In case you missed it, Utah native Roseanne Barr once again stirred up controversy recently with comments she made on a podcast. Comments that are being widely interpreted as being insensitive at best, viciously antisemetic at worst.
Roseanne being offensive and unfunny? That’s sort of on the level of water is wet and the sky is blue.
Appearing on a podcast hosted by comedian Theo Von, Roseanne said, “Nobody died in the Holocaust, either. That’s the truth. It should happen. Six million Jews should die right now ‘cause they cause all the problems in the world. But it never happened.”
Whoa. Taken at face value, those comments are beyond incendiary.
(Greg Gayne | ABC, via AP) This image released by ABC shows Sara Gilbert, left, and Roseanne Barr in a scene from "Roseanne," which was canceled in 2018 after Barr sent out a racist tweet. The series returned as "The Conners," without Barr.
If you listen to what preceded those comments, there is some justification for the excuse proffered by Roseanne’s son — that she was being “sarcastic.” In comments that were so incoherent that it took Von a while to pick up on what she was saying, Roseanne obliquely (and falsely) suggested that President Joe Biden didn’t legitimately win the 2020 election, that she was somehow prevented from speaking that (false) truth, and then offered up the Holocaust comments to somehow prove her point.
I have no inclination or desire to come to her defense, but I do think she was being sarcastic. And trying — and failing — to be funny.
That’s not an excuse. It was a horrible thing to say, and the I-was-only-kidding excuse doesn’t cut it.
And, no, the fact that Roseanne is herself Jewish doesn’t make it OK — although Von quickly pointed that out, seemingly to excuse her comments. The fact that members of her own family died in the Holocaust doesn’t make this better, it makes it worse.
Insulting people of a particular religious persuasion is nothing new for Roseanne, of course. She did refer to members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as the “Nazi Amish” some 35 years ago.
Again, I’m not trying to defend or excuse Roseanne, but you have to wonder if there are mental health issues involved here. I’m not trying to offer analysis from my completely unqualified perspective — this is something she has herself talked and written about on multiple occasions.
(Adam Rose | ABC, via AP) In this image released by ABC, Roseanne Barr, left, and John Goodman appear in a scene from the comedy series "Roseanne." The comedy about the blue-collar Conner family and its brassy matriarch returned in March 2018 as a success for ABC and Roseanne Barr but was canceled two months later after Barr’s racist slam of Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett. ABC called her tweet “abhorrent." The series returned as "The Conners," without Barr.
I wondered the same thing as she espoused multiple wacko conspiracy theories in recent years. When she was fired from the “Roseanne” revival after a racist tweet in 2018. When people inside ABC told me about things that were happening on the set of her sitcom during its original 1988-1997 run. Things that, they told me, got progressively worse over the years.
I’ve interviewed Roseanne multiple times over the past 30-plus years, both one-on-one and in group settings. She was more combative in the group settings, and generally pleasant when it was just me asking her questions. But I never knew quite what to expect from her.
And it’s worth pointing out that Roseanne’s unpleasant and unhinged behavior was tolerated and enabled by a lot of studio and network executives back when her sitcom was at the top of the ratings and she was making them a lot of money.
Although then-ABC Entertainment president Channing Dungey showed a lot of courage when she canceled the “Roseanne” revival — then the No. 1 show on TV — in the wake of that racist tweet. (That happened so quickly it seems unlikely there was a plan at the time to continue the show without Roseanne, as happened with “The Conners.”)
It would be nice if the Utah native just stepped out of the limelight and stayed there — both for her and for the rest of us.
We should not expect that to happen, however.
(Photo courtesy of Eric McCandless/ABC) John Goodman, Ames McNamara, Sara Gilbert, Lecy Goranson, Jay R. Ferguson, Laurie Metcalf and Katey Sagal star in "The Conners."
There are reports that “The Conners” will end soon • This is only a problem for fans of the series, of course, but even they shouldn’t worry. Much.
This stems from an interview series star John Goodman did with France 24, in which he said, “I think we may be coming to an end on it, I’m not sure.” Which, unless he has some inside information nobody else has, doesn’t make much sense.
The show’s ratings are relatively good — it’s ABC’s No. 1 sitcom in total viewers and No. 2 in the 18-49 demo (trailing only “Abbott Elementary”). And network sources are saying there are no plans to cancel the show.
That could change, of course, if the ratings tank. But there’s no imminent danger.
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