Two famous comediennes are stuck in the “sunken place,” and one of them is asking fans to forgive the other for her public pronouncements.
Embattled entertainer Mo’Nique is admonishing the public to resist the urge to stone Roseanne Barr because of her recent sociopolitical transgressions. The 48-year-old Oscar winning actress (Precious) defended “her sister in comedy” Barr, who lost her record-breaking ABC “Roseanne” reboot after calling former President Barack Obama’s senior advisor Valerie Jarrett an “ape” in a tweet in May.
Mo’Nique said a person’s life and career should not be destroyed for a single mistake.
“We’ve all said and done things baby that we wish we could take back and swallow and say, ‘Oh.’ But when you’re in the public eye, you can’t and it’s out there,” Mo’Nique told KTLA. “But to put the title of ‘racist’ on her…”
“My sister made a mistake and she said something I know she wishes she could take back. But what I would ask is we don’t throw her away.”
As most of pop culture knows by now, Barr likened Jarrett to a primate, saying she looked like the “Muslim Brotherhood & planet of the apes had a baby” as a way to disparage the Obama White House during its terse negotiations with nations in the Middle East. Roseanne, not coincidentally, is a staunch Donald Trump supporter and even based a few episodes of her defunct show on the 45th president’s policies and philosophy.
Barr futilely tried to scrap together an apology to salvage her show, but to no avail. ABC honchos, of course, immediately cancelled “Roseanne” and have scheduled a show about her fictional family, the Conners, for this fall but without Roseanne’s participation.
Roseanne stepped in mess again this past week during an interview for her YouTube page, in which she claims that she thought Jarrett was white.
“I thought the bitch was White!” the disheveled and disgraced comedian roared into the camera. “Goddamnit, I thought the bitch was White. F—!”
Monique said she is showing Barr the same kind of love that Roseanne did for her back when her ’90s’ hit show was on the air:
“I remember when I had the ‘Mo’Nique Show,’ and there were big, major black superstar talent that had white representatives and they told their talent, ‘That show is too black and we really don’t want you to go on there,’“ Mo’Nique said. “But there was a white woman named Roseanne Barr that showed up for me. … And they didn’t hear the conversation when the cameras wasn’t rolling. … That woman was giving me some beautiful words.”
Barr makes forgiveness hard on fans as she keeps fumbling the ball, as she did on Fox News’ “Sean Hannity Show” on Thursday and issued yet another apology but then immediately slammed Jarrett’s appearance.
“I’m so sorry that you thought I was racist and that you thought my tweet was racist, because it wasn’t. It was political,” Barr told Hannity, addressing Jarrett.
She continued: “Plus I’d tell her she’s gotta get a new haircut, I mean seriously, she needs a new haircut.”
