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'I'm not racist, just an idiot who made a bad joke,' says Roseanne

FALLEN TV star Roseanne Barr has returned to Twitter to tell fans not to feel sorry for her after racist tweets saw her rebooted hit TV show abruptly axed.

She says she’s “not racist, just an idiot who made a bad joke”. And despite initially saying she was leaving Twitter, she now says she won’t be ending her association with the social media tool which landed her in so much trouble.

In a series of tweets unleashed hours after she was fired, Barr said she did something “unforgivable”, “egregious” and “indefensible”, admitted she “went too far”, and made multiple apologies.

She said her original comments were a result of “Ambien tweeting” — a reference to the sleeping pill.

She also appealed to her fans not to defend her, but at the same time retweeted messages fiercely doing exactly that.

Barr’s revived sitcom was cancelled overnight after she compared African American and former Obama administration official Valerie Jarrett to an ape.

Responding to the controversy this afternoon, the comedian declared she wasn’t a racist, and tweeted at Jarrett directly to apologise for “hurting and upsetting u with an insensitive & tasteless tweet”.

“I am truly sorry — my whole life has been about fighting racism,” her tweet to Jarrett continued. “I made a terrible mistake which caused hundreds of ppl 2 lose their jobs. so sorry!”

While apologising repeatedly, Barr’s choice of retweets from supporters justifying her original, racist message struck a defiant tone — they included one post that juxtaposed an image of Jarrett with an image of a Planet of the Apes actor — a comparison that led to her firing.

She appeared to justify that move by tweeting that, while she was sorry for the joke that started it all, she would continue to defend herself.

She also suggested that US network ABC axed the show because of a “threatened boycott” from the show’s advertisers by “ppl who do that sort of thing”.

Critics leapt upon that declaration with swift replies, including: “I heard it was because your actions had consequences. Put your big girl pants on and take responsibility.”

“I heard it was because you can’t keep your racist typing hands off of social media,” another added.

BIZARRE DEFENCES FOR ‘RACIST’ TWEET

It comes as right-wing commentators and high-profile celebs who laud US President Donald

Trump, worship Barr, and decry political correctness and “fake news” rushed to Barr’s defence after popular Roseanne TV sitcom was cancelled by ABC in America, going to extraordinary lengths to support her.

With arguments including “she’s not racist” and “they’re just words”, the defences of some of her supporters seemed straight out of far-right field.

So much so that some who had traditionally agreed with their views were calling her supporters out for the “mental gymnastics” required to concoct simplistic arguments ranging from the wilfully obtuse to deliberately ignorant to “prove” that the now-deleted tweet wasn’t racist.

This, despite the fact that Barr compared a black former Obama administration official Valerie Jarrett to an ape, writing that if the Islamist political movement “Muslim brotherhood & planet of the apes had a baby = vj.” then clumsily apologised, admitting it was “a bad joke”, “in bad taste” and she should have known better.

Vehement defenders argued Barr was everything from a victim of political correctness to just plain misunderstood.

Singer Ted Nugent ignored the racist connotations of comparing African-Americans to apes.

“So Roseanne referencing a movie title is racist. Lying dishonest soulless freaks from Planet of the Apes,” he tweeted.

Conservative radio talk-show host and loyal Trump defender Bill Mitchell joined the fray, tweeting that in Planet of the Apes, the apes were superior, so comparing Jarrett to an ape wasn’t racist.

He deleted that tweet, but doubled down with another barrage or posts, arguing Barr wasn’t racist “she just doesn’t like Jarrett” and cancelling her show was an over-reaction.

Anyway, he argued, they were just “words”.

Anyway, he argued it’s not like Barr had ever been accused of being racist before.

Except Barr does have form with both offensive outbursts, and racist ape insults: five years ago calling then-US National Security Advisor Susanne Rice, another African American woman, a “man with big swinging ape balls”.

The justifications were all too much for some fellow right-wingers like high-profile conservative commentator Tomi Lahren.

Lahren’s outspoken views have seen her compare the Black Lives Matter movement to the Ku Klux Klan — but she drew the line at the “mental gymnastics” being used to defend Barr.

Meanwhile, some were saying Barr’s demise was political correctness gone mad, and a victory for the thought police.

Others used a picture of comedian and TV host Bill Maher comparing Mr Trump to an orange orang-utan to argue Barr’s axing was a classic example of double standards.

Barr’s most high profile supporter is the US president himself.

When the rebooted Roseanne show resumed, Mr Trump personally phoned her to congratulate her on the show’s big ratings.

In the wake of Barr’s axing, his personal Twitter account has so far remained silent.

Disney chairman and CEO Robert Iger said cancelling Roseanne was an easy decision, tweeting: “There was only one thing to do here and that was the right thing.”

His statement came just minutes after ABC President Channing Dungey announced the rebooted sitcom was cancelled in a statement calling Barr’s tweets “abhorrent, repugnant and inconsistent with our values.”

Barr was also dumped by her agents, ICM Partners, who said Barr’s tweet was “disgraceful,” “unacceptable” and “antithetical to our core values.”

The company said it ended its relationship with Barr “effective immediately.”

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