The 5-Minute Fix: 5 thoughts about Roseanne, Trump and racism
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| By Amber Phillips |
Let's start by summing up the Roseanne drama in two paragraphs:
On Tuesday, among other offensive things, Roseanne Barr tweeted this: “muslim brotherhood & planet of the apes had a baby=vj.”
By “vj,” the star of “Roseanne” meant former Barack Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett. The reference to Jarrett, who is black, was clearly racist. Barr apologized, but ABC canceled her hit show. President Trump has thoughts about the show's cancellation, and they're pretty consistent with what he's said (or hasn't said) in the past about condemning racism.
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Roseanne Barr in January. (Getty)
The Fix team also has thoughts about yet another moment in the Trump era that sits at the intersection of race, culture, entertainment and politics. Here are five of them:
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1. Barr undercut the very Americans she was trying to lift up: Barr is arguably the face of pro-Trump Hollywood, writes Eugene Scott. Her character in the rebooted version of "Roseanne" was a Trump supporter, and she explicitly said she wanted to give voice to those Americans who may feel underrepresented.
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Barr and John Goodman in a scene from the “Roseanne” reboot. (Adam Rose/ABC via AP)
But she ended up reinforcing stereotypes that some liberals have about those Americans, Scott says. “Trump supporters are also often viewed as racist because many of them have gone on the record acknowledging the role cultural anxiety plays in their politics.”
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2. Why we're using the word “racist”: Speaking of the left, some have criticized journalists for calling Barr's tweet “racist” when most journalists won't explicitly call Trump's thousands of false statements “lies.”
Callum Borchers explains why there's a difference:
“Barr's comparison between Jarrett and an ape played on an old and clearly racist trope. There is no need to find an alternative description. Trump's false statements are not always so easily categorized, however.”
White House reporters who cover Trump say he is sometimes confused when he speaks, or he just speaks without knowing the facts. “Because journalists cannot read Trump's mind, they sometimes balk at the word 'lie,' because its usage suggests knowledge of the president's thoughts,” Borchers writes.
Without knowing that Trump intended to lie, we can't call it a lie. But there was no mistaking the intention behind what Barr tweeted about Jarrett.
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3. Barr differed from Trump in another important way: “Barr and Trump both compared people of color to animals on Tuesday,” Borchers writes. “One lost her job as the star of a hit TV series; the other is still president of the United States.”
The difference is plausible deniability about what they meant. Trump described members of the MS-13 gang, which includes people from Central American countries, as “animals.”
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Trump calls Nancy Pelosi an 'MS-13 lover'
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