Given how immune we’ve become to the idea that people actually get held to account for expressing deeply offensive opinions it has come as a major shock to hear that Roseanne Barr has just killed her own show by tweeting about former Obama-era staffer Valerie Jarret and claiming the African-American advisor was the result of what would happen if the “muslim brotherhood and planet of the apes had a baby”.
Yeah. The intentions there are… pretty clear.
You do know other people can see you on Twitter, right Roseanne?
Predictably, the internet erupted. Less predictably, bad things happened to a public figure for public hate speech: her show was cancelled mere hours later.
Barr must have realised something was up because she apologised, deleted the tweet and quit Twitter in an attempt to shut that post-horse bolt stable door, but the damage was done. US network ABC announced the show was canned, Barr’s management announced they had dropped her as a client, and at least one cast member confirmed she had already informed her representatives that she wouldn’t be returning to the show.
As I called my manager to quit working on Roseanne, I was told it was cancelled. I feel so empowered by @iamwandasykes , Channing Dungey and anyone at ABC standing up for morals and abuse of power. Bullies will NEVER win.
— Emma Kenney (@EmmaRoseKenney) May 29, 2018
Locally Channel 10 announced they were cancelling plans to screen it and had pulled the old series from their network as well.
To be clear, despite the predictable outpouring of free speech warriors on Twitter, Barr wasn’t the victim of a political correctness purge by ABC.
That tweet was reportedly the last straw for the show’s head writer, the legendary comedian and actor Wanda Sykes, who told ABC that she was quitting after seeing the tweet and the network made the commercial decision that Sykes was more valuable for them to maintain a relationship with than the increasingly problematic Barr.
Just take a moment to observe all the things Roseanne had to do to get canceled:
– Call Valerie Jarrett an ape
– accuse dems child sex trafficking
– tell Hillary Clinton to commit suicide
– accuse Chelsea Clinton of being part of a Jewish conspiracy
– call George Soros a Nazi— Travon Free (@Travon) May 29, 2018
And the chances of the show being given a new home seem remote: not only has at least one cast member confirmed that she was already in contact with her management about quitting the show after Barr’s tweet, a number of showrunners and producers have made clear that they would walk if the show came to their network – including Fox.
.@FOXTV don't even think about it.
— Morgan J. Freeman (@mjfree) May 29, 2018
Anyway, we assume President Trump will shortly announce Barr’s new position in his communications team. Or possibly his legal team – it’s not like she’s much less qualified than the people currently doing the job, in any case.
The White House already seem on board! There ARE second acts in American life!