{"id":99426,"date":"2018-06-04T18:03:33","date_gmt":"2018-06-05T00:03:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/parker-roseannes-ouster-shows-times-are-changing\/"},"modified":"2018-06-04T18:03:33","modified_gmt":"2018-06-05T00:03:33","slug":"parker-roseannes-ouster-shows-times-are-changing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/parker-roseannes-ouster-shows-times-are-changing\/","title":{"rendered":"Parker: Roseanne\u2019s ouster shows times are changing"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Parker\"
Parker<\/span>du1-i-syn<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It seems too facile to call her merely racist, which her recent tweet about former White House adviser Valerie Jarrett plainly establishes. Barr said that Jarrett was the result if the \u201cmuslim brotherhood & planet of the apes had a baby,\u201d amusing approximately no one.<\/p>\n

No, Barr is more than an Ambien-enhanced racist; she\u2019s what happens when a struggling network (ABC) sells out in a bid to capture Donald Trump\u2019s base. If executives had but tuned into Barr\u2019s Twitter account sooner, they\u2019d have known she was a Trumpster suffering conspiracy fever. Then again, maybe they did know and didn\u2019t care. Ratings, baby, ratings are all that matter.<\/p>\n

Barr has apologized six ways from Sunday. In later tweets, she recalled begging ABC President Ben Sherwood not to cancel the recently resurrected show, saying that she thought Jarrett, who served eight years as a senior adviser to President Obama, was actually white. She added that Jarrett \u201clooks like my family!\u201d<\/p>\n

Sure. And did she also think that Jarrett was, what, a Presbyterian and not really a Muslim, as people on the fringe-right have long held? No, Barr was obviously tapping into the conspiracy theory that Jarrett, who was born to African-American parents living in Iran, is Muslim \u2013 and the racist\u2019s persistent belief that blacks are inferior and less evolved than whites.<\/p>\n

This is such an enduring, dehumanizing trope of racists that it requires no further elucidation. That Barr, whose own knuckles must be raw from strolling the subterranean sewers of her foul dreamscape, should select the ape and the terrorist Brotherhood to represent Jarrett\u2019s parentage is, in Sherwood\u2019s words, \u201cegregious and unforgivable.\u201d<\/p>\n

But, the Ambien made her do it! This was one of the explanations Barr offered, as she frantically rifled through her primordial psyche in search of a credible excuse. Ambien, an insomnia medicine, may help you sleep, but it doesn\u2019t make you a mean, ugly person. Those conditions would be considered pre-existing \u2013 and the \u201cAmbien haze\u201d to which Barr referred, a release of the inherent being. As the drug\u2019s maker tweeted in a comic line that Barr might study: Racism is not a known side effect of Ambien.<\/p>\n

The overwhelming condemnation of Barr\u2019s remarks via social and other media has proved at least one thing: Racism won\u2019t be tolerated in this country ever again. We can infer this because Barr made a similar racist remark in 2013 about then-national security adviser Susan Rice with little disapproval. With her familiar classiness, Barr tweeted that Rice, also African-American, was \u201ca man with big swinging ape balls.\u201d<\/p>\n

Who thinks like this?<\/p>\n

Racists, that\u2019s who.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, some have leapt to Barr\u2019s defense. A joke is a joke, they say, and bad ones shouldn\u2019t be show-stoppers. Free speech, y\u2019all, comes the chorus from quarters where the First Amendment is only selectively admired. Speech is free, all right, but it doesn\u2019t mean free from consequences \u2013 and free markets decide what sells.<\/p>\n

It didn\u2019t take guts for ABC to cancel \u201cRoseanne,\u201d despite its high ratings (see Donald Trump\u2019s praise) and its 18 million viewers in the first week. It took only a modicum of humanity, and, of course, the understanding that advertisers and audiences would no longer support the show.<\/p>\n

Frankly, after Barr\u2019s screeching, crotch-grabbing (no wonder she likes Trump) massacre of the national anthem in 1990, as well as anti-Semitic comments and her subsequent remark about Rice, she didn\u2019t deserve another shot at America\u2019s laugh track.<\/p>\n

No doubt, Barr\u2019s anguish over about the consequences shared by her cast and co-stars is sincere. But bottom line: There is no excuse. While Barr\u2019s tweet about Jarrett may have revealed her darkest thoughts, her attempts to cover herself reveal who and what she is.<\/p>\n

Inadvertently, the incident also highlighted who Valerie Jarrett is: a strong, intelligent, well-educated, service-driven, thoughtful, warm and charming woman of historic significance. One hopes that Jarrett, whom I count as a friend, is also impervious to the Barrs of the world. Regrettably, these include the current president, who rose to office on the racist \u201cbirther\u201d myth about Obama\u2019s origins and was elected despite a long history of moral turpitude and alleged sexual abuse.<\/p>\n

On a positive note, Trump and Barr are to be credited with shining a light on America\u2019s underbelly and uniting decent Americans in common cause. Unlike in earlier times when racism or sexism were shouted out, social media and the recent momentum of two relevant movements \u2013 #MeToo and #BLM \u2013 suggest that times are, indeed, changing for good. No excuses.<\/p>\n

In the meantime, Jarrett floats above the fray with grace and dignity, seeking ways to make this a teaching moment, and reminding us of what true leadership looks like.<\/p>\n

Kathleen Parker writes a twice-weekly column on politics and culture for The Washington Post. She received the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary In 2010. Reach her at kathleenparker@washpost.com<\/a>. \u00a9 2018 The Washington Post Writers Group<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Parkerdu1-i-syn It seems too facile to call her merely racist, which her recent tweet about former White House adviser Valerie Jarrett plainly establishes. Barr said that Jarrett was the result if the \u201cmuslim brotherhood & planet of the apes had a baby,\u201d amusing approximately no one. No, Barr is more than an Ambien-enhanced racist; she\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":99427,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5758,6334],"tags":[125],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-99426","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-columnists","category-columnists-guest-columns","tag-newsletter-opinion"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99426","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=99426"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99426\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/99427"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=99426"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=99426"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=99426"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=99426"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}