Seinfeld speaks out on Roseanne Barr
There is an alternate universe in which Roseanne Barr, the actress and conservative provocateur, had actually put down the bullhorn of social media. After all, she had promised to do so. She wrote last month, in since-deleted messages, that she was “leaving Twitter” — penance for racist posts that brought a premature end to her revived ABC sitcom, “Roseanne.”
But in this universe, Barr returned to her favorite platform with a vengeance.
Her Twitter lapse lends strange support to the estimation of Jerry Seinfeld, known for an eponymous sitcom of his own, that her downward spiral was of her own making and needed no momentum from ABC’s abrupt goodbye.
“I don’t see why it was necessary to fire her,” said the co-creator and star of the television sitcom “Seinfeld” in an interview with “Entertainment Tonight.” He deployed macabre language in an apparent reference to her self-destructive internet behavior, adding, “Why would you murder someone who’s committing suicide?”
Resurrecting her old Twitter personality, Barr uses her page to defend President Donald Trump, who had called her to congratulate her on her show’s ratings and wove her firing into a tale of his own victimization.
She spreads conspiracy theories about former President Barack Obama. And she generally stirs the pot of outrage.
Particularly ripe for retweets by the television star are posts that reinterpret her slur against Valerie Jarrett — the reason that ABC had nixed her show — as poor word choice rather than racism. Their messages of support crowd her profile.
The old Barr is back, but Seinfeld sees no reason her real-life persona should get in the way of the fictionalized version that made “Roseanne” a hit. He said that ABC should find a new actress for Barr’s part in the planned spinoff, “The Conners,” saying, “There’s other funny women that could do that part.”
Whether he found dark comedy in her downfall, he did not say. He certainly was transfixed — just like the rest of the country.
“I never saw somebody end their entire career with one button push,” Seinfeld said. “That was fresh.”