This is hysterical.
Rosanne Barr has attempted to excuse her racist tweeting by claiming that she was on Ambien (an anti-insomnia medication) when she put out her last 10 years of tweets, or, well, at least that last one:
guys I did something unforgiveable so do not defend me. It was 2 in the morning and I was ambien tweeting-it was memorial day too-i went 2 far & do not want it defended
While it’s true that being awake while dead tired can make you think that you’re funnier and smarter than you really are, it doesn’t make you think different things. You’re just more likely to expect everyone to laugh at your comic genius. But, of course, being a wealthy celebrity has the same effect, and if you tweet out Rosanne-level shit over ten or more years and still get offered a new sitcom, that’s going to have an inhibition-lessening effect as well. All of which had the makers of Ambien feeling they had no reason to be generous to Barr. So they put out a tweet of their own:
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.
They were, of course, a little slower on the draw than individuals who didn’t have to get a tweet approved by some corporate supervisor, but I gotta say that I like the idea of a company willing to trash casual racism instead of taking some bullshit “above the fray”, supposedly morally neutral position.
The Grauniad concludes its report with a good one, Ambien maker responds to Roseanne Barr: ‘Racism is not a known side effect’: “Barr did not say whether her decade-long history of racially-charged tweets and promotion of conspiracy theories also occurred under the influence of Ambien.”
And the wingnuts are frothing, How the right is defending Roseanne Barr’s racist tweets:
I know, I know, please, please, none of her decade’s-worth of twitterings were racist because, um, ah, err… yeah, they didn’t say they were racist. So they weren’t. QED
Big pharma trying for Good Guy status and… succeeding? I officially have no idea any more.
@sonofrojblake:
Well, trying for higher moral ground than Rosanne Barr didn’t require a lot of reaching, admittedly.
I remember the nineties. Hating Roseanne was as popular with conservative misogynists as hating on “political correctness.” Now those same people have to defend her?
Reminds me of how gamergaters defended Jack Thompson because he said some antifeminist stuff. He used to be the antichrist of gaming culture for wanting games censored and banned, but people would cut off their own heads to “own the libs.”
Selling hate is clearly the easiest way to get people to sell out their own principles. Gotta watch out for what I’d be willing to do, as angry as I am at these fuckheads.
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