Saturday, March 31, 2018

Roseanne Barr, the Bomb-Dropping Darling of Trump's Base

by Nomad

Whatever you think about Roseanne Barr, there is one thing all of us would agree with. She certainly knows how to get attention. Clearly, she is devoted to the idea that there is no such thing as bad publicity.  

Her critics have always called her trashy but that's no skin off her nose. She revels in that label almost as much as Sarah Palin once did.
Her autobiographies (three of them altogether) have gone into explicit detail about almost every aspect of her past. Not for the faint-hearted.  

Highlights include amateur prostitution with customers in the parking lot of the restaurant where she worked, her year in the mental hospital, her drug-addled adulterous affair with Tom Arnold (which was instantly plastered all over the National Enquirer) and, most problematic, the questionable claims of incestuous sexual abuse.

Questionable because her family reportedly denied that any of it had happened and it was all in Roseanne's imagination. After years of public accusations, she seemed to retract the very serious allegations she made against her parents.
On Oprah, no less.
Here's how she excused herself: 
"I was in a very unhappy relationship and I was prescribed numerous psychiatric drugs... to deal with the fact that I had some mental illness... I totally lost touch with reality... (and) I didn’t know what the truth was... I just wanted to drop a bomb on my family."
Dropping bombs is something that Roseanne is very good at. In this case, it ripped her family apart for nearly 12 years.

Tone Deaf

Who can forget the bomb she dropped on July 25, 1990?
That was when, at the height of her popularity, Barr outraged patriotic Americans by butchering the National Anthem, (as well as grabbing her crotch and spitting on the ground.)
A lot of people thought it was amusing, but Republicans were apoplectic at the perceived disrespect. The normally-milquetoast president, George H. W. Bush, called her antics "disgraceful."
In fact, according to her own account, she barely made it out of the stadium alive.



At a press conference, she tried to explain by saying she had simply been trying to amuse the baseball players and parody their penchant for spitting and adjusting their protective cups. A very big "whoops" moment that nearly destroyed her career.
'I thought that it would be very funny.. None of this was meant viciously. Nobody feels worse than me.'
After a moment of mea culpa, Roseanne came out swinging. She accused her critics of elitism and said that she would sing that "damned song any damned time I want to sing that song." She also implied that the American anthem didn't deserve to be respected because it was "the only anthem about war and killing people."
Unsurprisingly, conservatives were ready to burn her at the stake. Today, many of the same people who thought a firing squad was too good for her are celebrating the fact that Barr is a Trump-supporter.

Wildly Swinging Pendulum

Still, there's no arguing that she has made a name for herself in the industry. When her show closed after nine seasons (from 1988 to 1997), Barr had racked up an Emmy, a Golden Globe, and several other awards. She reportedly earned $40 million for the final two seasons, Barr, making her the second-highest-paid woman in show business at the time, after Oprah Winfrey.

Since then, she has starred in various projects, including a reality TV show called "Roseanne's Nuts." Another project, a pilot for a new sitcom, was shelved by the network in 2011. Barr claimed that her "progressive politics" was the only reason behind the pilot's rejection. She claimed that she was told that that network executive found the show "too polarizing."     

There was never any doubt what Barr's far left political view. So, it was not much of a shocker, when, on August 5, 2011, she announced her candidacy for president on the Green Party ticket. 
A month later, she made an appearance at the Occupy Wall Street protests. There, she denounced "guilty" Wall Street bankers and said that such people should be forced to give up any income over $100 million, be sent to re-education camps, or be executed by beheading if they resisted.  She wrote on her Twitter page.
“If corporations are people then Goldman Sachs needs to be executed for premeditated mass murder, terrorism mayhem & grand larceny."

Losing the Green Party nomination to Jill Stein, Barr decided to run on the Peace and Freedom Party ticket. Barr's running mate, Cindy Sheehan, - not a happy camper- eventually pulled out of the campaign before the 2012 election, leaving Barr in the lurch.  

All this could be written off as an attention-seeking sideshow, hardly worth a second glance. However, in spite of her past progressive views, Barr, in June 2016, declared her support for Donald Trump. She told The Hollywood Reporter interviewer:  
"I think we would be so lucky if Trump won. Because then it wouldn't be Hillary."
An astute observation. Her disgust for Clinton wasn't much of a secret.
"Hillary owns the press…people in this country are not allowed to say anything except for that they love Hillary, or they’ll be harassed, especially on social media, until they leave or hang their head in shame…Because if you don’t endorse Hillary, then you’re anti-American, a racist, a sexist, or whatever names her robots throw around.”
Name-calling was something she was against and yet, Barr called Clinton supporters "fascists" and "Stalinists." In an August 2016 Twitter rant, she claimed that “jew hater hillary clinton’s handler huma weiner is a filthy nazi whore.”

In one interview, Barr also claimed to have encouraged Trump to run for president. And what made him an attractive candidate?
“Because of all of his views. He was extremely progressive. He was saying we should invest more in education, and we need health care. He said all the things that Hillary’s saying. That’s why I know that it’s just a con. The whole fucking thing. It’s a scam, a con, and it’s rigged.”
Does this make any sense? No, not much.


From Green Party Feminist to Vocal Trump Defender

It's even more incomprehensible because Barr has consistently supported women's causes over the years and cited it as her primary reason for entering into politics.
Given Trump's disdain for women in general, her support for this candidate seemed like an inexplicable move. Is it really possible that this once outspoken liberal and Green Party candidate could really have suddenly adopted Trumpism?

By all appearances, she has gone over to the dark and slimy side. The Washington Post describes her as "a vocal defender of Mr. Trump." Observers have noted that Barr can now be seen sharing InfoWars and Seth Rich conspiracy theories.

Yet, this is the same person who wrote in her 1989 book:
Conservatives are really smart people and, like P. T. Barnum, they've gotten rich by never overestimating the intelligence of the American people. I think conservatives are basically assholes if you watch them closely for a minute or two you will be able to recognize that they are the same kids in elementary school who ate their boogers and I bet most of them still do too.

Can't you just imagine George Bush, Pat Robertson, Reagan, Nixon, etcetera hiding behind the respective school buildings, sort of removed from the group, chewing on a you-know-what, enviously eying the children who could actually make friends, and then, with their weak chins aquiver, they would screw up their faces and scream, "I'm telling" as they conjure up all the tight-lipped Protestant rage they are capable of mustering?

What we need is a woman and mother up for president and I'm going to run someday and my campaign motto will be "let's vote for Rosie and put some new blood in the White House every 28 days."
If you like that writing style, her books would be right up your alley. Trust me, you'll require a bottle of Pepto-Bismol, strong disinfectant hand wash, and a couple of paracetamol.

I suppose the questions boil down to: Is she for real? Is she just nutty as a fruitcake, or is she hoaxing Trump and all his fans?


Congratulations from the White House

With the debut of the revival of her sitcom, "Roseanne" drawing more than 18 million viewers, Barr has apparently put all those left-wing politics behind her.
In the show- as in real life- Barr plays the part of an avid Trump supporter. Despite his administration being in constant meltdown mode, Trump found time to call Barr on Wednesday to congratulate her on her ratings.
He also sent this tweet.

Barr told ABC’s “Good Morning America” that she hoped her show would open up ”civil conversation instead of just mudslinging."
"I really do 'cause I think we need to be more civilized than that."
Yes, she really did say that. The very person who called conservatives "booger-eaters," Hillary Clinton a "Jew-hater" and her assistant "a filthy Nazi whore."

As far as her phone call from the White House, Barr said:
“He’s just happy for me. I’ve known him for many years, and he’s done a lot of nice things for me ... it was just a friendly conversation about working and television and ratings.”
Who knows, at this rate, maybe Sarah Huckabee should be looking over her shoulder. If her show doesn't pan out, Barr might just become the official White House press spokesperson.

No doubt, Trump would enjoy the boost Roseanne would give his  "ratings"... right up until the moment she decides to "drop a bomb" on his administration.

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