Tuesday, May 29, 2018

WE'RE ABOUT TO BECOME THE VILLAINS OF THE ROSEANNE BARR STORY

Wow, that was fast:
ABC canceled its hit sitcom "Roseanne" on Tuesday after the show's biggest star, Roseanne Barr, went on a racist Twitter rant....

In one of the tweets, she wrote, "Muslim brotherhood & planet of the apes had a baby=vj."

Barr was responding to a comment about Valerie Jarrett, a top former aide to President Obama.
Nobody could have foreseen this!



Between the initial tweet and the cancellation, many people joked that Barr would now be considered not so much a bigot as a brave intellectual heretic.



I think even James Bennet's New York Times op-ed page and Jeffrey Goldberg's Atlantic were too bien-pensant to defend Barr on this (or on her "Chelsea Soros Clinton" tweet). But now I expect the conversation to switch to "left-wing censorship" -- even though calls for the show's cancellation didn't just come from the left.



I don't know who would want to advertise on Barr's show now. It's understandable that ABC would want to be rid of the show. But this business decision will be blamed on free-speech-hating progressives:



The blaming could conceivably be limited to the right, but I assume it's going to be taken up by centrists who should know better, and by conservatives writing for non-conservative editors who should also know better. Roseanne Barr wrote an awful thing, something she's done frequently in the past with no consequence. But it's all going to be our fault.

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