Roseanne's racism is much worse than Sam Bee's potty mouth
On the political entertainment front, everyone seems to be on apology tour these days, but not with apologies for everybody.
President Donald Trump is miffed that Disney chief Bob Iger phoned Valerie Jarrett, former top aide to President Barack Obama. He reportedly wanted her to be the first to know that Disney-owned ABC is canceling its reboot of the 1990s sitcom "Roseanne," despite its commercial success after its star Rosanne Barr posted racist tweets about Jarrett.
On Tuesday morning, Barr had used Twitter to attack Jarrett, describing her as looking like the "muslim brotherhood & planet of the apes" had a baby. The Muslim Brotherhood reference might have come from Jarrett's having been born in Iran to American parents, combined with Barr's habit of retweeting bogus conspiracy theories about liberals without caring whether they're true or not.
Either way, Trump got to the heart of what he saw as the important issue here: him.
"Iger," Trump tweeted Thursday, "where is my call of apology?"
It was Trump's second tweet in two days that called for an apology from Iger for "the HORRIBLE statements made and said about me on ABC. Maybe I just didn't get the call."
He cited ABC News reporter Brian Ross, who mistakenly reported last year that Trump had directed aide Michael Flynn to contact Russians during the 2016 campaign. Trump actually was already president-elect when he made that request. In his recent tweet, Trump blasted Ross for issuing "no apology."
Not true. Ross and ABC News apologized for the error. That's what professional journalists do when we make a mistake, contrary to the impression Trump leaves with his rants about "the fake news media."
I, for one, am still waiting for Trump to apologize for the more than 3,000 untrue or misleading statements he has made since assuming office, according to an ongoing database by the Washington Post's Fact-Checker. I'm not holding my breath.
Why does the White House get involved with a TV show? Because, one, we have the nation's first president who appears to follow TV ratings as closely as he watches Wall Street. And, two, TV shows have become one of the arenas where we fight culture wars.
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