After Roseanne Barr’s recent racist and oddly anti-Semitic tweets — not her first, probably not her last — ABC decided to cancel the second season of buzzy reboot of her sitcom, Roseanne.
“Roseanne’s Twitter statement is abhorrent, repugnant and inconsistent with our values, and we have decided to cancel her show,” ABC Entertainment president Channing Dungey said in a statement on Tuesday.
The latest tweet that seems to have pushed ABC over the edge: Barr compared Valerie Jarrett, a former Obama advisor, to “muslim brotherhood & planet of the apes had a baby.” She also tweeted that Chelsea Clinton is married to a nephew of George Soros, and that Soros is a “nazi who turned in his fellow Jews.”
Roseanne is a bigot, pt 1 million pic.twitter.com/hQmmUiEHjl
— Parker Molloy (@ParkerMolloy) May 29, 2018
The horrific — and untrue — tweets launched a campaign on Twitter, #SuspendRoseanneNow.
(Barr tweeted an apology, saying she was leaving Twitter and “my joke was in bad taste.” Still, that doesn’t excuse it.)
But her racism isn’t new, so many wonder why ABC revived Roseanne in the first place (and why it took them so long to cancel the show). In November 2015, she bashed a left-wing Israeli writer; in August 2016, Barr called Hillary Clinton ‘anti-Semitic’ and tweeted “jew hater hillary clinton’s handler huma weiner is a filthy nazi whore.”
#BREAKING: ABC is canceling “Roseanne” after Roseanne Barr’s racist Twitter rant.
(Should be noted that ABC knew what it was getting into when it hired her. The network looked the other way as long as it could).
— Caroline O. (@RVAwonk) May 29, 2018
If ABC didn’t give Roseanne a reboot, she’d be lost in a sea of eagle avatars spouting her racist, deranged nonsense. Now she’s a renewed household name spouting her racist, deranged nonsense. Infuriatingly irresponsible.
— Louis Virtel (@louisvirtel) May 29, 2018
Barr, born in a Jewish family in Utah, is a mom to four. She’s outspoken about being pro-Israel and anti-BDS (Boycott, Divest, Sanction movement). In 2012, she ran for President, losing the Green Party nomination to Jill Stein. In 2016, she endorsed Trump. President Trump may be upset her show was cancelled; he called Barr to congratulate her on the hit ratings for Roseanne season one.
ABC did make the right decision in cancelling Roseanne, which was a hit. As James Poniewozik tweeted, “I slam networks all the time, and you can think what you like about Roseanne, or ABC’s ever airing the show. But they just made a decision to cancel their highest-rated show for its star’s racist comment, and that is worth noting.”
For the record, this is Channing Dungey. Sitting on top of your world like a Queen in full judgement of your garbage and taking it out. #Roseanne pic.twitter.com/GxEP2B61uq
— Ava DuVernay (@ava) May 29, 2018
