Fallout from the Roseanne Barr kerfuffle continue. After a thoughtless, racist tweet on Memorial Day about former President Obama aide Valerie Jarrett, “muslim brotherhood & planet of the apes had a baby=vj,” Barr’s rebooted hit TV series Roseanne was canceled by ABC/Diseny, talent agency ICM dropped her, Paramount pulled all reruns of the original series from TV Land and and CMT, and Hulu dropped streaming of the revised series.
Late Tuesday, after tweeting she was leaving Twitter, only to tweet she is back on Twitter later, the comedienne, 65, blamed Ambien which is used to treat insomnia, for her racist tweets and telling her fans, “I’m not a racist, just an idiot who made a bad joke.”
Barr manically swerved lanes between apologizing for her remarks and retweeting memes that made her apology sound insincere.
In one of her other deleted tweets, Barr said “I’m sorry 4 my tweet, AND I will also defend myself as well as talk to my followers. So, go away if u don’t like it. I will handle my sadness the way I want to. I’m tired of being attacked & belittled more than other comedians who have said worse.”
At one point she said she believes she was fired because of fears over a potential boycott of the show’s advertisers. She also lashed out at co-stars Michael Fishman and Sara Gilbert.
“You throw me under the bus. nice!” she said in a tweet directed at Fishman.
All told, Barr posted more than 100 times since her cancellation.
She then cited Ambien again in a later tweet, saying, “Not giving excuses for what I did(tweeted) but I’ve done weird stuff while on ambien — cracked eggs on the wall at 2am etc.”
Weeeeeeeell, Sanofi, the maker of Ambien wasn’t having it. It went so far as to tweet a statement, throwing shade at Barr.
“People of all races, religions and nationalities work at Sanofi every day to improve the lives of people around the world. While all pharmaceutical treatments have side effects, racism is not a known side effect of any Sanofi medication,” the company wrote.
ALSO READ: Roseanne’s racist tweet leads to cancellation
Apparently, Dictionary.com decided to get in on the act as well by also tweeting:
Barr later deleted all of her references to the medication. Nevertheless, Ambien became the #1 trending topic on Twitter on Wednesday morning.
For the record, the REEL360 team has never experienced any racist side-effects after taking Ambien. Snoring perhaps. But no racist tweets.
