Roseanne Horribilis

The news swirling on the airwaves and through the Internet tubes this week is the spectacular downfall of Roseanne Barr. She revived her sit-com, which shot to the top of the ratings on broadcast TV. It had been renewed for a second season, but after a few bizarre, racist tweets, ABC pulled the plug.

This morning I read that she blamed Ambien for the tweets, but as the manufacturer states, one of the side effects of Ambien is not racism. The tweets began with an attack on Chelsea Clinton of all people, accusing her of marrying a nephew of Democratic donor George Soros. This is not true, which Clinton pointed out in a polite reply. Then Roseanne attacked Soros, restating the scurrilous rumor that Soros was a Nazi collaborator. This is also untrue (check out Snopes for the details), especially since Soros was just 14 when the war ended.

But the real damage came in a tweet about former Obama aide Valerie Jarrett, a light-skinned black woman. Roseanne's tweet: "Muslim brotherhood & Planet of the Apes had a baby=vj." The proverbial shit hit the fan. Reviving the ancient and ugly comparison of people of African descent to apes is just not acceptable in this day and age. Before a boycott of advertisers, and their eventual withdrawal could begin, ABC president Channing Dungey, a black woman, cancelled the show.

Their has been the predictable outcry from the alt-right about freedom of speech, and every time this happens it has to pointed out that the First Amendment only protects speech from being prosecuted by the government. It does not mean you don't have to suffer any consequences from an employer. It is ironic that this happens right after the NFL told its players that they couldn't exercise freedom of speech and had to stand for the National Anthem or hide in the locker room. By the way, almost thirty years ago Roseanne disgraced the anthem by grabbing her crotch and spitting after screeching her way through the song.

Roseanne has been a TV presence in the U.S. for over thirty years. She began as a stand-up comic, and coined the term 'domestic goddess." She has always claimed to be a representative of the struggle of lower middle-class women, but now that she's a multimillionaire I wonder if that can be true. It is not true that her show was the only representative of that demographic. The Middle, also on ABC, was a charming and gently humorous show about the financial struggle of a loving family. As far as I know, no one of that show (though Patricia Heaton is extremely conservative) ever made racist tweets.

What's really sad about all this is that a number of people have lost their jobs. Writers, actors, crew--all are unemployed. Those who have been heard from have all expressed their dismay at her tweets. Roseanne, after apologizing, blasted some of them. One writer has not heard from her and says he expects not to.

Donald Trump's reaction, predictably, was about himself, and how he didn't get any apologies from ABC like Jarrett did. I think most of the country is disgusted with the remarks, and defending them requires some intellectual gymnastics. Roseanne ran for president once (she actually got 61,000 some votes in the 2012 election running with the Peace and Freedom Party) so, given the climate right now, maybe she should do that again.