She’s enjoyed more opportunities to spew her racist views and completely untrue conspiracy theories than anyone in the world deserves, but Roseanne Barr is finally getting hers. Just hours after the Trump-supporting comedian hurled a racist tweet aimed at former Obama advisor Valerie Jarrett, ABC Entertainment canceled her rebooted eponymous series. Then her agency, ICM, dropped her as a client. Now the next shoe has dropped in the blowback: the original iteration of the series has been dropped off numerous network schedules. The syndicated show, which ran in the late 1980s and early 1990s, was extremely well-distributed and lucrative; all the same, The Hollywood Reporter reports that Viacom was the first to drop the former hit.
After a racist tweet by Roseanne Barr that created an outcry online, reruns of the Roseanne revival scheduled to air on Viacom networks Paramount Network, TV Land and CMT will be pulled from their respective schedules.
Hulu wasn’t far behind.
Later on Tuesday a Hulu spokesperson also confirmed that the streaming platform would be dropping the show, writing, "We support ABC’s decision and are removing the show from Hulu."
Even smaller broadcasters don’t want anything to do with Barr anymore. (Took them long enough, but that’s a different diary entirely.) Not to be outdone, “diginet” Laff declared that they, too would no longer be providing a portal into the fictional land of Lanford, Illinois.
"While we believe viewers have always distinguished the personal behavior of the actress Roseanne Barr from the television character Roseanne Connor, we are disgusted by Barr’s comments this week,” Laff said in a statement. “Therefore, we are removing the original Roseanne series from the Laff schedule for the time being, effective immediately."
Meanwhile, Barr’s target, Valerie Jarrett, has called for the continued resistance to the blatant bigotry that continues to rage across the nation.
...the former senior adviser to the president during the Obama administration, who appeared on MSNBC's town hall Everyday Racism in America, told the gathered audience of Barr's tweet, "This should be a teaching moment."
"I’m fine," she added. "I’m worried about all the people out there who don’t have a circle of friends and followers coming to their defense. The person who’s walking down the street minding their own business and they see somebody cling to their purse or want to cross the street, or every black parent I know who has a boy who has to sit down and have a conversation, 'the talk' as we call it, and as you say, those ordinary examples of racism that happen every single day. I think that’s why I’m so glad to be here this evening talking with all of you.”
Added Jarrett: “Tone does start at the top, and we like to look up to our president and feel as though he reflects the values of our country. But I also think that every individual citizen has a responsibility, too, and it’s up to all of us to push back. Our government is only going to be as good as we make it be. And as [the reverend] always taught me, you have to be — people on the inside have to push hard and people on the outside have to listen.”