Topic: Media Research Center
The Media Research Center has long had a sweet spot for Roseanne Barr. In 2018, for example, it cheered her false smear of George Soros as a Nazi sympathizer during World War II (in fact, he was a Jewish teenager trying to evade capture). That same year, even the MRC couldn't defend her racist smear of former Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett, but it did play whataboutism to try and distract from it.
Still, the MRC's soft spot for Barr has persisted. In a June 2022 column, Christian Toto complained that Barr hasn't been welcomed back into Hollywood yet, defending her by uncritically repeating her excuse that she was on Ambien when she smeared Jarrett:
Barr shared a gross, racially-charged Tweet in May of 2018 connected to former President Barack Obama official Valerie Jarrett, who is black. Barr immediately apologized for the message, saying she had been taking Ambien at the time and didn’t realize the light-skinned Jarrett was black.
True? False? It didn’t matter.
ABC fired Barr from her own show, costing her millions in the process. The network didn’t stop there. It killed off her character and continued the series without her, rebranding it as The Conners.
Barr hasn’t had a mainstream gig since. She appeared briefly alongside Andrew “Dice” Clay in 2019, but otherwise she’s been off the Hollywood radar.
She may never work in that town again.
Toto then claimed that Jussie Smollett, he of the racial attack hoax, made a film that got attention, whining that "he’ll be working again faster than Barr, a feminist pioneer who changed the face of TV but got punished for a Tweet that injured no one."
In June of this year, however, Barr went in a bizarre tirade claiming that "nobody died in theHolocaust" but that "It should happen — 6 million Jews should die right now because they cause all the problems in the world." She later claimed that this was humor and sarcasm, but didn't explain where, exactly the humor was supposed to be.
Desite that dubious and offensive track records, the MRC is still cheering Barr, this time as an "anti-woke" comedian, whatever that's supposed to mean. Catherine Salgado gushed in an Sept. 15 post:
Anti-woke comedian Roseanne Barr slammed censorship-heavy YouTube as she announced increasing interest in video platform Rumble.
Barr posted on X (formerly Twitter) Sept. 12 that she is increasingly focusing on The Roseanne Barr Podcast (which has 376,000 YouTube ubscribers) on the more pro-free speech Rumble as Google’s YouTube continues its biased and oppressive censorship. “[T]this is the start of something better!” she celebrated, before adding, “Free speech is great again.”
In the same tweet, Barr shared a link to her Rumble channel. “Starting to build up my Rumble- If you want to, follow this page to stay up on the podcast and any and all videos going forward,” she posted. “I’ll keep the YouTube going until they go full Gulag.” Barr already stated in a post on X she was considering leaving YouTube on Sept. 6, 2023.
Salgado made no mention of the offensive smears and attacks Barr has engaged in, of course -- not even her Holocaust denial of a few months earlier -- let alone how all that hate is supposed to make her "anti-woke."
Salgado also repeated the MRC's earlier complaint that a court ruled YouTube had the right to ban quack doctor Joseph Mercola over what she euphemistically called his "COVID-19 content" -- which actually involved spreading falsehoods and misinformation -- going on to huff, "It’s no wonder free speech advocates are looking for alternatives to YouTube." Yes, liars and extremists would want to seek out places where their lies and extremism isn't called out for what it is, and Rumble clearly isn't picky.And, yes, Salgado clearly believes that hate and lies are "free speech" that must never be questioned or exposed.
Barr is just the latest extremist the MRC has chosen to embrace because she spouts conservatively correct things.
