Roseanne’s tweets about Valerie Jarret, Chelsea Clinton and George Soros proved to be the stones that cracked the camel’s skull when ABC cancelled her show. Samantha Bee called Ivanka Trump a “feckless cunt” who should be convincing her father to change his immigration policies. While Bee did lose some advertising sponsors, she has not been fired (as of this writing). While she did apologize, some have come to her defense, including her former employer John Stewart. As would be imagined, some people see these situations as analogous and believe that if Roseanne should be fired, then so should Bee.
As with anything involving political identities, people will tend to see the matter through the lenses of their affiliations rather than applying a consistent standard of when a person can be justly fired. While such bias is unavoidable, I will endeavor to assess the matter as objectively as possible in the context of ethics. In terms of the legality of the matter, the answer is easy: ABC had the legal right to fire Roseanne and TBS has the legal right to keep employing Bee. They also have the right, within the limits of whatever legal contract exists, to fire her.
Assessing the fairness of the difference in treatment is, in ethical terms, a matter of considering whether the standards have been applied consistently in both cases. To be more specific, the fairness or unfairness comes down to considering whether there are relevant differences between the two situations that morally justifies the difference in treatment.
To use an analogy, consider my assessment of student papers. Ethical grading, like ethical firing, requires that I apply the same standards to all my students. If two students receive different grades, then there must be a relevant difference between their papers. If not, the difference in the grades would be unjust. For example, if one student who loathes running plagiarizes and gets an F, yet a student who is on the cross-county team plagiarizes and gets a C because they share my view of running, then I would have acted unjustly. However, if the loather of running plagiarizes the entire paper and the cross-country runner only fails to properly cite one small quote from Socrates, then the difference in grades would be warranted—while both did something wrong, the penalty varies based on the wrongness. The same applies to the Bee and Roseanne cases: while they both did something wrong, the question is whether their misdeeds are similar enough to warrant similar consequences. As such, I will compare the situations to see if they are, in fact, sufficiently alike to warrant the firing of Bee. One way to look at the situations is to draw an analogy to a physical attack and use some analogous standards in the discussion. I will use this approach.
When assessing the ethics of an attack, physical or otherwise, it is worth considering the relative strength of the opponents. While unprovoked attacks are obviously bad, there are moral distinctions. If for example, a weak person feebly swings at a strong person, that is less bad than a very strong person hammering a weak person. In the case of insults via Twitter or TV, one way to consider strength is in terms of social status: people with greater status can generally “hit” harder than people with less status.
In the case of Roseanne, she was going after people who are well known and have significant status. In the case of Bee, she went after Ivanka Trump, someone who also has considerable status—presumably more than the comedian Bee. Thus, the two were, roughly speaking, punching at their social weight—and perhaps punching up. So, the two cases are comparable here. Of course, social status is not the whole story—there are also advantages and disadvantages that arise from factors such as race, sex and gender.
In the case of Roseanne’s main Tweet and Bee’s insult, they were both attacking other women. As such, they are punching sideways into their own sex. Roseanne, however, was going after a black woman while Bee was going after a white woman. Since whites enjoy a social advantage, Roseanne was punching down, while Bee was punching sideways into her own “race.” As such, this is a potential relevant difference.
Going along with the analogy of the physical fight, there is also the question of the weapons used. Socking someone with a fist is generally less bad than walloping someone with a baseball bat. Likewise, there are degrees of severity in the words used and the nature of the attack.
Purely in terms of the words, Bee seems to be worse here: she used “cunt” whereas Roseanne used rated G words like “Muslim” and “ape.” However, there is also the matter of the severity of the attack itself—after all, it is not just a matter of individual words being awful, but also what lies behind the words.
The Muslim part of Roseanne’s attack cashed in on xenophobia about Muslims and dragged the old idea that Obama and his fellows are Muslims. The “Planet of the Apes” component brought up the old racist tool of comparing black people (and others) to apes or monkeys. These factors entail that the Tweet was more than just a personal attack—the use of the ape reference broadens her attack. To use the fight analogy, Roseanne is swinging at her target, but also hitting bystanders as well.
It could be claimed that Bee’s use of “cunt” drags in women—since that term is most often (but not always) applied to women. As such, she is also hitting bystanders as well, making her as bad as Roseanne. This, of course, leads to the debate about whether the term is sexist or whether it is only sexist when used by men or in a certain way. As such, the question is this: is Bee a sexist/misogynist in the way that Roseanne is supposed to be a racist? One way to consider the matter is to look at the history of Roseanne and Bee.
Roseanne has a well-established Twitter history of racism. As such, the claim that she is a racist has considerable merit. In contrast, while Bee does attack women, she does not attack them because they are women. In the case of Ivanka, Bee is not acting in accord with a consistent history of sexism/misogyny. Rather, she used what is often seen as a sexist term to attack Ivanka because of what Ivanka has done (or, rather, not done). As such, while her word choice can be faulted, she is not (to use the fight analogy) punching bystanders—her punch was aimed directly at Ivanka. As such, she is less bad than Roseanne in two ways: first, she is not acting in the context of a history of racism or sexism. Second, her insult only involves the specific target without the spillover attack on people of the same “race” or sex.
Crudely put, Bee used what most regard as a vile term to insult one person while Roseanne engaged in the tropes of xenophobia and racism in her attack, thus insulting and attacking everyone in those targeted groups. So, what Bee did was not as bad as what Roseanne did and this can be the relevant difference that justifies the difference in treatment.
It could be argued that while there is a difference, Bee should still be fired for using a bad word to describe Ivanka. This raises a different issue from whether Bee is as bad as Roseanne and involves the ethics of justified firing.
One practical approach is to look at the matter in terms of the potential harm the employee does to the employer by their actions. This fits in with the usual approach to justified firings for cause—the employee does enough harm to warrant firing. In the case of media companies, the concern is with the impact on advertising and viewership. Roseanne’s Tweet seems to have clearly done more damage in these areas than Bee’s word. As such, Bee’s show would seem to roughly as economically viable for TBS as it was before, although the loss of advertisers presumably did impact the bottom line. As such, this would also be a relevant difference between Bee and Roseanne.
There remains the moral concern about when or even if an employer should fire an employee simply for saying something bad regardless of the impact on the bottom line. One easy and obvious approach is to contend that the badness of what an employee says is only relevant to their employment when what they say has an impact on the employer. That is, simply saying bad things or being bad does not warrant firing. What matters is the impact of the actions on the employer. Employers, it could be argued, are not the guardians of morality—they are in business to do business. As such, even if Bee was wrong to use that word, the badness of her action does not itself warrant firing her. Nor did the wrongness of Roseanne’s actions.
Ordinary people are being fired for using politically incorrect speech virtually every day. It’s hardly just Roseanne. You would be too if you ever said or wrote something politically incorrect. We’re being conditioned regarding what can think and what we can say. It’s called crimestop.
Mike, I’d like you to consider the possibility that Roseanne did not know Valerie Jarrett was black. I didn’t know she was black–I thought she was Iranian.
Does this change anything? After all, no one seemed to have a problem with calling Bush a chimp.
I did hear that Roseanne claimed that she thought Jarrett was Saudi or Jewish and Persian or white (she had different tweets on this matter).
Jarrett was born in Iran, but to American parents.
It is not impossible that she though Jarrett is white. Let us suppose that she thought this. Then why would she bring up the Planet of the Apes remark?
As you noted, some did compare Bush to a chimp-so people do compare white people to monkeys. The reason why there was mostly no problem with this insult of Bush is argued here: https://www.npr.org/sections/itsallpolitics/2011/04/27/135771740/portraying-obama-as-a-chimp-not-the-same-as-showing-bush-as-one
If Roseanne had no significant history of racist comments, then the “I thought she was white so my ape comparison isn’t racist” could have some merit. If Roseanne had not seen images of Jarrett or ever read anything about her being black, then that defense might work. However, the idea that Roseanne had no idea that Jarrett was black and just sort of used the Planet of the Apes thing to insult someone she thought was white is rather implausible.
Of course, as Reagan said, if you are explaining then you are losing. Putting it out there that Roseanne thought she was white will stick for some, no matter what evidence is offered against the claim.
Personally, I don’t care for Roseanne or Samatha Bee so whether or not either one has a show means nothing to me.
Roseanne (and Bee) are rude and crude as part of their act, and for all I know it is just an act and they are perfectly nice people in real life.
I do suspect, however, that if Roseanne had been talking about Clarence Thomas or Condi Rice she would still have a show right now.
In any case, Trump has figured out how to use the culture wars to his advantage. All this stuff only makes him stronger.
I predict he gets 35-40% of the black vote in 2020.
True; he can point to the “social justice warriors” that “got” Roseanne fired and fire up his base. Since many of them are unemployed, they will have plenty of time to be riled up about things that do not really impact their lives. He also riles people up about things that do impact their lives (jobs going overseas, low wages, etc.) but either does nothing about those problems or actively harms his base. He either has mastery of manipulation or has been rather lucky-the right guy tweeting the right things at the right time.
Since many of them are unemployed, they will have plenty of time to be riled up about things that do not really impact their lives.
What a crock of shit this statement is. For the first time that I can recall, there are more job openings than there are unemployed people. From what I have seen, people in Trump’s base work more jobs than than those most strongly opposed to him, the antifa crowd, etc. Ah, but Mike will now cowardly hide behind the word “many”, ‘cause if like there’s a thousand or so Trump supporters across the whole country who are unemployed, well Mike didn’t tell no lie now did he?
Why you gotta insult people like that Mikey? Why you go so low? Hey, you know who has plenty of time to get riled up about stuff? Folks on the dole. And that includes college professors who teach no-show classes.
TJB – It wouldn’t matter at all. The intent or understanding of the speaker means nothing – the words are given power by the offended party or parties, or by the PC mob, and used to destroy those who use them, whether purposely or unwittingly.
I think I mentioned in another post the case of David Howard, an aide to the mayor of Washington, DC, who used the word “Niggardly” (meaning “cheap”, “miserly” or “stingy”) when referring to a budget. He was forced to retire because the word merely sounds like another word. In this case, Howard’s superior vocabulary and erudition were his downfall within a sea of ignorance. Even Julian Bond, the then chairman of the NAACP decried his forced resignation, and recommended that the Mayor’s office purchase dictionaries for all employees.
Many politicians have been brought down by their use of the colloquial term “tar baby”, which refers to a problem so sticky that the more contact you have with it, the further you become stuck, and the more impossible extrication becomes. Mitt Romney had to apologize for referring to the “Big Dig” in Boston as a “Tar Baby”, and when Doug Lamborn referred to Barack Obama’s policies as a “tar baby”, well, the response was swift and intense in calling him a racist. Nevermind the colloquial definition, nevermind the Uncle Remus story of “B’rer Rabbit”, nevermind the actual understanding of the term on Lamborn’s part or his intent in using it – the word has been used in the past in a racist context, therefore Lamborn was a racist.
We live in a world of political correctness where words are defined by those who hear them, not by those who speak them. The power they gain by the acceptance of their offense is too delicious to allow it to be diminished by a simple, “Oh, I’m sorry – I certainly didn’t mean it that way. I’m not sure I ever heard that usage before …” That kind of intolerance is quite chic nowadays.
Pedantic know-it-alls can talk about the history of oppression against this class or that class, or philosophers can talk about punching “up” or “down” to a historically oppressed class, but the result is a kind of fear among public figures – fear of meaning one thing but being understood in a different context, and being unable to take it back as they watch their careers spiral into oblivion.
Roseanne is on pretty thin ice here – but I do maintain that she isn’t being punished – the words are out there and it doesn’t matter a bit what she meant or what ethnicity she thought Jarrett was. The mob has gotten their teeth into the words, and ABC is quaking in their boots, trying to figure out what the best move is to appease the monster and go on peacefully about their business.
Agree with one exception. I don’t think ABC is necessarily quaking in their boots. As a Disney company and thus an entertainment and news behemoth, it is part and parcel to this greater monster that must be appeased.
Could be. I won’t dispute that – sometimes it’s hard to tell where to draw the line between those that fear the behemoth and those who are the behemoth. Ultimately, they all become the latter.
Nassim Taleb:
T he best example I know that gives insights into the functioning of a complex system is with the following situation. It suffices for an intransigent minority –a certain type of intransigent minorities –to reach a minutely small level, say three or four percent of the total population, for the entire population to have to submit to their preferences. Further, an optical illusion comes with the dominance of the minority: a naive observer would be under the impression that the choices and preferences are those of the majority. If it seems absurd, it is because our scientific intuitions aren’t calibrated for that (fughedabout scientific and academic intuitions and snap judgments; they don’t work and your standard intellectualization fails with complex systems, though not your grandmothers’ wisdom).
https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dictatorship-of-the-small-minority-3f1f83ce4e15
I think that the most relevant part of your essay is the last part. Neither of these cases have anything to do with punishing anyone. Nor do I think there is any ethical analysis necessary in either case – at least not the way you have applied it.
In other words, neither has anything to do with who said what about whom. It is all about public reaction, political correctness, and the bottom line for a business.
I think that Roseanne was fired because anything having even the slightest hint of racism has become an extremely delicate issue that people fear. I think I said in an earlier post that there are some words that have actually become weaponized – the power of the N-word, for example, regardless of the context in which it is said, or even the use of a word that sounds like it but has a completely different meaning is cause for termination and public shaming. ABC didn’t want to fire her, I don’t think they really care what she says – they know who and what she is. Their dilemma was simply about damage control. If they kept her, would they be viewed as a racist organization, or one that supports racism by the angry mobs? Or could they limit the damage and save their reputation by firing her?
The same is true for Samantha Bee – and under the same kind of scrutiny her words were less damaging.
One might (and I will) make the case that there has always been a “wink-wink – you know I’m right” when criticizing Trump, his family, conservatives or Republicans. Feckless cunts are not a protected class; there is no power to the words, there is no social stigma surrounding insulting or offending any member of the Trump family. Imagine, though, if someone had said that about Michelle Obama? No doubt they would have been fired summarily.
Nearly every criticism of Obama, whether a crude, nasty insult or a legitimate critique of policy, was made to be racist in some way. That was his insulation, his protection – the power to which that concept has risen.
So for this, I’d say your analogy was not quite accurate. Rather than using running as an example, I think it might be better to use power. Imagine you had two students who performed similarly, but differently – but neither was a plagiarist or anything like that. Both students are well known to be mediocre performers at best. One student, however, was the offspring of two attorneys who kept a vigilant eye on his grades, his performance, and his teachers – and was very vocal about any perceived offense on your part, complaining to the dean frequently. The other student took everything in stride. If you tended to err on the side of inflating the grades of the first student – I think that would be more in line with what’s going on here. It’s not the students or their performance – it’s the fear of blowback on the part of the angry supporters.
OK, I give up. On two questions.
1. Why did Roseanne pop off at Valerie Jarrett? As far as I can find, they have no previous history. Perhaps Roseanne just came across some tweet by Jarrett, or something she said, but I doin’t know what it might be. I don’t actually care, about this or the whole kerfuffle, but I don’t see how anyone can take a position without understanding it. I believe Jarrett’s position is not friendly to Israel, which may explain the Muslim Brotherhood part of the comment, if some anti-Israeli statement provoked it.
2. Why is nobody asking or discussing what provoked the oiginal tweet? It’s the only possible way to understand the context, if you care about whether the tweet was offensive to anyone but Jarrett.
I suppose I could add a third stumper – why anyone cares – but we seem to be past that.
If Roseanne was reacting to an anti-Israeli statement, that takes care of half of the insult. As for the other half, I saw while searching an avatar of Jarrett as an ape from Planet of the Apes, and like GWB, once you see the resemblance you can’t unsee it. It’s quite an appealing avatar; if I had one like it, I’d use it as an Internet avatar … if I used avatars. From Jarrett’s Twitter pic, it’s certainly not obvious to me that she is black, whatever black means nowadays in the US. On first sight, I’d place her background as Mediterranean or Middle Eastern, or even well-tanned Caucasian.
So: if Roseanne in a semi-doze read something about a Jarrett anti-Israeli statement, and tweeted this off … well, it’s an insult to Jarrett, but who cares on Twitter? If this is not the explanation, then what is?
I’ve spent far too much time on this. Why hasn’t anyone who cares asked the question?
As for Samantha Bee, this was a scripted piece, and therefore deliberate. “Feckless cunt” and suggesting that Ivanka should seduce her own father into agreement seems to be par for the course for her, though. Nothing to see here.
P.S. Taking a cue from Bill Maher, I think we need a New Rule:
What happens on Twitter stays on Twitter.
Sheesh.
Also…He’s is own brand of Twitwit. Did you see where Bill Maher said he’s hoping for a recession to get rid of Trump? Of course the guy makes $10 million/yr so it won’t affect him any. Eggs, omelets, etc.
“Why did Roseanne pop off at Valerie Jarrett?
Well, the real reason is as you said, “Who cares?” but aside from that I don’t think there was a reason. It certainly wasn’t policy related, it was just an insulting remark, presumably made to get the attention it did. Maybe the result wasn’t predicted, though. Tom Arnold came out and said that this whole thing was predictable long ago – and that no one heeded his cautions to take Roseanne’s phone away before there was trouble.
I’m sure there have been hundreds, maybe thousands of similar tweets – but this one came from an ABC/Disney “star” who was about to break all sorts of viewership records for a new, outrageous show – and thus it is newsworthy to our star-struck nation.
“Why is nobody asking or discussing what provoked the original tweet? “
Again – no one is asking because no one cares. There is probably no valid reason – just one angry, ill-informed (but highly public) member of one tribe acting out against a target on the other, for the same reason other celebrities take to the Twittersphere – to draw attention to themselves.
People in this country admire and extol our Hollywood stars, to the extent that these stars can stand in front of a microphone with no more information than a Miss America contestant, and actually make a difference in support of or against policies they themselves have no hope of understanding.
“…I suppose I could add a third stumper – why anyone cares …”
Really the only question with any bite to it. People care because of the power of perceived racism. Roseanne’s statements are better off being ignored as the rantings of an uninformed, ignorant, narcissistic character who is used to getting attention for outrageous comments, but the fact that they could be construed as a racist comparison of an African American to a simian, coupled with a reference to a Muslim – and said by a Big Star, were just too juicy to let go. Suddenly Roseanne speaks for All Conservatives, and can maybe be held up as The Voice of All Trump Supporters.
And so everyone scrambles for position on this – which distracts us from having to try to understand what’s going on with the negotiations with the G7 or North Korea or the economy or taxes or immigration.
After all, what’s really important here?
There is probably no valid reason – just one angry, ill-informed (but highly public) member of one tribe acting out against a target on the other, for the same reason other celebrities take to the Twittersphere – to draw attention to themselves.
Yebbut … why isn’t anyone who expresses an opinion asking the question and informing themselves before spouting ignorance? Surely nobody thinks Roseanne hit the Leftist Phonebook and stabbed a pin into it.
Assume there exists a person who believes that if Roseanne’s tweet was racist, she should be punished by having her show cancelled. Assume further that person cares about fairness.
The tweet might be prima facie evidence of a racial slur. Call it an 80% prior. Roseanne said it wasn’t intended as such and she didn’t even know that Jarrett identified as black.
Roseanne didn’t help her case here, because she apparently offered differing and incomplete accounts, but a person who cared about fairness would want to examine this possibility.
If Roseanne had some interactions with Jarrett before, we could rule out the ignorance defence. If she never had interactions with Jarrett before, then why was she tweeting about Jarrett anyway? The person wanting to be fair would want to sort this out before commenting. And yet, as far as I could see, nobody at all did that. Perhaps my assumption that there exists a person who wants to punish Roseanne for a possibly racist tweet and is interested and is also fair-minded is false.
People in this country admire and extol our Hollywood stars, to the extent that these stars can stand in front of a microphone with no more information than a Miss America contestant, and actually make a difference in support of or against policies they themselves have no hope of understanding.
This, by the way, eternally terrifies me.
This whole Roseanne reboot never smelled right to me. I did watch the first episode or two which were enjoyable in the old “All in the Family” sense. But then the old Roseanne showed through with her teaching the grandkids how to steal from the supermarket. Not that I put much stock in what quasi-marketable TV personalities have to say, but while I wouldn’t say she and Trump supporters were an odd fit, it did seem a little forced to me. And this all going down after ABC kicked the successful Tim Allen show off. If anyone was going to “do it for the ratings”, they would have kept his show around, not to mention actually promoting it.
You got a lot farther than I did. I didn’t like her show when it ran the first time, and the sight of her face on my TV inspires me to reach for the remote. I can’t stand it when public figures, with absolutely no sense of what a real issue really is, try to leverage their stardom to elevate a talking point to a mantra. I wish they’d all stay home – or at least put some money behind the causes they say they support instead of just using them to feed their massive egos.