Tuesday, 29 May 2018

ABC Has Canceled "Roseanne" After Her Racist Tweet About Valerie Jarrett



ABC on Tuesday made the decision to cancel its Roseanne revival after the star's racist tweet comparing former Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett to an ape.
ABC Entertainment president Channing Dungey called Barr's comment "abhorrent, repugnant, and inconsistent with our values."
"We have decided to cancel her show," said Dungey.
In a tweet posted on Tuesday morning, Barr said the black senior adviser to President Obama was the "baby" of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood political party and Planet of the Apes.
The tweet came in response to a conspiracy-laden thread alleging Jarrett had helped cover up CIA spying.
After her racist remark drew criticism on Twitter, Barr defended her statement.
"It's a joke," she wrote in response to a CNN reporter.
"Muslims r NOT a race," she said in response to another user.
She later tweeted an apology to Jarrett. "I am truly sorry for making a bad joke about her politics and her looks. I should have known better. Forgive me-my joke was in bad taste," she wrote.
Comedian Wanda Sykes, who had worked as a consulting producer on the show, had already announced she would not be returning after Barr's tweet. A source close to Sykes denied a report that she demanded that ABC cancel the show.
Roseanne's debut in March was the highest rated comedy on any network in four years, with an audience of 18.4 million and a 5.2 in the advertiser-coveted 18 to 49 demographic. ABC quickly renewed it for a 13-episode second season. As the nine episodes aired, the show's ratings ebbed (10.6 million viewers and a 2.5 in the demo), but Roseanne still finished as the No. 1 show on television.
Barr was once known for her leftwing views, which played out on the show during its original run. The character of Roseanne Conner was a factory-organizing feminist, and the show represented the concerns of a Midwest, working class family that rarely caught a break. Its anti-racist, pro-LGBT politics reflected Barr's politics, who in 2012 ran for president on the Green Party ticket.
But on Twitter, Barr started to express another side of her beliefs. She began tweeting anti-Muslim, pro-Zionist views, and retweeting far-right conspiracy theories, most infamously #Pizzagate, which implicated Hillary Clinton and her campaign chair John Podesta in a pedophiliac trafficking ring. She also revealed herself to be a pro-Donald Trump activist, to the surprise of some of her fans.
ABC announced the show's revival in May 2017, and said it would reflect American political divisions after Trump's election. Later in the year, Barr's adult children took control of her Twitter feed, deleted her past tweets, and changed her password, she said during a press conference in January.
Barr, however, regained control over her Twitter feed before the show's premiere, and recommenced giving a voice to pro-Trump views, and the fringe conspiracy theory known as "The Storm" or QAnon. She refers to it constantly, in tweets and retweets.

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