Roseanne Sorry For Racist ‘Planet Of The Apes’ Tweet About Obama Adviser
Roseanne Barr, once a groundbreaking symbol of what it meant to be a real, working-class woman onscreen, continues on her ill-fated mission to make all of her one-time fans feel like they have no choice but to despise her.
The most recent snafu occurred on Twitter. “Muslim brotherhood & planet of the apes had a baby=vj,” tweeted Barr. She was attacking Obama-era White House adviser Valerie Jarett. She followed that up with a tweet about how Muslims are not a race. She then followed that up with a declaration of her intent to leave Twitter.
I apologize. I am now leaving Twitter.
— Roseanne Barr (@therealroseanne) May 29, 2018
Like most celebrities, she’ll likely be back in a few days. Did Barr’s racially charged tweets qualify as hate speech, by Twitter’s often confusing standards? Has Barr finally realized the error of her ways? Or has she realized the blurring of the boundaries between celebrity and civilian are getting too blurred on the great equalizer of Twitter, allowing outraged plebians to crowd up her mentions?
Who knows? All we know is that it gives us regular folk a brief respite from getting outraged about the tarnished legacy of a Jewish comedy icon. The tweets have since been deleted. Barr’s reps did not respond to a request for comment.
Shira Feder writes. She’s at feder@forward.com
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