Roseanne Barr says she's made herself 'a hate magnet'

Roseanne Barr.
(Image credit: Getty Images)

In an interview published Sunday, Roseanne Barr said she's made herself "a hate magnet," and "as a Jew, it's just horrible. It's horrible."



The interview was conducted by Rabbi Shmuley Boteach the day after Barr's show was canceled by ABC due to a racist tweet she made about former President Barack Obama's senior adviser, Valerie Jarrett. Barr referred to Jarrett as "Muslim brotherhood & planet of the apes had a baby," and she told Boteach she "didn't mean what [people] think I meant," and "that's what's so painful. But I have to face that it hurt people."

Barr cried throughout the interview, and said she apologized to those upset by her tweet. "I'm a lot of things, a loud mouth and all that stuff," she said. "But I'm not stupid, for God's sake. I never would have wittingly called any black person ... a monkey. I just wouldn't do that. I didn't do that."

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Since the interview was conducted, ABC has ordered 10 episodes of a Roseanne spinoff called The Conners, with Barr not involved at all with the show. She remains active on Twitter, retweeting questionable accounts while at the same time sharing such deep thoughts as, "does Twitter exist to spread disinformation?" (Per Barr, "it was CIA created so ... it was the original intention perhaps.")

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Catherine Garcia, The Week US

Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.