There’s no excuse for spouting ugly slurs — Roseanne will pay the price
FAREWELL Roseanne Barr, exposed as an ugly personality by an ugly thought.
Her career ended after she tweeted that an African-American woman who was a senior adviser to Barack Obama looked like the ‘muslim brotherhood and Planet Of The Apes had a baby’.
ABC cancelled her hugely successful show and it seems unlikely the comedienne will ever work in Hollywood again.
In America, where ever-febrile race relations are even worse after more than a year of Trump, no one likens any person of colour to an ape and gets away with it — and rightly so.
In New York this week, I noticed something new. Servers don’t ask if you take your coffee ‘black’ or ‘white’ any more. ‘Light or dark?’ is the politically correct query in restaurants and diners.
Good people all over the country are scrupulous about avoiding anything that could be construed as a racial undertone or a perceived slight. That is why Roseanne (left) can have no excuse.
Some supporters have asked why a white person comparing a black person to an ape is more offensive than Donald Trump being compared to an orangutan, as has happened.
Likening Trump to an orangutan is unpleasant, but it has nothing to do with race. It is a comment on a man who persists in dyeing his hair orange and styling it into extravagant shapes, for reasons known only to himself. It might be rude, but it won’t cause a riot.
Had Roseanne’s tweet gone unpunished, a riot would have been the least of it.