Drug Maker Responds After Roseanne Blames Racist Tweet On Ambien
NEW YORK (CBSDFW.COM/CNN Money) - Roseanne Barr is blaming the sleep drug Ambien for her racist comments on Twitter, telling her fans online, "I'm not a racist, just an idiot who made a bad joke." ABC canceled her hit show "Roseanne" on Tuesday following her foul Twitter behavior.
Barr went on another tweetstorm early Wednesday, retweeting fans who portrayed her as a victim of a liberal media double standard. She zig-zagged between apologizing for her remarks and retweeting memes, making her apologies come off as insincere. All told, she posted more than 100 times.
Photos of former President Barack Obama aide Valerie Jarrett shown side-by-side with an ape were among Barr's retweets on Wednesday. It was Barr's earlier tweet about Jarrett that caused outrage and ultimately led to her television show being canceled.
In response to a comment about Jarrett, Barr tweeted, "Muslim brotherhood & planet of the apes had a baby=vj."
Barr still claims that she was just joking when she compared Jarrett to "Planet of the Apes" and the Muslim Brotherhood in the Tuesday morning tweet. Replying to one of her fans, she said, "I honestly thought she was Jewish and Persian-ignorant of me for sure, but...i did."
The comedian also said that she had been on Ambien, a medication used to treat insomnia, at the time of her initial tweet.
"Guys I did something unforgiveable so do not defend me," Barr said. "It was 2 in the morning and I was ambien tweeting -- it was memorial day too -- i went 2 far & do not want it defended -- it was egregious Indefensible. I made a mistake I wish I hadn't but...don't defend it please."
Barr cited Ambien again in a later tweet, saying, "Not giving excuses for what I did(tweeted) but I've done weird stuff while on ambien -- cracked eggs on the wall at 2am etc." She later deleted her references to the sleep medication. Nevertheless, Ambien became a trending topic on Twitter on Wednesday morning.
Barr's explanation was deemed laughable.
Even the maker of the insomnia drug, Sanofi, quickly retorted that "racism is not a known side effect."
In one of her other deleted tweets, Barr said, "I'm sorry 4 my tweet, AND I will also defend myself as well as talk to my followers. so, go away if u don't like it. I will handle my sadness the way I want to. I'm tired of being attacked & belittled more than other comedians who have said worse."
Barr's Twitter account had a manic feel throughout the morning. Through her selection of retweets, Barr implied that she was fired over her support for President Donald Trump. One of the posts she shared said, inexplicably, "they brought the show back so they could inevitably cancel the show when she said something they didn't like."
But then she deleted her retweet of that post.
Barr also said her firing "worked out" because she "would leave when they started to try to censor me."
(© Copyright 2018 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. Cable News Network, Inc., a Time Warner Company contributed to this report.)