What happened

ABC canceled its highest-rated show, this week, after a racist tweet by the sitcom’s star provoked outrage on social media. Roseanne Barr described Valerie Jarrett, an Iranian-born African-American who served as former President Barack Obama’s senior adviser, as if the “muslim brotherhood & planet of the apes had a baby.” Barr apologized for making a “bad joke,” but that failed to quell a firestorm of condemnation. Just hours after the offending tweet was posted, ABC dropped Roseanne, which averages 18 million viewers an episode. Channing Dungey, the network’s entertainment president, called the tweet “abhorrent, repugnant, and inconsistent with our values.” Robert Iger, CEO of the Walt Disney Co., ABC’s corporate parent, phoned Jarrett to apologize.

A few hours after promising to leave Twitter, Barr returned to the site, retweeting statements by fans who blamed PC culture for her canning. “It was 2 in the morning and I was ambien tweeting,” Barr wrote, suggesting she was loopy from sleep medication. That excuse was widely mocked online, including by Ambien’s manufacturer, whose CEO said, “Racism is not a known side effect.” Roseanne returned to television in March after a 20-year hiatus, and President Trump repeatedly congratulated Barr—who played a Trump supporter on the show—on her high ratings. Asked whether Trump would weigh in on the cancellation, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said he was too busy. Not 24 hours later, Trump tweeted that Iger never called “to apologize for the HORRIBLE statements made and said about me on ABC.” Barr promptly retweeted him.