Roseanne Barr pulled no punches when she called out Jimmy Kimmel and Joy Behar for wearing blackface. She said it’s “high time” to show the “utter hypocrisy” of those in the Hollywood crowd.
Roseanne Barr decided it was time to settle some scores with the Hollywood elites years after she was fired from her ABC sitcom, Roseanne. She pointed out how unfair it was for ABC to immediately fire her for posting a tweet that some deemed to be racist, only to continue allowing Jimmy Kimmel and Joy Behar to continue to host talk shows with the network, even though they both wore blackface.
Back in 2018, the Emmy winner was fired after she compared the former Barack Obama advisor Valerie Jarrett, who is black, to a character from Planet of The Apes. Barr apologized right away and claimed to not know that Jarrett was black, but ABC still wasted no time in getting rid of her by both canceling her show and killing off her character when the show was rebooted as The Conners.
Speaking directly to ABC, Barr said, “You should have allowed me to go on your other news shows, particularly those ones hosted by people who have done blackface and you never fired them, you should have let me go on there.”
“Jimmy Kimmel and his girlfriend Sarah Silverman, they did blackface and you never even said it is wrong that you did that. And they just let that go,” she added. “I never got to have my say or explain what happened or even to apologize for the mistake I made. I fell on the sword of the double standard of the left because I was the only one who got canceled. The things others at ABC have done are far more egregious.”
Barr also claimed she was branded a traitor for supporting President Donald Trump. “Oh my God, I saw I was being used—I was being used— by a political machine which has exposed itself over the interceeding five years since. Joy Behar did blackface, Jimmy Kimmel did blackface and [ABC] didn’t fire them,” Barr declared. Joy Behar denies she wore blackface when she dressed up as a “beautiful African-American woman” for Halloween. Kimmel infamously wore blackface to portray the NBA legend Karl Malone in at least one sketch on The Man Show.
The veteran comedian went on to explain how “everyone in Hollywood” ran away from her except a few true friends when she got branded a “racist” over the Jarret tweet. Her real friends called her to say they knew she wasn’t a racist, but most would not go on the record in public for fear of being canceled too.
“Just a few, a few very very brave people such as, I want to say the most brave being my friend Mo’Nique,” Barr said about the African-American comedian Monique Angela Hicks. She also said Hollywood star and director Judd Apatow came to her defense. Everyone else in Hollywood refused to call her or acknowledge her at all.
“Aside from those two people, everyone else was afraid,” Barr declared. “I don’t say anything else but they were afraid because it’s a mob mentality. Barr said that she and other “canceled comedians” made a “pact” that if they ever got a chance for a comeback, they would come back “offensive as ever.”
“We have to because we are pro-free speech,” Roseanne Barr said about canceled comedians like herself making a comeback. “We’re pro-American values. And if we come back and namby-pamby it, we’re not fighting because comedy is supposed the thing that laughs, you know power the scorn especially when it’s corrupt. And this is why we became comics in the first place, is to go ‘NO!’ we’re not going to do that and you’re funny—to say you’re funny to those in power because you’re so corrupt and here’s the joke about them. That’s why we do it.”
Barr explained her comeback on Fox Nation with her special Cancel This! was especially empowering. “It was me embracing who I am in my politics,” Barr said. “Which is comedy. Because it is the last free speech art form. And it was me going they aren’t going to have the last word about me. I will not only have the last word, but I’ll have the last laugh too!”
