ABC swiftly announced that they had canceled the second season of their Roseanne revival after the star went on a racist tirade that compared dark-skinned women to apes.
After Barr compared former Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett to an ape, she tried to save her show by tweeting an apology, which appears to have been ordered by ABC:
I apologize to Valerie Jarrett and to all Americans. I am truly sorry for making a bad joke about her politics and her looks. I should have known better. Forgive me-my joke was in bad taste.
— Roseanne Barr (@therealroseanne) May 29, 2018
However, as the backlash grew, ABC announced that they had canceled her show. ABC Entertainment chief Channing Dungey said, “Roseanne’s Twitter statement is abhorrent, repugnant and inconsistent with our values, and we have decided to cancel her show.”
ABC should have known that this was coming. Barr has been an outspoken Trump supporter who has embraced fringe conspiracies and all that is bad about the conservative movement. ABC should have never brought her back in the first place, and with the ratings for Roseanne still performing very well, but already eroding, Barr wasn’t worth the boycotts and PR disaster that was sure to hit the network if they tried to keep her on the air.
Roseanne Barr didn’t make a mistake. This sort of ugly racism is who she is, and it has no place on American television.
Goodbye and good riddance to Roseanne Barr.
For more discussion about this story join our Rachel Maddow and MSNBC group.
Awards and Professional Memberships
Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association
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