Friends of Padre Steve’s World,
I never liked Roseanne Barr. Even before she grabbed her crotch and made all sorts of other disrespectful movements as she sang the National Anthem at a a San Diego Padre’s game in 1990 I felt that she was crude and not very funny. Mind you I am not a prude when it comes to jocular or edgy humor. I get it, I am a fan of most Norman Lear, Mel Brooks, and Zucker, Abrahms, and Zucker; but it’s just that I always considered her brand of it to be crude and without merit.
At the time of the National Anthem incident I had been in the Army nine years and was my class leader at the Army Chaplain Officer Basic Course. Barely a week later Saddam Hussein would invade Kuwait. I have since read many articles dealing with the incident and Roseanne’s excuses for it as well as the accounts of some of the players who were there who also gave her the benefit of the doubt.
Likewise, having stood in front of microphones and been in front of big audiences and dealt with audio delays I can to some extent give her the benefit of the doubt. I can believe that she panicked after screwing up the start of the anthem and being confused by the audio delay of singing into a microphone and hearing it from the outfield speakers a third of a second later. But when I hear her blame and demonize the fans for that I don’t buy her excuses. In retrospect all I see is someone who has to blame others for her own lack of judgment. She told the Washington Post in 2015:
“I started too high. I knew about six notes in that I couldn’t hit the big note. So I just tried to get through it, but I couldn’t hear anything with 50,000 drunk a—— booing, screaming ‘you fat [expletive],’ giving me the finger and throwing bottles at me during the song they ‘respect’ so much.”
The attendance that evening was only about 27,000 and as anyone who has ever attended a game in San Diego knows that the crowd there is pretty laid back and certainly not “50,000 drunk assholes,” at the beginning of the game as she told the Post. Having attended a number of games in San Diego I can say that whether there are 1,000 or 50,000 people fans in attendance that they don’t become drunk assholes until at least the 6th inning.
Yes she got booed, and deservedly so, but those fans were not a bunch of drunk assholes, but many if not most were active duty, retired, veteran Navy and Marine Corps personnel or their family members. She also blamed the Padres Catcher Mark Parent for telling her to act like a ballplayer, scratch her crotch and spit on the ground. Parent denied that and said that he explicitly told her not to do that. I believe him. If I was the catcher that day I would have said, lady, just get off the field and apologize to anyone who thought that you were being disrespectful and not do something that would make the incident even worse.
She was given the chance by ABC to restart her old show this year. Before that she had been on the cutting edge of promoting conspiracy theories and making racist comments during the 2016 election and after the election of President Trump. Going back to my already established distain for her I never watched it and it had nothing to do with her support for President Trump, I have despised her for almost 28 years, long before Trump ever voiced his desire to run for President.
Last week Roseanne had her mid-season finale, her ratings were solid, all she had to do was to not be an asshole and make racist comments, but she couldn’t resist. Maybe it’s because President Trump seems to get away with saying worse things about all sorts of people on a daily basis on Twitter, if so she badly miscalculated, and she ruined the lives of a lot of people working on her show. John Goodman and Sarah Gilbert have nothing to be concerned about, but the younger, less established cast members and crew members do need to be concerned because they are no longer employed. Actions do have consequences.
She and her supporters are now making her out to be a martyr to political correctness, but I would say that if you condemned her in 1990 and support her now you have a very inconsistent understanding of political correctness and for that matter basic morality and civil decency. She is no victim, she is, and always has been a perpetrator of gross disrespect for others and then when criticized play the victim.
As I said in 1990, the hell with her. She is just another sociopath who deserves all the condemnation that she gets, and if she doesn’t like it maybe she needs to go to Russia or Hungary where racism and anti-Semitism is celebrated.
So until tomorrow,
Peace,
Padre Steve+
The Inglorius Padre Steve's World 