Roseanne Barr has been on thin ice ever since the 2018 reboot of her iconic television show premiered barely a month ago. And now that ice has finally broken.
The actor and the show have received considerable backlash to their pro-Trump stance – a position which many believed is no laughing matter – and thus not a great premise for a sit com.
Of course, Barr made her name for being an opinionated woman, and a feminist. When her show first aired in 1988, she was a trailblazer. She was one of the first female comics to get her own show. She was outspoken about racism and social justice. There were story lines dedicated to domestic violence, alcoholism and financial struggles, all largely taboo at the time.
All of which makes what’s happened this week so disappointing.
But it was also a long time coming. Because merely being a Trump-supporter in itself wasn’t the reboot’s biggest burden to overcome; what it really needed to do to succeed was minimise the off-screen impact of Barr, who had recently revealed herself on Twitter to be a staunch conspiracy theorist.
For example, on March 31, Barr tweeted: “Trump has freed so many children held in bondage to pimps all over the world….he has broken up trafficking rings…notice that…give him benefit of the doubt.”
But this week, Barr’s Twittering irrevocably crossed a line, which proved the final straw for the ABC television network.
Barr tweeted an appallingly racist comment about former Obama aide Valerie Jarrett looking like the offspring of the “Muslim Brotherhood & Planet of the Apes.” Jarrett, an African-American, was born in Iran to American parents.
The actor apologised for the tweet after receiving a negative response, claiming the likening of a human being to an ape, based on their skin colour, was merely a "bad joke" that was made in "bad taste."
The rise and fall of Barr this year should be a lesson to all high-profile people that in 2018, the more successful you are, the more accountable you are to the public.
Top Comments
So free speech is officially dead then. Just as I thought
Hardly. She had the freedom to say what she wanted, just like ABC had the freedom to cancel her show.
Freedom of speech doesn't equate to freedom of consequence.
I'm not sure that America's founding fathers had 'ape balls' in mind when legislating to protect public expression.
Such a brave move to cancel the show and so swiftly.
I’ve seen a bunch of people tweeting their defense of Roseanne by calling it free speech and just a bad joke.
Glad to see that so many people recognise the difference between a joke and unacceptable derogatory speech that dehumanises someone.
This is in a totally different camp to, for example, the poorly timed and poorly thought-through tweet last ANZAC Day by
Yassmin Abdiel-Magied which was aimed at provoking debate about an important topic (refugees) but was unfortunately quite insensitive.
Sometimes people tweet things they later regret because they didn’t think it through properly or realise the consequences.
And then there are those who use social media as a platform to espouse their racist/homophobic/nasty opinions regardless of who they hurt. Organisations have every right to decide whether they want to associate with - or pay - people who publicly espouse those kinds of values.
I'd suggest that the swiftness of the move to cancel probably suggests it was planned for a long time. Their finger was probably already on the trigger, just waiting for Roseanne to provide them with adequate reason to pull the end move.
Not sure about that, the show was a hit and a huge money spinner. People will overlook a lot to keep milking the cash cow, let alone plan on butchering it.
Exactly - she had to wait for adequate provocation to axe the show. They were already overlooking Roseanne's past behaviour - she just managed to raise her liability to the point that continuing with the show was not good business for the network.
Only a couple of weeks before, they announced that it was so successful they had already re-signed for season two. Then all of a sudden they cancelled the rest of the first season. They wouldn't do they if they had already re-signed while planning to cancel. So it doesn't seemed it was planned at all. On the contrary.