Chiming in. Bill Maher shared his take on his “friend” Roseanne Barr’s racist tweets that caused ABC to cancel her revived series, Roseanne. The Real Time with Bill Maher host addressed the ordeal on Friday, June 1, and joked that although he’s still friends with Barr, 65, he thinks a part of her is “quite a racist.”
“It was a tough week for the line. You know, the line that comedians sometimes cross. Half the country wants Roseanne to go away forever, half the country wants Samantha Bee to go away forever. So much for wanting more females voices in television,” Maher, 62, joked on the show.
“Roseanne will always be my friend but her world came crashing down this week. A series of tweets she put out on Tuesday that were just so full of racism, conspiracy theories and personal attacks, were described as ‘abhorrent bordering on presidential,’” the HBO personality quipped. “My friend Roseanne admitted that she had been admitted to a mental institution. She had said she has multiple personalities and unfortunately, one of them is quite a racist.”
The late-night host continued: “But it’s also not a mystery to me how a person with a mental illness can be taken in by a party that has lost its mind.”
The Roseanne reboot was canceled by ABC on Tuesday, May 29, after Barr tweeted about former Obama key advisor Valerie Jarrett, describing her as if“Muslim brotherhood and Planet of the Apes had a baby.”
Maher was brought into the situation by people on social media saying he should also be fired for making jokes against President Donald Trump in the past. “The snowflakes on the right — and yes, there are plenty on the right, too — tried to drag me into this, saying I should be fired because I compared Trump to an orangutan,” Maher said. “Obviously, this is another day where we have to… explain jokes to idiots.”
“Here’s why that’s a dumb analogy,” he added. “Let’s look at four key facts: 1) Trump is an orangutan 2) White people have not been subjected to a racist trope comparing them to apes for hundreds of years 3) My offering Trump $5 million to produce his birth certificate in 2013 to prove he was not half an ape… was itself a response to his birtherism, racist bulls—t and 4) I’ve already been fired by ABC.”
Hours after Barr’s tweets, President of ABC Entertainment Channing Dungey released a statement announcing that the network was pulling the plug on season 2 of the show. “Roseanne’s Twitter statement is abhorrent, repugnant and inconsistent with our values, and we have decided to cancel her show,” the statement read at the time.
