Roseanne Barr is as Sh*t at Cultural Criticism as She Is At Not Being Racist

By Kayleigh Donaldson | Celebrity | June 14, 2018 |

By Kayleigh Donaldson | Celebrity | June 14, 2018 |

Rod Serling wrote Planet of The Apes. It was about anti-semitism. That is what my tweet referred to-the anti semitism of the Iran deal. Low IQ ppl can think whatever they want.

— Roseanne Barr (@therealroseanne) June 14, 2018

…

You know what, sometimes you have a pithy introduction to the news of the day and other times you’re wondering how to spell the sound your head makes as it slams repeatedly into the table out of frustration.

So, let’s look at Roseanne’s latest bullshit, shall we?

Remember when she said she was going to quit Twitter? Ah, that was a pleasant 30 minutes. Well, now she’s back - again - and trying to further justify her obvious and abhorrent racism. This time, she’s going all cultural critic on us. Fortunately, I think my job is safe. She makes Rex Reed look like Roger Ebert. Hell, she makes an especially thick ant look like Roger Ebert.

Where do we even start? The ‘Low IQ’ comment, echoing her pal Donnie? Barr’s projecting so hard, the Odeon cinema wants to use her for the latest IMAX screening. These aren’t very bright people.

My favourite part is the name dropping of Rod Serling. You know, the guy who didn’t write the iconic novel, Planet of the Apes. The Twilight Zone guy did not moonlight as French author Pierre Boulle, who also wrote The Bridge on the River Kwai. It would be cool if he had, but Serling was a busy dude, what with him writing one of the most influential sci-fi shows of all time that’s also the great piece of social justice pop culture. He did co-write the original movie but that was only the first draft. By the time it got to shooting, Michael Wilson had done a lot of rewrites. It’s debatable today how much of the film is Serling’s and how much is Wilson’s (the twist ending is Serling’s: Classic Twilight Zone stuff). Serling’s plan would have been a way more expensive story than the producers were willing to shell out for.

For the record, Boulle did not write Planet of the Apes as an allegory for anti-Semitism. That reading says more about Barr than anyone else. So the humans represent the Jewish people and the aggressive apes are the… Well, I’m sure we all know what Barr thinks.

Serling’s work is famously socially aware. The Twilight Zone is full of stories that are allegories for issues of racism, anti-Semitism, war, politics, Cold War paranoia, and so on. Essentially, he was the kind of writer who Barr and her ilk would deem an SJW today. As far as I can find, he never intended his draft of Planet of the Apes to be an allegory for anti-Semitism. Neither did Boulle. It’s not that I expected Barr to actually find a good way to justify her racism - for one thing, there’s no way to justify the shit that spews from her mouth on a daily basis - but if you’re going to try and argue, ‘I called a woman an ape because my reading of this movie is that the black-coded apes are going after the Jews’, then there’s a whole other issue that needs to be dealt with.

(Header photograph courtesy of Getty Images).