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BARR’S RACIST TWEET GETS HER SHOW DROPPED
Roseanne Barr’s racist slur has been slammed even by her costars on the show Roseanne
The popular US television comedy Roseanne, was cancelled by the network on Tuesday, after actor Roseanne Barr incited outrage by comparing a black former Obama administration official to an ape on Twitter.
“Roseanne’s Twitter statement is abhorrent, repugnant and inconsistent with our values, and we have decided to cancel her show,” Channing Dungey from the network said in a statement.
The show, a revival of the 1990s hit sitcom Roseanne, was the network’s most widely watched prime time show. Barr was also an executive producer on the reboot.
In a since deleted comment on Twitter, Barr compared Valerie Jarrett, an adviser to former US President Barack Obama, to an ape. Barr wrote that if the Islamist political movement “muslim brotherhood & planet of the apes had a baby = vj.”
The actor, 65, apologised “for making a bad joke” about Jarrett, who is black and was born in Iran to American parents.
“Don’t feel sorry for me, guys!! I just want to apologize to the hundreds of people, and wonderful writers (all liberal) and talented actors who lost their jobs on my show due to my stupid tweet,” Barr said in a tweet late on Tuesday.
The talent agency that represents Barr has dropped the actor.
Following the cancellation news, several pages on social media defended Barr’s slur, arguing that Hollywood stars have previously used similar racial slurs and have implied that Donald Trump (current US President) and George Bush (former US President) look like “apes” or “monkeys”.
Jarrett, 61, said she got a call from the channel before the announcement of the show’s cancellation. “I think we have to turn it into a teaching moment,” she said at a taping of a town hall event, called Everyday Racism in America, that the network released ahead of its scheduled broadcast.
RERUNS ALSO PULLED
The fallout from the show’s cancellation also hit its syndication market as reruns of the 1990s Roseanne episodes have been removed from several cable networks.
CAST COMMENT
Anger among the show’s supporting cast added to pressure on the network. Sara Gilbert, who plays Darlene in the show, called Barr’s remarks “abhorrent.” Emma Kenney, who plays Gilbert’s on-screen daughter Harris, said on Twitter that she had decided to leave the series because of Barr’s words even before the show was cancelled.
Tuesday’s furor echoed a 2013 incident in which Barr, in a subsequently deleted tweet, said black former Obama administration official Susan Rice “is a man with big swinging ape balls.”
ROSEANNE BARR HAD TWEETED THAT IF “MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD & PLANET OF THE APES HAD A BABY = VJ”, REFERRING TO VALERIE JARRETT, A BLACK FORMER OBAMA ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL