Freak Out Friday – June 1, 2018

Well, pretty much one thing has dominated the news this week: Roseanne Barr’s idiocy.

1). Stupidity, Barr none. I don’t have to go into detail about her racist tweet, except to say that when you compare a black person to a monkey, that’s Racism 101. It doesn’t get any more down to earth racist than that. Yet that was the action she took, without thinking at all about the blowback her comments would have against her cast and crew. Two hundred people are out of work because she had to make a tweet.

Keep in mind that there was nothing to be accomplished by this. Twitter is useful for one thing only: getting word out about stuff you want to promote. You don’t get paid for it. You just use it to accomplish stuff, and the number of people who have accomplished damage with it is rising. Trump is effectively committing career suicide with it, yet still he has managed not to have it be fatal, and Barr apparently thought that she was likewise impervious. She was not.

And no, this is not a First Amendment issue. If she’d been arrested, yes. But ABC is a private company and they can do whatever they want. And if Barr signed a contract with a morals clause, which she probably did, then it’s game over.

So since this space focuses on Trump, we should examine how he reacted. After all, he did call her to congratulate her on her show’s ratings because ratings are all he understands. And Barr is both a loud Trump supporter and embracer of all the insane conspiracy theories you’ve ever heard. So how did he react to her racist tweet?

He didn’t.

What he did react to was the fact that he has been lampooned on ABC and no apology has been forthcoming “to President Donald J. Trump.” Because he is once again referring to himself in the third person, like a modern day Ming the Merciless. Trump once again missed a golden opportunity to try and prove he isn’t a racist. Why did he miss it? Well, because he’s a racist. Ultimately you really couldn’t have expected anything else.

For all we know, he’ll offer Barr a job in the White House.

Meanwhile he continues to demand that ABC issue an apology. Fine. I think ABC should say, “We are sorry Donald Trump is president.”

2). Do I contradict myself? Very well, I contradict myself.. According to the Washington Post, Trump has made false or misleading statements over 3000 times in his first five hundred days, including thirty five whoppers at his recent rally alone. His most major recent one is that he flat out said he did not fire James Comey over Russia, even though he told Lester Holt of NBC he did exactly that not two days after the firing. It becomes increasingly obvious why his people don’t want him testifying before Robert Mueller. It is not simply a certainty that he will lie under oath; it’s just a matter of how much. And considering perjury is a flat out reason for impeachment as we well know, the only question will be whether the GOP will justify it on Trump’s behalf even though they used it to go after Clinton. Why are we even wondering? Of course they will justify it.

3). Pardon me.. Trump’s pardon train continues as he pardons Dinesh D’Souza, a right wing conservative jackass who made an anti-Obama documentary and, oh yes, pled guilty in 2014 to making illegal campaign contributions. While Trump loudly decries the non-existent false voters who cost him the popular election, apparently he has no trouble with voter interference if it’s from a far right winger who did it on behalf of a Republican candidate. Really no surprise there.

Who did he NOT pardon? Alice Marie Johnson, a Black great grandmother who Kim Kardashian brought to his attention. In 1996 she was sentenced to serve life in prison for a non-violent first offense drug crime. That’s insane. But she is Black and it happened in Tennessee, so what else would you expect? She continues to rot in prison for a clear overreaction to her crime and Trump did nothing to set her free. If he revisits it in the future and releases her, that will fall into the “Did he do anything right?” category. Let’s see him do one thing to prove he’s not a racist.

Did he do anything right?. Amazingly, he did. (Yes, Luigi, I knew about this.). On Wednesday he signed into law a bill that would enable experimental medicines to be used on terminal patients. Although Democrats assert that it will falsely raise hopes, and the Koch Brothers support it–which alone should be something to cause alarm–I honestly do not see the harm in this. They’re terminal. What in the world do they have to lose?

PAD