Did Roseanne Barr Deserve to be "Fired" From the Roseanne Show?
Reflections on a cancelation...
In recent weeks, my wife and I have been binging the old 90s Roseanne show. For the unfamiliar, this comedy detailed the life of a poor white family in Illinois, and was headlined by Roseanne Barr, John Goodman, and Laurie Metcalf among an ensemble cast. Generally, the show is quite good, despite some weird and preachy moments, particularly in the latter seasons.
In 2017, the show was rebooted and was still funny. Wisely, it jettisoned a lot of the original series’ wackier developments from the latter seasons (like the Connors’ and Jackie’s babies, Dan’s heart attack, winning the lottery, etc.), waving them off as a product of Roseanne’s creative writing.
Roseanne Barr has always been an eccentric personality. It is widely believed that she has life-long mental illness (though comments about her having “multiple personality disorder”, a controversial disorder that may not actually exist, seem a bit credulous1). Notoriously tone-deaf and irreverent, she stirred controversy by mangling the Star Spangled Banner at a ball game in the 1990s2. Despite the, honestly, woke tone of much of her 90s show (even by today’s standards3), she drifted right in more recent years and was known for posting bizarre, sometimes racist or anti-Semitic(Barr, herself, is Jewish it’s worth noting) conspiracy-theory laden tweets.
And then, of course, came the tweet that ended it all. Speaking about former Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett (who is black), Barr tweeted: “muslim brotherhood and planet of the apes had a baby = vj”. Barr apologized for the tweet calling it “bad taste” (which it obviously was) and stated she was leaving twitter (she is back on as of my writing this, which is absolutely her right of course). But the damage was done and she was condemned by her bosses at Disney/ABC and costar and executive producer Sara Gilbert who plays Darlene.
Pretty soon the Roseanne reboot was cancelled4 but then reconstituted as “The Connors”. I’ve gotten the impression that Gilbert was fairly instrumental in this (both potentially to her credit and criticism) though other costars such as John Goodman have been a bit more sympathetic to Barr. The Connors has been an excellent show, even without Barr, and is about to wrap up its run.
Nonetheless, though in no way condoning Barr’s racist tweet, her exit from the show she basically created always left me uneasy. Perhaps for several reasons.
First, Barr’s mental health problems and erratic behavior have hardly been a secret. ABC’s executives knew about her history when they brought her show back in 2017, so it’s hard to say they were “surprised” by her behavior. I suspect Barr’s termination occurred just as “cancel culture” was reaching its feverish pitch between the #MeToo and Black Lives Matter eras. I’m not even sure she’d be fired for the same tweet today; perhaps allowed instead to make some lesser form of public penance.
The degree to which mental illness explains racist comments remains open for debate. To be sure, individuals with schizophrenia or various impulse control disorders are more prone to saying things they might otherwise regret. Notably, Kanye West imploded much of his public reputation due to anti-Semitic comments ostensibly made during manic episodes. The explain/excuse dimension is a tricky one. Does having a mental illness excuse antisocial comments? I’m not sure, but I suspect the people frothing over Barr or West’s comments are often the same ones declaring that homeless mentally ill carrying out actual assaults should never be compelled into treatment.
Having worked with many chronically mentally ill people, they do often say odd and even offensive things. On one hand, it could be argued maybe those thoughts lingered in their minds all along, mental illness only bringing down the barriers to expression. On the other hand, human minds are dark things and a combination of “there but for the grace of god” and “he who is without sin cast the first stone” gives me pause. Which of us would want to be judged by our worst thoughts if we lost the ability to control their expression? In my experience, those who most loudly claim to be saints tend to turn out to be the worst sinners.
Second, I’m skeptical that the standards ABC applied to Barr would have been applied to someone making similarly gross comments against other ethnic groups. My suspicion is that statements prejudiced against other groups, whether white, Jews, Latino or perhaps even Asian, likely would have been treated differently (about the same time as Barr’s fall, for instance, NYT journalist Sarah Jeong was defended by many cultural elites despite making similarly grotesque anti-white comments on Twitter).
Third, I’m not sure we necessarily want our art to be effectively censored, even in the de facto sense, by the moral purity police. Many prominent individuals in history, across all cultures, would be judged as despicable by current moral standards. Many artists have been drunkards, sexually irresponsible, openly racist, or anti-Semitic, etc. Is our world better if we excised all their artist expression from our lexicon? I’m not so sure.
Of course, there are always edge cases. The actor who murders his wife and family isn’t going to be headlining next season. On the other hand, I think we now recognize that many of the cancelations of politicians (such as Al Franken) and artists (Mumford and Sons musician Winston Marshall perhaps) in the late 2010s and early 2020s were excessive, as were many of the cringe public “struggle session” apologies (actress Ellie Kemper being force to apologize for participating in a ball as a teen put on by an organization with Confederate roots, but which was no longer racist at the time she participated always rankled me5). I’m not saying everyone should get off scot-free for abhorrent comments, but where do we draw the proper line of public ostracism due to thought crimes?
In the case of the Roseanne show or the Connors, the people who cast her aside are still profiting from her intellectual creation. It would have sucked to have the show die altogether in 2018, but on the other hand, though Barr was certainly instrumental in her own downfall, the outcome has always left me discomforted.
There are, of course, lessons about being careful what one posts in social media. And I acknowledge that simply brushing aside racist or anti-Semitic comments doesn’t feel like the right outcome either. Perhaps finding the right balance between penance and sanctimoniousness is a difficult one. So, I’d love to hear from you…with the benefit of hindsight, was the outcome experienced by Roseanne Barr just? Drop a comment below (if a paid subscriber) or drop me a line.
Bill Maher’s comment “"She has said she has multiple personalities and, unfortunately, one of them is quite a racist” is particularly goofy. I like Maher a lot, but he has his moments and blind spots.
Barr was never exactly known for her singing. I imagine the ballpark knew what they were getting when they signed her on for this gig.
Perhaps worst was the Thanksgiving episode from Season 8 which was remarkably cringe. It repeats the myth that the Wampanoag Indians were a peaceful, wise, pastoral people who were massacred by the Pilgrims. In fact, the Wampanoag were plenty warlike and sought to recruit the Pilgrims as allies against neighboring tribes. The Wampanoag and Pilgrims forged an alliance which lasted 50 years, impressive by even modern standards. The whole episode was dripping in sanctimoniousness. It was fascinating to see such anti-American/European propaganda decades before “wokeness” became culturally dominant. It and the myths it tells has old roots, it appears.
I know I keep referring to Barr as being “fired” as something of a shorthand, but the technical details appear more complex, albeit in a way that isn’t really instrumental to the matter at hand, so I’ll continue using the shorthand. In any case, she was shown the door.
The woke cookie-cutter apology she issued “At the same time, I acknowledge that because of my race and my privilege, I am the beneficiary of a system that has dispensed unequal justice and unequal rewards” is a typical example of the kind of cringe forced apology statement so many put out at the time. These statements will live on as an embarrassment for these poor individuals.