thing


It was a disgusting, reprehensible, bigoted tweet by Roseanne Barr.

Of course, I am talking about

Lest you be appalled at such seemingly tasteless sarcasm, consider that several hours after ABC cancelled Roseanne following the star's vile remark about Valerie Jarrett, the Independent of the UK wrote "Ms Barr’s comments appeared to be a continuation of a conspiracy theory that has circulated for years. Shortly after Ms Barr’s racist and antisemitic tweetstorm, ABC announced it would be cancelling her sitcom, which was one of the highest-rated new shows of the season."





Uh, no. The network made its announcement only after Roseanne Barr made the comment about President Obama's closest adviser and was a response to it.  CNN has an informative rundown of the timeline pertaining to Barr's tweets, the response among her colleagues and other individuals, and of the network. The most telling, however, was from ABC Entertainment President Channing Dungey: "Roseanne's Twitter statement is abhorrent, repugnant and inconsistent with our values, and we have decided to cancel her show."

Note the singular "twitter statement," and give ABC credit for the honesty expressed in its specificity.  Barr's remark about Jarrett was abhorrent and repugnant, as well as meeting the dictionary definition of "racism" in claiming the inherent racial inferiority of blacks. It is debatable, though, whether it was completely inconsistent with the network's values, given that ABC undoubtedly knew of Barr's history of despicable comments.

Cancellation of the program was blamed on the one tweet also by the Associated Press, which noted "ABC cancelled its reboot of 'Roseanne' on Tuesday following star Roseanne Barr's racist tweet that referred to former Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett as a product of the Muslim Brotherhood and the 'Planet of the Apes.'"

Cable news networks also focused on Barr's tweet about Jarrett, as her allegation about Soros gets swept into the dustbin of history.  That allegation is all the more significant because it is grossly inaccurate and  arguably anti-Semitic, and conspiracy theories involving Soros are a favorite of the right-wing.

The campaign against George Soros is is not technically racist, an important factor. But Soros is a much more significant individual than is Jarrett, a state of affairs not lost upon conservatives, though conveniently ignored by the media and disregarded by the American Broadcasting Company. 

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