In May, Roseanne Barr got her own show cancelled after one of her especially racist tweets went viral.
Roseanne lashed out, ranting and raving and blaming anything and everything but herself. Now, however, she’s ready to have a much calmer conversation.
But she’s also teasing — or perhaps threatening — a comeback. In fact, she claims that she has already received multiple offers.
In an interview with Rabbi Schmuley Boteach, Roseanne Barr speaks about her actions and what the future may hold for her.
“Inside every bad thing is a good thing waiting to happen,” Roseanne says.
Many would suggest that the anticipated good thing in this case is the spin-off, The Connors, which ABC has confirmed.
“And I feel very excited,” Roseanne continues. “Because I’ve already been offered so many things.”
Racism may get you fired if enough people raise their voices about it. But it can also get you elected to the highest office in the land.
“And I almost already accepted one really good offer to go back on TV,” Roseanne threatens. “And I might do it.”
Roseanne adds that nothing is set in stone just yet, saying: “But we’ll see.”
Roseanne also reveals that she did not demand any financial compensation from ABC when she gave the go-ahead for them to make The Connors.
“I thought signing off of my own life’s work and asking for nothing in return, I thought that was a penance,” Roseanne explains.
“Sometimes you ask people what do you think should be done to you,” Roseanne says. “Knowing what you’ve done wrong.”
Here, the context is that she is speaking with Rabbi Boteach about her Jewish faith.
“And it seems,” Roseanne remarks. “That people always know what should be done to them.”
We might question that, but the context of the conversation here is within the paradigm of Judaism and that’s a little outside our lane.
“I just knew that was the right thing and I want to do the right thing because I’ve lived my life,” Roseanne says. “Most part of it, to do the right thing for all people, not just Jews.”
“It’s really hard to say this, but I didn’t mean what they think I meant. I don’t want to run off and blather on with excuses, but I apologize to anyone who thought, or felt offended and who thought that I meant something that I, in fact, did not mean. It was my own ignorance, and there’s no excuse for that ignorance.”
“I definitely feel remorse… I’m a lot of things, I’m a loud mouth and all that stuff, but I’m not stupid, for God’s sake. I never would have wittingly called any black person…a monkey.”
It is so easy to imagine someone accidentally making a racist comparison when they did not realize that their statement was racially charged.
The problem, of course, is that Roseanne has a long history of making horrifying, inflammatory statements.
In fact, Valerie Jarrett isn’t even the first black woman who worked in the Obama Administration about whom Roseanne has made racist statements.
And then there are her other tweets.
Earlier this year, Roseanne tweeted a conspiracy theory that claimed that Parkland shooting survivor David Hogg had made a nazi salute at a March For Our Lives rally. He had not, of course, but that’s hardly the point.
Honestly, Roseanne’s persistent belief in conspiracy theories makes some wonder if one of her alleged job offers is to appear on InfoWars alongside Alex Jones.
Based upon her Twitter activity, it appears that she genuinely believes that Donald Trump is conducting secret arrests (using secret courts) of countless celebrity Illuminati child-molesters.
These celebs, so the theory goes, aren’t put in jail, but allowed to appear to lead their lives while closely monitored by Trump’s people.
Seriously, some of these folks believed that Chrissy Teigen’s bizarre flight at the end of 2017 was somehow evidence of this.
Even in recent weeks, Roseanne has tweeted stories about secret child-molestation bunkers being found, demanding to know why the news wasn’t covering it.
(The answer is: because it isn’t true)
Roseanne has spoken about her Jewish faith, even blaming her show’s cancellation on antisemitism.
She has also tweeted about “Jewish mind control.” The conspiracy theory community is full of actual antisemitism.
The frustrating thing about Roseanne Barr is that she can seem so likeable at times. But only being a good person part of the time is not really enough.
Does Roseanne deserve yet another chance at a comeback?
Even people who despise her and her racist statements aren’t all going to agree.
