Less than twelve hours after comedian Roseanne Barr announced that she was leaving Twitter in the wake of a vile tweet saying that Obama advisor Valerie Jarret, who is black, resembles the offspring of “muslim brotherhood and planet of the apes,” she’s back on the social media platform and tweeting up a storm. It’s possible to imagine situations where promptly returning to social media would be a good idea—if you were kidnapped by goblins and it was the only way to get a message out, for example—but judging from Roseanne’s twitter feed, “ABC has canceled my sitcom and I have nothing to lose” isn’t one of them.
Barr started off her Twitter relaunch by amplifying the voices of people who felt she’d been treated badly, kicking things off by retweeting a person who didn’t know Jarrett was black and following up by retweeting a different person calling Barr’s agents “morons” for dropping her. After retweeting some unrelated news stories—and a George Carlin meme from the guy who interrupted Julius Caesar last summer—things started getting weird. What did Barr hope to accomplish by retweeting someone who suggested that when she compared a black woman to an ape, she’d been tweeting about genetic similarities among primates?
Barr then went on to retweet people suggesting that perhaps Joy Behar, Trevor Noah, and Keith Olbermann should also be fired. And then things pivoted once more. Barr apologized to Valerie Jarrett directly on Twitter, retweeted a longer apology, then gave her Valerie Jarrett apology a second go:
Then, having spent a few hours retweeting people who defended her, Barr repeatedly asked her fans not to defend her, while suggesting her racist tweet was caused by Ambien (and because “it was memorial day too,” whatever that means):
To make the whiplash experience complete, Barr then retweeted a bunch of people criticizing her, although it’s unclear if she was endorsing their views or bringing them to the attention of her defenders, who promptly swarmed their replies. We might get some clarity about her motives on Friday, because Barr is headed to “Intellectual Dark Web” superstar Joe Rogan’s podcast:
Readers who can’t wait until Friday to hear more from Roseanne Barr are encouraged to check out her Twitter feed, where she’s just started easing back in to retweeting George Soros conspiracy theories.
