Trump-loving Roseanne has been a terrible person for a long time -- she just flew under the radar
Donald Trump has a new favorite TV show. Propelled by nostalgia, curiosity and deplorable angst, the reboot of Roseanne drew huge ratings last night—promoting a call from President Trump, who saw the moment as a personal victory.
Lefty-leaning blogs are spending their day thinking about the show's popularity today, "prompting Hollywood soul searching" and questions about what drove the ratings.
But those who've watched the alt-right TV personality know Roseanne Barr has been problematic for years. It's just that she wasn't doing anything people cared about—until rebooting her sitcom with a cast of people who've been more successful than her since the show wrapped, like Laurie Metcalf, John Goodman and Sarah Chalke.
Raw Story has been one of the outlets documenting Barr's conspiracy peddling for a long time.
Here are some of the craziest things she's said. Bear in mind that many of these are now disappeared. Despite now being hailed as an anti-PC hero who rebelled against Hollywood, Barr deleted her Twitter after her crazy tweets started spurring a backlash that might have derailed her career. When she came back to Twitter, she promised to be apolitical.
It's unclear whether her co-stars understood that they were signing up to be the poster children of Trump's America. Co-star John Goodman was visibly uncomfortable when the pair appeared on Jimmy Kimmel together and Barr started getting political.
1. In 2011, Barr accused Rupert Murdoch and News Corp. of tapping her phones. "He tapped my phones and people went through my garbage, and all that kind of stuff does kind of drive you crazy," she said on Chelsea Lately. “And now, here I am sitting here and that guy’s going down!” While it is true that News Corp. did illegally tap the phones of some people in the UK, no one besides Barr thinks she was a target. Why would anyone target a former sitcom star who had not had a hit in nearly two decades?
2. She cyberbullied an elderly couple who was getting death threats. One thing not everyone will take issue with was Barr's targeting of George Zimmerman's family. The neighborhood watch guard who shot and killed an unarmed black boy in Florida has received—and invited—death threats since he killed Trayvon Martin. Given his taunts about the killing and threats against others, some would argue that Zimmerman himself might be fair game. However, in 2012, Barr tweeted out George Zimmerman's parents' home address. The elderly couple said they were concerned for the safety—they talked to Barbara Walters about the death threats they faced.
3. She might be anti-Semitic? Barr, who was raised in a Jewish family, has oscillated wildly on Israel. She has called it a “Nazi state" and “brutal and undemocratic theocracy." She has also posed wearing a Hitler mustache and pulling smoking "Jew cookies" out of an oven. She is friends with prominent Holocaust deniers.
[caption id="attachment_1245409" align="alignnone" width="251"]
Barr has defended herself by pointing out that she is "an observant Jew" and that she doesn't have to support Israel because she's Jewish: “A Jew is required to correct his thinking and transform the world for the better, but Zionism has changed every single corner of Judaism now…What are the Zionists fighting for? Land? For what? Strip malls and movie theaters and tract housing?”
4. But she also supports nuclear warfare to stop divestment from Israel? In 2015, Barr tweeted that "I hope all the Jews leave UC Davis and then it gets nuked" in response to a vote for divestment to end the "occupation."
5. She's spread insane conspiracy theories about Hillary and the Democratic party. Before the 2016 election, the comedian claimed that the fix was in, and that Hillary had "paid for the oval office." She was stumping for Trump throughout the election, saying "we would be so lucky if Trump won. Because then it wouldn't be Hillary."
She also promoted the Pizzagate conspiracy that even Alex Jones had to apologize for and spread the lie that Hillary Clinton's campaign was responsible for the death of aide Seth Rich.
Oh, and Barr she retweeted an InfoWars propaganda piece which falsely claimed that “5.7 Million Illegals” voted in the presidential election.
6. Roseanne Barr believes in the chemtrails conspiracy. She went on the Joe Rogan show to talk about how "you can't let them be spraying" aluminum and barium. Her claim is that Monsanto sprays chemtrails because they need "a mirror." Even Joe Rogan, who is a bit of a nutter himself, found this absurd.
7. Barr has made transphobic remarks about bathrooms.
It's not just a one-time thing, either. In her book, Barr gleefully insulted both sides of the sensitive debate about gender, or as she described it, "the Transgendered versus the Butch Dyke wars."
"To see two of those folks fighting about being female was quite an eye-opener for me. You haven’t lived until you have seen a huge guy with boobs talking about female hormones and deciding to keep his penis, and how that was a feminist issue,” she wrote.
Don't worry, though: this may be the issue that undoes the show's popularity. Snowflakes on the right have already threatened to boycott the show over the inclusion of a gender-fluid child.
Related Post