Roseanne Offers Defense of Fateful Tweet

It was about anti-Semitism, comedian claims
By Arden Dier,  Newser Staff
Posted Jun 14, 2018 11:28 AM CDT
Roseanne: Tweet Was Actually About Anti-Semitism
Roseanne Barr arrives at the Golden Globe Awards on Jan. 7, 2018.   (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP, File)

A little over a week of Twitter silence and Roseanne Barr is back with a new defense of the tweet that triggered the cancellation of her hit ABC show. Maintaining the reference to Valerie Jarrett as "Muslim brotherhood & planet of the apes had a baby" wasn't racist, the comedian now says it was meant as a condemnation of anti-Semitism. Rod Serling, the Jewish creator of The Twilight Zone, "wrote Planet of The Apes. It was about anti-semitism. That is what my tweet referred to—the anti semitism of the Iran deal," Barr said in a Wednesday tweet, less than an hour after telling fans she'd "been using this time2 reflect &2 gain insight on what I said & how it was misunderstood."

After sharing a 2009 Jewish Currents article describing Serling's "implicit message about interspecies respect and xenophobia" in 1968's The Planet of the Apes, Barr returned to the subject of anti-Semitism Thursday, saying she grew up in a house "filled with survivors of [concentration camps] Auschwitz and Belsen" and "am an advocate 4 them & for all oppressed ppl." In other tweets, she said she'd "developed a bit of palsy in my head and hands due to the stress I have lived thru." But she also said she'd been sleeping—"without ambien too, thank G0D!!"—planting trees, and singing, per Deadline. "[I'm] feeling a great deal of relief. I will begin to speak for myself in media soon," she added. (Read more Roseanne Barr stories.)

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