For those wondering if anyone on FOX News would defend Roseanne Barr after her ABC show, "Roseanne," was cancelled today, following a racist tweet about former Obama aide Valerie Jarrett, FOX host Harris Faulkner and conservative guest Noelle Nikpour did just that.
The Outnumbered Overtime discussion about Barr began with Faulkner setting up the sympathetic talking points: “Roseanne Barr apologized for very racist type of conversation that she was having on her Twitter account. ABC is now reporting that they have cancelled her show.”
A large graphic of Roseanne’s apology displayed on the screen as Faulkner also read it.
Faulkner neither showed nor read Barr’s racist tweet. Instead, she euphemistically described it as "what would happen if one person got together with another person and the baby would be like Valerie Jarrett." Faulkner added, "You can go to her Twitter account and figure out what’s going on there.”
No, Harris, viewers can’t figure it out on Roseanne’s Twitter account because she has deleted the racist tweet. However we obtained a screen grab via Think Progress:
Faulkner did say, “Let’s just call it what it is,” before turning to liberal guest Jessica Tarlov. She gave a better description of what Roseanne said: “If a Muslim person and an ape had a baby it would be Valerie Jarrett. Obviously that’s racist to the nth degree.”
Tarlov continued by saying that Roseanne’s tweet “really strikes at the heart of that argument that Roseanne was a Trump supporter because it was just about economic anxiety. That’s blatant racism. She’s had anti-Semitism on her Twitter account for a long time.”
Faulkner became visibly annoyed at that. She complained, “So, you connected this already to the president which I understand is an argument on the left.”
Next we heard from conservative guest Noelle Nikpour. She refused to call Roseanne’s tweet racist: “We live in a politically correct world right now… it’s just plain not nice, it’s not nice to say this.”
Tarlov interrupted: “It’s racism.”
Nikpour continued, “Let’s just look at what this was and what she said. The tweet was not nice. It was ugly. It was demeaning. It was gross and let’s just leave it at that.”
“Why leave it at that?” Tarlov shot back. She went on to point out that Barr had once published a photo of herself in a Hitler mustache.
But Faulkner interrupted to admonish Tarlov to “stay on topic.”
That "topic" seemed to be something more Barr-friendly. Faulkner said, “I don’t understand it to be anything other than free speech. She’s saying, and it is extremely offensive, but it is just that.”
Faulkner also made a point of saying that Roseanne later called her Valerie Jarrett tweet “a miscalculated joke.”
“And she is a comedian. She does have a very wicked, twisted sense of humor,” Nikpour helpfully added. “Everybody knows her to be a little raunchy, a little rough.”
Funny, when it’s a liberal comic, Faulkner is not so absolute in her love for free speech. When Kathy Griffin apologized after tweeting a photo of herself with a dummy Trump head covered in blood, Faulkner asked, “Why is Kathy Griffin rolling ISIS style? Like, who on the planet thinks it’s OK to showcase that?”
About an hour before CNN and Kathy Griffin parted ways... We talked about it on @OutnumberedFNC: Griffin was rolling ISIS style... pic.twitter.com/5FUQCeLVxH
— HARRISFAULKNER (@HARRISFAULKNER) June 1, 2017
Faulkner also had quite a different view when Michelle Wolf made fun of Sarah Huckabee Sanders, as Think Progress noted,:
When given big chance to take the open highway of #high road and make us all laugh, #whca guest chose to gutter sway. First Amendment protects you can say a thing. Doesn't mean you should. BTW teaching my daughters, #MeanGirls are irrelevant. #basic
— HARRISFAULKNER (@HARRISFAULKNER) April 29, 2018
Watch racism get whitewashed below, from the May 29, 2018 Outnumbered Overtime:
“Does Harris ever look in the mirror and discover she is actually black?”
No truman, because like Antoinette just pointed out, the ONLY color Harris Faulkner ever sees whenever she looks in the mirror is GREEN — that is, “Goebbel$” Murdoch’s GREEN. Furthermore, as Antoinette also pointed out, one should ALWAYS remember these ancient words from the Bible:
“No one can serve two masters. He will either hate one and love the other or be attentive to one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and mammon”
If she had any morals, she would leave this racist network. This same network that discriminated against her African-American colleagues which led to a discrimination lawsuit against the network. Insiders know which lane this broad prefers to be in.
NOTE TO SISTAH HARRIS
Would you call it ‘free speech’ if Rosie described you in a tweet as a product of apes? We doubt your white mate will give that a pass. Hypocrite!
Now we have Barr blaming Ambien. I’ve been on Ambien. It’s a mild sedative which never turned me into a racist. Heck, it never was strong enough to really help me sleep!
Barr, like her beloved hero Trump, is a liar and a racist. Good riddance! I’m sure Fox News can find a spot for her in their line up. She’d be adored by their white identity fanboys who mistake racist vomit like Trump’s and Barr’s as a push against political correctness.
These ppl are too stupid to be embarrassed by their constant gaffs.
A perfect metaphor for what Trump is doing to our democracy!
I note that the Right Wing did not always love Roseanne Barr. They were happy to excoriate her when she did her infamous Star Spangled Banner performance. But the moment she came out as a Trump supporter, all was forgiven from the Right.