What a mess Roseanne

chaiz

Fri, Jun 01 2018, 2:51 am

Fox wrote:

I don't think anyone, anywhere on the political spectrum, thought Roseanne's "joke" was defensible. John Nolte at Breitbart ran a column praising ABC for yanking her show.

That said, Roseanne apologized almost immediately. Virtually everyone who knows or has worked with her vouches for the fact that Roseanne is one of the least racist or otherwise prejudiced entertainers around.

The double-standard debate is focused less on Samantha Bee than on MSNBC's Joy Reid, who posted a series of offensive anti-gay remarks (including characterizing ideological opponents as effeminate gays as a way of discrediting them). When these posts came to light, she claimed her account had been hacked. When that was proven a lie, she apologized but said she had no memory of ever writing the posts. She kept her show and was praised for her "honesty."

So now the gay men are riled up, claiming that firing Roseanne while giving Joy Reid a pass shows that a single oblique racist reference is treated more seriously than years of in-your-face anti-gay rantings. Michael Lucas has joined the fray, along with all the usual media suspects, and even Clay Aiken has weighed in.

In another corner, we have Joy Behar of ABC's The View. Aside from calling for Trump's assassination or death, she has notably said that Christians are mentally ill. So now the devout Christians are riled up that she has never apologize nor been sanctioned by ABC in any way, thus proving that religious prejudice is apparently okay with ABC while racism is not.

Women and anyone concerned with s-xual abuse are rolling their eyes big time. ABC is owned by Disney, and Disney CEO Bob Iger, who made a public statement that Roseanne's tweet was incompatible with their values, was one of Harvey Weinstein's chief enablers over the years and has fought to keep contracts with Weinstein private. Apparently Weinstein's behavior was compatible with their values?

Did I leave out the growing conservative African-American contingent? They're huddled in their corner, pointing out all kinds of ongoing tone-deaf racial gaffes on the part of ABC. "Now you're worried about one comedian's single tweet?" A lot of the comments reference the fact that 32 people were shot and 7 killed in Chicago last weekend -- almost all black -- while nobody died because Roseanne said something racist to Valerie Jarrett. They would prefer energy be spent on the former rather than the latter.

So this is a controversy with something for everyone!

It is possible to think that there are terrible people on both sides of the aisle. There are a few such people and that gives me some hope. Just because Samantha Bee said something vulgar and terrible and wrong doesn't mean that Roseanne Barr lost her free will to control herself from not tweeting something terrible. And it goes vice versa, really. I think as adults we should be able to see past the parties and recognize misdeeds regardless of tribal or partisan affiliation.

SixOfWands

Fri, Jun 01 2018, 10:45 am

chaiz wrote:

Of course. Its nothing more than another version of "... but Hilary ...." Bring up something that a left winger allegedly did wrong to justify repulsive behavior by a right winger.

As to another poster's claim that "everyone" knows that Barr isn't a racist -- to the contrary, everyone has long known that she is.

Calling Huma Abedin a "filthy Nazi wh0re." References to "islamic rape pedo culture."

And while she underwent a recent "conversion," who can forget her calling Israel a “Nazi state,” and saying the “Jewish soul is being tortured in Israel.” Not to mention references to "Jewish mind control," and accusing Israel of being “inhuman” toward Hamas.

She may well be mentally ill, as Jimmy Kimmel suggested. And if that's the case, then I hope she gets help. But that doesn't change her racism.

Fox

Fri, Jun 01 2018, 10:50 am

chaiz wrote:

Right, but it's not the action that has caused the controversy -- it's the reaction.

Aside from conservative African-Americans, many of whom felt Roseanne's tweet wasn't that bad on the scale of racism, no one is defending her.

Nor would anyone protest the consequences of her tweet -- having her show cancelled by ABC -- if that standard were applied across the board to equally-offensive behavior on the part of other entertainers and employees.

But ABC and Disney have taken little or no action when performers called Christians "mentally ill" (Behar); called President Trump and everyone who voted for him "white supremacists" (Hill); or regularly calls people Nazis in profanity-laced tweets (Olbermann).

One media analyst who's been making the rounds on news shows, Jeffrey McCall, said that “nobody should feel sorry for Roseanne, but it does seem Disney needs to provide some clarity about what it expects from other employees regarding public civility.”

Really, though, the kerfluffle over Roseanne is almost background noise at this point. Since then, the Television Academy gave Samantha Bee a platform to defend her comments about Ivanka Trump while barring any critical press coverage; and op-eds in Variety and the Hollywood Reporter both slammed Disney/ABC for having given Roseanne a reboot in the first place, since she was known to have "controversial" views.

My advice to Eddie Murphy would be to stay retired from stand-up, and under no circumstances re-create the classic Uncle Gus and Aunt Bunnie routine. There are so many -isms in that, he'd never see the light of day again.

princessleah

Fri, Jun 01 2018, 11:01 am

This popped up on vulture today (from here: http://www.vulture.com/2018/06......html)

Quote:

No, Samantha Bee’s Joke Isn’t the Same As Roseanne Barr’s Tweet
By Jen Chaney @chaneyj

On Full Frontal Wednesday night, Samantha Bee called Ivanka Trump a “feckless c---.” It was not the first time Bee has called someone a cunt on national television. Last year, she used the same word to describe Woodrow Wilson during her Not the White House Correspondents’ Dinner special and no one cared.

Nevertheless, it became a major issue on Thursday because White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said that TBS — which, along with Bee, apologized for the see-you-next-Tuesday line and removed the clip from Full Frontal’s Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter pages — should be fired.

“Her disgusting comments and show are not fit for broadcast, and executives at Time Warner and TBS must demonstrate that such explicit profanity about female members of this administration will not be condoned on its network,” Sanders said.

Let’s be clear about what really concerns Sanders, the White House, and President Trump — who, as of Thursday morning, was still demanding an apology from Disney CEO Bob Iger for the mean things that have been said about him by ABC employees. It’s not the use of explicit profanity being directed toward women. (Please refer to the page that begins with “grab ‘em by the p****” in your Examples of Trump Hypocrisy Handbook.) It’s not the degraded standards for discourse on our airwaves and in our culture. (Wasn’t it President Trump who, last fall, referred to any NFL player who protested racially motivated police violence as a “son of a b---”?)

No, the White House’s demand that TBS cancel Full Frontal is an effort to create false equivalencies that foster mistrust of a media they characterize as left-leaning lie mongers. It’s divisive, it’s dangerous, and it’s absolutely par for the Trump-administration course.

This particular chapter in the media-bashing saga started on Tuesday morning when Roseanne Barr, in one of those classic cases of Ambien-induced racism that we’re always hearing about, described Valerie Jarrett, a former advisor to President Obama, as the offspring of the Muslim Brotherhood and Planet of the Apes. Within hours of tweeting that disgusting racist joke, ABC fired Barr and canceled her show, the network’s most widely watched and successful sitcom in years.

Not long after, both President Trump and Sanders accused ABC of a double standard, noting that Iger never apologized to Trump for, among other things, an erroneous story by ABC News reporter Brian Ross about the Russia scandal (in fact, ABC apologized for the mistake, issued a correction, and suspended Ross without pay), and then-ESPN host Jemele Hill’s tweets calling Trump “a white supremacist who has largely surrounded himself with other white supremacists.” That whataboutism continued today when Sanders criticized Bee and called for TBS to cancel Full Frontal.

This problem is described quite accurately by the Washington Post’s Callum Borchers, who zeroes in on the false equivalency of suggesting a connection between the Roseanne cancelation and what happened with Jemele Hill: “What’s striking about the Hill tweet’s inclusion on a White House list of grievances against Iger is the implied equivalence between racism and calling out racism. Jarrett said Tuesday that Iger phoned her to apologize on behalf of the company for Barr’s racist tweet. The White House’s position is that Iger should have similarly dialed Trump to apologize for Hill’s accusation that the president is a white supremacist. The suggestion is that calling someone racist is just as offensive as saying something racist — maybe even more so.”

Let’s apply that logic to the Samantha Bee business. Her use of the C-word to describe Ivanka Trump stemmed from her criticism of the First Daughter–slash–senior presidential advisor tweeting a photograph of herself and one of her children in the midst of a news cycle focused on immigrant children being separated from their parents. Maybe Bee shouldn’t have used that specific word. I’ll concede that she could have been less crass, even though she’s used the same language in the past and no one said boo until Barr got fired. Bee’s larger point was to criticize Ivanka Trump’s insensitive and tone-deaf photograph. The point of Barr’s tweet, in as much as it had a point, was that Barr thinks Jarrett is both an Islamist and an ape. Saying that both women deserve to be fired suggests their offenses are identical. They are not.

In a lot of ways, this whole thing strikes me as Smoky Eye II: The Reckoning. Gasps were sounded and pearls were clutched when Michelle Wolf accused Sanders of being a serial fibber at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. “She burns facts, and then she uses the ash to create a perfect smoky eye,” Wolf cracked. “Maybe she’s born with it, maybe it’s lies. It’s probably lies.” The offense? Wolf had supposedly — except, no, she didn’t — made fun of Sanders’s appearance, which was deemed unacceptable by some observers. The fact that Wolf criticized the White House press secretary for regularly lying to the public was not of nearly as much concern as the suggestion that Wolf said something derogatory about her looks. It’s quite similar to how Bee’s underlying message — that the U.S. needs more humane immigration policies — has gotten totally lost in this ridiculous circle of accusations about who gets away with saying the most offensive stuff.

Now, Bee has been forced to go on the defensive, even though her transgression is not nearly as egregious, offensive, or cruel as what Barr did. Even worse, the biggest offender of all still sits in the Oval Office, tweeting and saying whatever he wants. For those who are genuinely concerned about nasty profanity being spouted into the cultural ether, I suggest you pick up the phone and check your caller ID. The worst rhetoric of all? It’s coming from inside the White House.

Fox

Fri, Jun 01 2018, 11:11 am

SixOfWands wrote:

Please show me anyone on this thread, or indeed, any respected conservative public figure who is trying to "justify" Roseanne's tweet. Is Breitbart's defense of her firing too left-wing to count?

The point is very simple: consequences should be applied as equally as possible. If one is going to be fired for tweeting something racist -- an entirely reasonable standard -- one should also be fired for saying that all members of a particular religion are mentally ill. Why is that difficult to understand?

As for Roseanne's alleged racism, these tweets and references are all filtered through the analysis of The Daily Beast, and they may prove that she is a foul-mouthed loon, but when "evidence" of racism includes such things as questionning Seth Rich's death or following QAnon on Reddit, it means the case is weak. The Daily Beast has morphed into Gawker and is increasingly a platform for doxxing and outing. I fear we will soon have to summon Mr. Thiel to put them out of our misery.

Fox

Fri, Jun 01 2018, 11:47 am

Quote:

. . . Bee’s underlying message — that the U.S. needs more humane immigration policies — has gotten totally lost in this ridiculous circle of accusations about who gets away with saying the most offensive stuff.

Now, Bee has been forced to go on the defensive, even though her transgression is not nearly as egregious, offensive, or cruel as what Barr did. Even worse, the biggest offender of all still sits in the Oval Office, tweeting and saying whatever he wants. For those who are genuinely concerned about nasty profanity being spouted into the cultural ether, I suggest you pick up the phone and check your caller ID. The worst rhetoric of all? It’s coming from inside the White House.

I don't understand the Vulture piece. Are these people actually trying to guarantee a landslide for Trump in 2020? I mean, I voted for him, but I'm not that fervent a supporter!

I see that Ms. Chaney has conveniently left out a key element in the "humane immigration" story: the fact that the MSM tweeted and broadcast damning pictures from 2014 -- well into President Obama's second term -- and attempted to pass them off as current. Only when they were caught were any apologies made for the "mistake."

Apparently, humane immigration policies weren't a concern to Ms. Bee back in 2014. At least not to the degree that she felt compelled to call out members of Obama's administration who tweeted family photos by calling them vulgar names.

If Ms. Bee is truly motivated by simple compassion for families separated by immigration detention, perhaps she should lobby Congress to approve money for family detention centers that has been requested by the Trump administration. Or perhaps she should request that the Trump Administration send an envoy to Central America -- as the Obama Administration sent Vice President Biden -- to tell people the risks of smuggling their children into the U.S.

Somehow, by the final paragraph of Chaney's op-ed, it's all President Trump's fault. He made Jemele Hill call people white supremacists -- as if that's a minor (or accurate) thing! He made Roseanne tweet a disgusting racial reference. He's the real problem!

The underlying logic is basically "by any means necessary." Trump is so evil that any language or accusation -- no matter how distorted or profane -- is justified on the part of the #Resistance. Um, no. Normal, sane people do not believe that.