Almost five years after her fall from grace after a 2 a.m. post on Twitter that sent shockwaves through the nation, Roseanne Barr has returned to the comedy scene with a stand up special called “Cancel this!”
On last Friday’s episode of “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” Roseanne said she wished to have her say after being totally cancelled in 2018, and use the opportunity to talk about cancel culture, which she deems “horrible” and “fascist.”
Another prime target of her show will be the Biden administration: “Jokes are a great way to, you know, scorn power,” she said. “And my jokes are so great. They’re the most offensive.”
In 2018, Barr was fired from her N° 1 show over a tweet in which she stated that former Obama advisor Valerie Jarrett was what would have resulted if the “muslim brotherhood & planet of the apes had a baby.”
Barr was accused of racism and her network, ABC, immediately cancelled her show. Viacom, Hulu, and others pulled the sitcom from their networks entirely, including the old episodes from its first run in the ‘80s and ‘90s.
Roseanne immediately apologized to Jarret and “all Americans” on Twitter, but later wrote on Twitter to her fans: “Hey guys, don’t defend me, it’s sweet of you 2 try, but … losing my show is 0 compared 2 being labelled a racist over one tweet—that I regret even more.”
“It was a witch-burning. They denied me the right to apologize. Oh my God, they just hated me so badly,” Roseanne told The Los Angeles Times. During the initial call with ABC’s executives, she told them she had always been under the impression that Jarrett was white. “I said I would go on my show and explain it. They wouldn’t let me. They decided I was a liar in my apology.”
In a tearful podcast with Rabbi Shmuley Boteach in June 2018, Barr reiterated that she was unaware of Jarrett’s racial heritage. She insisted that her anger towards Jarrett came from personal opposition to the Obama administration’s policies on “Israel and Jewish issues,” rather than from racial bias. Barr blamed her insensitive tweet in part on the prescription drug Ambien, understanding that it did not excuse her actions. “I am willing to accept whatever consequences this brings because I know I’ve done wrong,” she said.
At the time, Barr had developed a habit of using Twitter to spout crass and angry comments. In 2015, she called Haaretz’s Rogel Alpher a “privileged fat skinhead.” In 2016, she called Hillary Clinton an anti-Semite and her top aide Huma Abedin “a filthy Nazi whore.” But Barr stopped using Twitter a while ago. “That’s been a great thing for me, to be off that,” she told the LA Times.
Roseanne Barr’s special airs Monday, Feb. 13, on Fox Nation.
