Questionable actions date back to a cringe-worthy, crotch-grabbing rendition of the national anthem in 1990 a claim, later recanted, that she was an incest survivor and the 2009 picture reprinted on the Daily News. Yet many saw a disturbing pattern being followed instead of a joke. "One stupid joke in a lifetime of fighting 4 civil rights 4 all minorities, against networks, studios, at the expense of my nervous system/family/wealth will NEVER be taken from me."įILE - In this March 23, 2018, file photo, Roseanne Barr arrives at the Los Angeles premiere of "Roseanne" on Friday in Burbank, Calif. "I'm not a racist, I never was & I never will be," she wrote Wednesday. She apologized to those who had lost their jobs because of her action, but also condemned cast members who threw her under the bus, in her words.
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On social media, Barr wrote that what she said was indefensible, then retweeted several statements others made supporting her. President Donald Trump, noting in a tweet that Robert Iger, CEO of ABC's parent Walt Disney Co., had called Jarrett to apologize, wondered why ABC hadn't apologized for "HORRIBLE statements made and said about me on ABC." That led the drug maker Sanofi to say on social media that "racism is not a known side effect" of their product. ABC canceled its successful reboot of "Roseanne" on Tuesday following the star's racist tweet likening former Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett to a cross between the Muslim Brotherhood and a "Planet of the Apes" actor.īarr continued tweeting on Wednesday, at one point saying the offending tweet was composed at 2 a.m. Given Barr's past incidents of bad behavior and questionable social media posts, ABC faced questions Wednesday about why it went back into business with her before it all blew apart. Unless Sykes had a mastermind plan to blowup the show up from the inside, the question must be posed, “was the money worth it?”įrom what can be ascertained, for a short period of time–yes.NEW YORK - An old picture of Roseanne Barr dressed as Adolf Hitler, wearing a swastika and pulling burnt cookies from an oven, splashed on the front of the New York Daily News Wednesday like a neon sign asking ABC executives: What were you thinking? To create with a woman who, no doubt, sees her as an ape, is astounding. And even in comedy, where entertainers of color oftentimes take the pain of their experience and wrap it into a laugh for the audiences to enjoy, it’s difficult to understand why Sykes agreed to ignore the harm Barr has inflicted on so many.
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Sykes’ participation in the show speaks to that blindness which permeates certain entertainers of color who reach a level of influence. Black entertainers who take meetings with a president who openly hates them ( KanyeWest, Jim Brown, Steve Harvey). We’ve seen examples of Black actors working with controversial white directors ( Jamie Foxx + Samuel Jackson + QuentinTarrantino). What we have to discern is that Black people can also be problematic. Yet “Roseanne” was a huge success for ABC and beat out most of its competitors in numbers.Īnd the fact that two Black women-Dungey and Sykes–were part of this practice, should give us pause. A thought-provoking New York Times review by writer Roxane Gay, who, like Sykes is a member of the LGBTQ community, offered nuanced commentary on Barr’s problematic history.īut anything is possible in 2018, especially for a woman like Barr who was happily given a mainstream platform with a company that wants to silence activism (see “Black-ish” creator Kenya Burris’ fight with the network over his NFL protest episode) while propping up a bigot.
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In most of the reboots reviews, Barr was heralded as a comedic genius, and many swept her problematic history under the rug. She is committed to her white nationalistic views by clinging to her white supremacy by any means. Her turn from a progressive who used the first iteration of her show to tackle homophobia and elitism, into a far-right conservative who uses her social media to attack minorities and immigrants, is totally frightening.