Side effects do not include racism: drug firm responds to Roseanne
THE drug company that makes Ambien last night said the sedative “does not cause racism” after Roseanne Barr suggested the pills had been responsible for a highly offensive tweet that led to the cancellation of her television series.
ABC, the television network, terminated the comedian’s eponymous sitcom after she compared Valerie Jarrett, a black former senior adviser to Barack Obama, to an ape.
Barr said she had been “ambientweeting at 2 in the morning” when she suggested that if the Islamist political movement “Muslim brotherhood & planet of the apes had a baby = vj”.
In a statement Sanofi, a French drug company, said: “While all pharmaceutical treatments have side effects, racism is not a known side effect of any Sanofi medication.”
Barr later responded that she has had odd experiences while taking the sleep medication late at night. But she backtracked on blaming the drug for her remark, saying: “I blame myself, not Ambien.”
Barr has been a high-profile backer of Donald Trump and also plays one of his supporters in Roseanne. Commenting on her firing, Mr Trump criticised Bob Iger, the chairman of The Walt Disney Company, which owns ABC.
The US president wrote on Twitter: “Bob Iger of ABC called Valerie Jarrett to let her know that ‘ABC does not tolerate comments like those’ made by Roseanne Barr. Gee, he never called President Donald J Trump to apologise for the HORRIBLE statements made and said about me on ABC. Maybe I just didn’t get the call?”
The original Roseanne sitcom came to an end in May 1997. It was revived this year and the first episode was watched by 18.4 million viewers.
Amid the furore over her comment Barr told supporters on Twitter: “I’m not a racist, just an idiot.”
In a tweet directed at Ms Jarrett, Barr said: “I made a terrible mistake [which] caused hundreds of ppl 2 lose their jobs. so sorry!”
In a further flurry of tweets Barr said she had thought Jarrett was Saudi, Persian, or Jewish and at one point wrote: “I mistakenly thought she was white.”
She also apologised directly to Jarrett, who said she hoped it could become a “teaching moment” for America.