Roseanne’s dumb tweet
Published 1:06 pm Saturday, June 2, 2018
by Michael Reagan
I’m burned out on Trump TV.
I don’t need to hear any more of his speeches or read one of his tweets.
I don’t want to watch every little thing President Trump does or says deciphered, misconstrued, attacked, defended, debated or analyzed on my TV every night by his many enemies and few friends.
To try to get some actual news Thursday morning I turned over to the Fox Business Network to watch Stuart Varney and the gang.
FBN covers real stuff and talks to real reporters about the ups and downs of stocks, the impact of President Trump’s trade deals on the economy and stories about the accelerating death spiral of the once-mighty Sears — the Walmart/Amazon of the 1900s.
But even on FBN I couldn’t escape Hurricane Trump, that permanent category 5 media storm that blows away or crowds out the important national and global news of every day.
The big Trump-related story of the morning was the continuing fallout over Roseanne Barr’s racist tweet about former Barrack Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett’s looks.
The tweet caused ABC to instantly cancel her highly rated “Roseanne” sitcom and led Robert Iger, the boss of parent company Disney, to call Jarrett right away to apologize.
FBN’s focus on Roseanne was a perfect example of how low the mainstream media have fallen when it comes to practicing real and important journalism.
She topped the news on virtually every channel, but the big story of the day should have been President Trump signing the “Right to Try” bill, which finally gives terminally ill patients the federal OK to use experimental medications that have not yet been fully approved by the FDA.
Barr’s tweet was also the latest example of the double standard that permeates the liberal mainstream media’s “news” coverage of President Trump.
Barr, who made herself a juicy target for liberals by proudly calling herself a Trump supporter, was immediately canned and shamed by the leftwing media industrial complex.
Keith Olbermann, Joy Reid, Alec Baldwin, Bill Maher, Don Lemon and “Full Frontal” host Samantha Bee — all card-carrying Trump haters — have said vile, crude and crazy things about Trump and his family.
They did so with little or no harm to their careers.
It’s safe for a liberal celebrity to call Trump a racist or a Nazi, as Olbermann did, or to call Ivanka Trump “a feckless c-,” as Bee did in her monologue Wednesday.
They’ll usually get applauded, defended or given every benefit of the doubt when they pull a Roseanne. They almost never have to apologize.
For example, Joy Reid’s homophobic blogs from 10 years ago have been glossed over or excused, and this week she and former riot-starter Al Sharpton were co-hosting a town meeting on racism at MSNBC.
Christians, Sarah Palin and conservatives are fair game for nasty name calling and low blows in the liberal media.
But if you say anything about a Democrat or a progressive, especially if it has any racial connotations, you’ll be a goner overnight like Roseanne.
Her biggest mistake was openly supporting Trump. That made her a marked celebrity.
She had a history of dumb and politically incorrect tweets, and she didn’t disappoint the liberals.
What she tweeted about Jarrett was wrong, not funny — and plain stupid. But if she deserved to be sacked for what she said, then so do Olbermann, Reid and a bunch of other liberals.
But Olbermann, a sportscaster whose nasty Twitter tantrums about Trump would embarrass a three-year-old, was recently rehired for about the 12th time by Disney’s failing ESPN sports network.
Bee apologized Thursday for “crossing a line.” TBS also apologized.
That’s all they’ll have to do to amend for their sins.
Bee gets a few points for saying she was sorry, but the liberal comedian was never in danger of losing her late-night job.
She knows the new rules of political trash talk — it’s not what you say, it’s who you say it against.
MICHAEL REAGAN is the son of President Ronald Reagan, a political consultant, and the author of “The New Reagan Revolution” (St. Martin’s Press). He is the founder of the email service reagan.com and president of The Reagan Legacy Foundation. Visit his websites at www.reagan.com and www.michaelereagan.com. Send comments to Reagan@caglecartoons.com. Follow @reaganworld on Twitter.