‘I’m the Only Person Who Lost Everything’: Roseanne Barr Decries Her ‘Witch Burning’ Ahead of New Special

There should be a word for the phenomenon where a world-famous, multi-millionaire stand-up comedian claims that their life has been destroyed by wokeness just days before their new comedy special premiers on a major platform – perhaps the “Roseanne Barr Effect.”

The former Roseanne star’s new special titled Cancel This will premiere on Fox Nation this Monday. The conservative streaming service has pulled out all stops in the publicity campaign for Barr’s return to comedy, and they even included the comedian in their Super Bowl promo – but you wouldn’t know all that when Barr talks about the “witch burning” that led to her temporary hiatus from television. In 2018, Barr tweeted that Obama senior advisor Valerie Jarrett was the offspring of the “muslim brotherhood & planet of the apes,” which led to ABC’s decision to remove Barr from the Roseanne reboot and move forward with The Conners.

Barr told The Los Angeles Times that, compared to other “canceled” comedians, her time-out from the spotlight has been by far the most devastating, saying, “I’m the only person who’s lost everything.” The interview should have simply been titled, “Roseanne Barr Forgets That Bill Cosby Went To Prison.”

“They didn’t do it to anyone else in Hollywood, although they always throw in Dave Chappelle and Louis C.K.,” Barr began her tirade before slightly backtracking, “Well, Louis C.K. did lose everything, but he committed an actual (offense). And Dave Chappelle was protected by Netflix. I’m the only person who’s lost everything, whose life’s work was stolen, stolen by people who I thought loved me.”

Barr has made numerous excuses for the racist tweet about Jarrett that led to her expulsion from the show that shared her name – previously, she’s blamed the outburst on Ambien, and in her interview with The Los Angeles Times she told them, “I thought (Jarrett) was white,” also saying, “They denied me the right to apologize. Oh my God, they just hated me so badly. I had never known that they hated me like that. They hate me because I have talent, because I have an opinion.”

Here’s the thing – ordinary people have been getting themselves fired over racist tweets since the beginning of Twitter, and celebrity status shouldn’t preclude anyone from the consequences of their actions, even if it often has for Barr’s peers. Barr’s “You just hate me because you’re jealous” defense doesn’t hold up in the face of the fact that, before Barr burned down her own career at ABC, Roseanne was not only the network’s top show – it was the number one show in all of television. ABC had every possible incentive to retain their biggest star, which should only speak to how egregious it was for her to publicly call a black politician a Muslim ape.

Now that Barr has the backing of one of the largest platforms in media, her “cancel culture” caterwauling rings especially hollow – the self-imposed speed bump in her massively successful and multi-million dollar career hardly constitutes the life-ruining catastrophe she paints it out to be. As for the shots she took at C.K. and Chappelle, Barr was probably just wondering why she hasn’t been handed a Grammy like the rest of the “canceled” comics.