No Rehab for Conservatives

I am out of control today. I’m blogging AGAIN.

I feel like airing my important thoughts regarding the Roseanne Barr kerfuffle.

As background, I should note that Barr is unstable. This is not news. She has claimed to have 7 personalities, none of them all that alluring. If Tom Arnold is to be believed, she made a pretty terrifying wife. She has a history of offending people deliberately. She posed for a photo for a Jewish magazine, dressed as Hitler and baking cookies that looked like people with big noses.

She is Jewish herself. I guess she thought it was okay.

ABC hired her to do a reboot of her sitcom, knowing exactly who they were dealing with.

Barr just released a pretty nasty tweet. She compared Obama crony Valerie Jarrett to a baby resulting from the coupling of the Muslim Brotherhood and the Planet of the Apes. People are saying this was a racist remark. It is not undeniably racist, but I would put the odds at 80%. Jarrett is black, and Barr essentially said she looked like an ape.

Barr claims she thought Jarrett was white, which would make the remark harsh but not racist. Is that credible? Could be true, I suppose. Jarrett is light-skinned and has mostly Caucasian features. But she’s not THAT light-skinned. Best guess: Barr knew she was black.

I’m guessing. Everyone in Hollywood is certain.

ABC had a hit on its hands with the new show, and it seemed like many conservatives were happy about it. Not me. I am not sure how to get network TV on my pathetic DirecTV system. I don’t know which channels to look for. That tells you how much I care about network TV. I don’t think much about it, and if I did, I wouldn’t think a controversial sitcom controlled by a formerly liberal crank, which appears to endorse cultivating sexual perversion in troubled children, was good for conservatism.

Remember Milo Snuffelopoulos or whatever his name was? He was gay, and he was conservative. So exciting. We had our own gay! We owned one! It proved we weren’t homophobic. I guess. Anyway, to me, he was in the same category as Arnold Schwarzenegger: a so-called conservative who would one day bring us shame. I was right about that. I figured Barr was the new Milo.

Milo was very obnoxious, and his sexual morals were beyond the pale. People supported him anyway, just like they support Ann Coulter and Ted Nugent.

Is it okay to reject Milo and support Trump, who is an adulterer and a loose cannon? Yes. The reason is mathematical.

If I had to choose between Milo and Hillary, I would pick Milo. I might even pick Barr over Hillary. In a presidential election, you only have two real options, and you do your best. The realm of punditry is different. There is an inexhaustible supply of political noisemakers out there. None are indispensable.

Barr’s cleverly named Roseanne character is or was a Trump supporter. I am not sure why, because I haven’t seen the show. I thought the old show was the network equivalent of Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman with a few twists, so I wasn’t interested. Anyway, Barr herself has clearly become conservative. Like Dennis Miller and other celebrities who have wrestled with the inner conservative voice and the conflicting desire to be liked by the cool kids, she has been moving to the right with time, and she, when not in character, says positive things about Trump.

This left ABC with heartburn. One the one side…money, money money! Mammon was pleased with his minions! On the other…intolerable show that doesn’t excoriate conservatives. The networks really hate wasting an opportunity to lie about us and bash us. Making us seem human seems dangerous to them. They canceled Tim Allen’s show even though it was a hit, and he didn’t even tweet beforehand. He was minding his own business.

Roseanne’s show was canned like one day after her tweet. By canceling the show, ABC succeeded in severely damaging the livelihoods of not one but a whole slew of political extremists. I am referring to Barr and the dozens of far-left liberals who also worked on the show. To ABC, wrecking a whole bunch of liberal lives was okay as long as Barr got it in the neck, too.

It reminds me of the way people responded to Trump’s truthful statements about Mexico. He lost contracts that involved goods made in Mexico. Trump stayed rich. Lots of Mexicans lost their jobs.
Okay. It’s not my job to advise other people on the best way to be petty and vengeful.

Barr is now criticizing her castmates, who have made it clear, in tweets, that they have no idea who this “Roseanne” person is or that they were working with her. I exaggerate. But they are using words like “abhorrent.” Barr is calling them out for their disloyalty.

At first, I thought Barr needed to knock it off. But now I think she has a point. She did a lot for these people. No one wants to see a Sarah Gilbert sitcom. Barr was the whole reason for the reboot. Even John Goodman couldn’t have done it. The people whose careers she boosted ought to think a little bit before stomping on her corpse.

Barr is not right, mentally. We all know that. Why not show a little patience, especially if you’re her “friend” and you’re getting rich off of her talent? She says she was out of her mind on Ambien. Is that true? Maybe it matters. What if it’s not true? What if Barr was just driven by her psychological problems? Mental illness isn’t something you can expect people to shut down at will.

How about this: instead of piling on her without hesitation, you suggest she confront what she did in an interview? What about having her talk to a therapist? Maybe this could be a helpful moment for mentally ill people everywhere. Maybe dozens of jobs and the welfare of a disturbed person are more important than an opportunity to grandstand.

“Disturbed” appears to be the right word for Barr. That is her reputation. Everyone in the cast was happy to let a disturbed woman be put in harness for their benefit. Now they’ve turned on her, in the space of one day, because she did what disturbed people should be expected to do.

A double standard has also been mentioned. I think that’s a credible point. Vile things leftist celebrities say generally go unpunished, much like the flagrant felony leftist David Gregory committed when he held up an illegal gun magazine on national TV.

I don’t care if the show survives or not. I will never watch it. I don’t think Barr is someone conservatives should get behind, either. I never have. I don’t think she’s a good person, and she is completely unreliable. But it’s revealing when the people of the loving, patient, tolerable left pounce on someone with a long history of serious psychological problems without even discussing the possibility that understanding is called for.

What would have happened had Barr tweeted something awful about Christians or conservatives? Nothing or nearly nothing.

I’m not happy with the atmosphere of anti-conservative hatred that forces us to meet higher or even impossible standards. It’s inevitable, though, so there is no point in getting wound up.

More

Roseanne Barr cited Ambien (a sleep drug popular with date rapists) as a factor in her strange, catastrophic tweet. Unbelievably, the makers of that drug decided to post a juvenile response. Nice way for a pharmaceutical company to treat a patient!

Here is the text of their tweet:

People of all races, religions and nationalities work at Sanofi every day to improve the lives of people around the world. While all pharmaceutical treatments have side effects, racism is not a known side effect of any Sanofi medication

Whether Barr is right or wrong, it is childish and unwise for a drug manufacturer to go after a patient. Amazing. And besides, are they right?

Here’s a list of known Ambien side effects (to which Sanofi probably should not have drawn attention): “mental/mood/behavior changes (such as new or worsening depression, abnormal thoughts, thoughts of suicide, hallucinations, confusion, agitation, aggressive behavior, or anxiety).”

Hmm. “Abnormal thoughts.” “Aggressive behavior.” Those could fit.

I don’t need Ambien, but if I did, my new knowledge of the things it can do to ruin your life would discourage me from trying it.

Is it addictive? Might as well check, while we’re all raising awareness. Here is what Wikipedia says:

Abrupt withdrawal may cause delirium, seizures, or other severe effects, especially if used for prolonged periods and at high dosages.

I call that addiction. If you can’t stop taking it without seizures, your body needs it.

It sounds like it’s pretty good stuff, if you only take it once, you don’t kill yourself, you don’t hallucinate, you don’t become aggressive, you don’t have abnormal thoughts, and you don’t sleepwalk and fall down the stairs (another claimed side effect).

I can’t even guess whether Ambien causes people to say nasty things, but it appears to be within the realm of possibility, and even if it’s not, the manufacturer should not have stooped to the level of Twitter trolling.