On May 29th, Roseanne Barr became embroiled in a scandal that ruined her career, and led to the reboot of her self-titled show to be cancelled after only one season on air.
Barr sent out an offensive tweet in which she called Barack Obama's former adviser, Valerie Jarrett, who is mixed-race, a cross between the "Muslim brotherhood" and an "ape."
Of course, these racist remarks, which she later called a "joke," did not sit well with the public, her co-stars or the media, and Barr has been dealing with the consequences ever since.
"I apologize to Valerie Jarrett and to all Americans," she tweeted. "I am truly sorry for making a bad joke about her politics and her looks. I should have known better. Forgive me - my joke was in bad taste."
She blamed her use of Ambien, a sleep drug, for her actions, and only revealed that she believed Jarrett was white.
"I have to face that it hurt people," she told Rabbi Shmuley Boteach. "When you hurt people even unwillingly there's no excuse. I don't want to run off and blather on with excuses. But I apologize to anyone who thought, or felt offended and who thought that I meant something that I, in fact, did not mean. It was my own ignorance, and there's no excuse for that ignorance."
"I definitely feel remorse," Barr added. "I've lost everything. And I regretted it before I lost everything."
Last week, she talked about the incident in the trailer of her new YouTube show.
"I'm trying to talk about Iran! I'm trying to talk about Valerie Jarrett about the Iran deal. That's what my tweet was about," Barr screamed her son Jake Pentland, the off-screen interviewer.
"I thought the b*tch was white!" she continued. "Goddamnit, I thought the b*tch was white. F*ck!"
Now, just a few days later, the 65-year-old comedian has given her first televised interview since her Twitter fallout, and she did not hold back.
Once again, Barr, who is no stranger to controversy, revealed that she "made a mistake" that has "cost me everything, my life's work."
"I walked away from the show despite the fact that I had a contract that protected me from getting in trouble," Barr confessed on Fox News' Hannity. "I was allowed under my contract to have 24 hours to correct any mistakes... But anyway, I walked away. I didn't want to cause anyone to lose their jobs."
Walking away from the show enabled the network to change around a few things and turn it into the new spin-off, The Conners.
As for her future on television? Barr jokingly told host Sean Hannity that she will only make a comeback "if there's nudity."
On a more serious note, the disgraced entertainer explained some of the reasoning behind her tirade on social media.
"That was a political tweet," Barr explained. "That is a tweet about asking for accountability from the previous administration about the Iran deal, which Valerie Jarrett is the author of, and that was what was in my head.'"
She insisted that what she said had nothing to do with race, so when everybody started calling her racist it "was a hard one to take."
"The first thing was shock that they were saying it was racial, when it's political. That was a hard one to take," she admitted. "Then everybody started to say I was a racist, which is the worst thing that you can call a Jewish person, especially someone like me who grew up with Holocaust survivors."
Barr, who currently resides in Hawaii, said she wasn't able to leave her home once the scandal broke because she was "scared to go outside."
She explained that despite saying sorry right when the incident took place in May, she recently reached out to Jarrett again.
"I'm so sorry that you thought my tweet was racist because it wasn't, it was political. I'm sorry for the misunderstanding that caused my ill-worded tweet. I'm sorry that you feel harm and hurt. I never meant that and for that I apologize. I never meant to hurt anybody or say anything negative about an entire race of people."
In the interview, Barr also backtracked on some of the things she said in the YouTube clip. This time, she said she thought Jarrett was "Middle Eastern," not white or black.
Barr has since published another YouTube video titled Roseanne Barr's official statement. In it, she told viewers that she will be making content from her own studio, where she can speak "without the filter of the biased media."
She then revealed that when ABC called and asked her to explain her "egregious and unforgivable tweet," she told them where she was coming from and offered "to go on The View, Jimmy Kimmel, or whatever other show you want me to go on and explain that to my audience."
It's hard to tell if Barr's plan would've worked backed then because she has ticked off a lot of people, and as we all know, forgiveness takes time. She has been putting effort into cleaning up her tarnished reputation, but it'll be hard for her to bounce back.
Do you think Barr should be given another chance? Let us know in the comments!
