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Roseanne's racism is much worse than Sam Bee's potty mouth

By Clarence Page, Tribune Content Agency on

Roseanne Barr, a fervent Trump supporter, has co-created a comedy about a family that is divided, as many real American families are, by support of or opposition to Trump. Trump supporters, including Trump himself, rooted for the show's demonstration that conservative humor doesn't have to be an oxymoron. Liberal friends told me they wondered if and when Roseanne would finally see that she was being conned -- just as a lot of liberals wonder about Trump voters in real life.

Meanwhile, on the other side of this political and tribal gap, comedian Samantha Bee apologized Thursday for describing Ivanka Trump with a vulgarity on her TBS show, "Full Frontal."

Bee showed a photo of the president's elder daughter with her younger son. Circulating online at the same time federal reports that the government couldn't account for the whereabouts of almost 1,500 migrant children last year, the photo sparked outrage online and in Bee's monologue.

"You know, Ivanka, that's a beautiful photo of you and your child, but let me just say, one mother to another, do something about your dad's immigration practices, you feckless c---!"

The audience exploded with laughter, but the White House was not amused. "The language used by Samantha Bee last night is vile and vicious," fumed White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders in a statement.

"The collective silence by the left and its media allies is appalling, Her disgusting comments and show are not fit for broadcast, and executives at (TBS owner) Time Warner and TBS must demonstrate that such explicit profanity about female members of this administration will not be condoned on its network."

 

Well, I don't blame the White House and Trump family for being outraged. To many of the women I know, the C-word is no more acceptable than the N-word is to African-Americans. Bee and the TBS network profusely apologized and the show immediately lost Autotrader and State Farm as sponsors.

But the show was not cancelled, and Sanders did not say it should be. Even Roseanne said to her credit she did not want people to compare her case to Bee's or anyone else. "Please don't compare me to other people who have said horrible things," she tweeted Thursday. "I only care about apologizing for the hurt I have unwittingly and stupidly caused."

Good for her. But what I find most memorable is how much more upset the president and his team were about the alleged offenses to the president. Barr's racist tweets received the sort of passive judgement Trump expressed when he blamed "both sides" for the violence at a white nationalist rally that left one dead and many injured in Charlottesville, Va., last year. I guess it plays well with his base, like everything else he seems to be most concerned about.

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(E-mail Clarence Page at cpage@chicagotribune.com.)


(c) 2018 CLARENCE PAGE DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.

 

 

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