facebook-pixel

Letter: Roseanne isn’t racist — one must prove intent

FIlE - In this April 8, 2014, file photo, Roseanne Barr arrives at the NBC Universal Summer Press Day in Pasadena, Calif. The unprecedented sudden cancellation of ABC's TV’s top comedy "Roseanne" has left a wave of unemployment and uncertainty in its wake. Barr’s racist tweet and the almost immediate axing of her show put hundreds of people out of work. (Photo by Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP, File)

Roseanne Barr’s comment was not racist. She said she thought Valerie Jarrett was white and there is evidence to support that. There can be no racism without knowledge and intent.

Some said the great pianist Arthur Rubinstein looked like a fish. Rubinstein self-deprecatingly said the same thing. Barr’s comment was no more racist than the fish comment. And where is the outrage over conservatives, male and female, being made fun of so viciously and hypocritically by the left — who routinely use the term “racist” falsely, as the ultimate weapon of destruction, even while calling Trump an “orangutan ape,” and his daughter a (blank), for example?

One must prove intent. The accusation of “racist” against Barr is unfair and unjustifiable.

But the politically correct love to cavalierly throw the word around anyway. It gives them an intoxicating feeling of aggrandizement and self-righteousness — so intoxicating that a TV network will summarily kill an enormously lucrative show in order to enjoy that artificial high, the way a drug addict will blow millions for the fix.

I hope that a smarter and more deserving network, not infected by the hideous disease and counterfeit moral code known as political correctness, will pick up the show.

Mark Terran, Salt Lake City