Roseanne Barr responded to Disney firing James Gunn by blasting his supporters as hypocrites for their selective outrage.
“I’m disgusted to read all of the support for James Gunn’s pedophile jokes—as the same people supported blacklisting me for a joke they didn’t even understand,” Roseanne exclaimed.
In a tweet that quickly got her fired by ABC, Barr described former Obama aide Valarie Jarrett as the love child of the “muslim brotherhood & planet of the apes.” Despite her apology and claims that she mistook Jarrett for a white woman, ABC (which is owned by Disney) immediately canceled Roseanne’s show. The firing was largely supported by both the Left and the Right, who widely believed her tweet was inexcusable.
Within days, however, the fireable comment narrative changed when comedienne Samantha Bee publicly called First Daughter Ivanka Trump a “c**t” on her TBS show. Unlike Roseanne, Bee not only kept her job, the Left celebrated her remarks as bold and virtuous:
Bee lived to fight another day and suffered no consequences for an action far more premeditated than Barr’s. Following that, Hollywood leftists from the likes of late-night comedians to musician John Legend celebrated mobs essentially harassing Trump administration officials in public. The double-standard was clear: leftists who violate decency get a gold star, but Trump supporters get a pink slip.
That all changed, however, when the mob came for Marvel director James Gunn, whose past jokes about pedophilia resulted in his firing by Disney. Ironically, Gunn himself had previously been a part of the mob that called for Roseanne’s head and the head of Laura Ingraham when she called Parkland shooting survivor David Hogg “whiny.”
“I wish some of these so-called defenders of liberty would start to understand what freedom of speech is AND isn’t. Roseanne is allowed to say whatever she wants,” Gunn said in his now-deleted tweet. “It doesn’t mean @ABCNetwork needs to continue funding her TV show if her words are considered abhorrent.”
Since Gunn’s firing, Hollywood celebrities from the likes of Selma Blair and “Guardians of the Galaxy” actor Dave Bautista have defended the director. As of now, a petition demanding that Disney reinstate him has amassed 215,000 signatures.