What’s in a name? Certain celebrities named Rose if called by any other name would still sound like insane, attention-seeking nut jobs without a shred of sense.
Oh, we all remember Rosie O’Donnell: how she mocked Chinese Americans, said 9/11 was a government conspiracy, repeatedly attacked Elisabeth Hasselbeck on The View, and then filled up her unemployed hours by blogging the insanity that apparently fills her head (although she’s apparently taking a break).
Meanwhile, yet another Rose has been stinking up the blogosphere: Roseanne Barr. Yes, that Roseanne: the one with the TV show, who later claimed her parents had physically and sexually abused her, while they (along with Roseanne’s sister) claim she’s a pathological liar. The one who married Tom Arnold — then a relatively unknown comic — and created a character for him on her show, got his name tattooed on her butt, and proudly dropped trou at a ball game to show it to the public. The one who screeched the National Anthem at a Padres game then grabbed her crotch and spit. Who later divorced Tom Arnold, married her bodyguard-chauffeur, had a son she refers to as a test tube baby, and got divorced again. That Roseanne.
But lest you think that that’s the last we’ve heard of her, think again. Just like Rosie O’Donnell, Roseanne has taken up blogging as a way to fill her unemployed hours, and when it comes to vile, inane stupidity she’s somehow managing to make Rosie look like a rank amateur. Other things they have in common, besides apparent difficulties with grammar and punctuation: a belief that they alone can see the “truth” coupled with a near palpable hatred for anyone else who doesn’t see life the way they do.
Remember, for instance, Rosie’s remark that Elisabeth Hasselbeck, her co-host on The View, was “very young and very wrong.” Oh, sure, Rosie came out later and apologized after being practically routed from the show, but since then she’s taken to displaying pictures of Hasselbeck festooned with devil horns.
Roseanne Barr is equally quick to vilify those who don’t agree with her, and it’s that tendency which has brought the has been’s name back to the national spotlight of late. Her targets? Well, just about anyone: those who don’t support Hillary Clinton; those who “hoodwinked” Clinton into turning over her delegates; liberal columnist Maureen Dowd (though I can’t say I happen to disagree with her on that one); and a trifecta of Elisabeth Hasselbeck, Sherri Shepherd, and Barbara Walters.
For the most part, the blogosphere has been content to ignore Roseanne for the past few years. But last week when she unleashed a steaming dose of hatred on actor Jon Voight, his daughter Angelina Jolie, and her partner Brad Pitt, it became apparent that Roseanne intends to follow in Rosie O’Donnell’s vile and rambling footsteps.
Voight, Roseanne says, “is a frightened little girl in a pink ballet tutu, who acts like Obama just wandered in from the rain forest with a bone thru his nose and a communist pamphlet in his loincloth.” As far as Angelina, she’s Voight’s “evil spawn,” while Brad Pitt is “vacuous.” (Curiously, Roseanne refers to Pitt as Jolie’s hubby, while the rest of the free world recalls that Jolie and Pitt said they won’t marry until gay marriage is legally recognized throughout the country.)
And then the real reasons for the vitriolic attack on Jolie and Pitt — as well as Roseanne’s ignorance — become all too clear: Angelina stated that she hasn’t decided for whom she’ll vote. In Roseanne’s world, not coming out adamantly in support of Obama means you must be evil.
Unless your name is Roseanne, apparently. Because she’s certainly had her share of doubts.
After saying that Barack Obama has a “blind spot “when it comes to feminism and lambasting the Democratic party for “shoving (Obama) down everyone’s throats,” she congratulated country musician Toby Keith’s support of Obama, saying “thank God you saved your ass by coming out as a democrat for Obama.” Meanwhile, Roseanne has said she will vote for Green Party nominee Cynthia McKinney.
So what should we assume this means about her ass?
My first thought: it means her head is too firmly lodged up there to see her own ignorance. Take, for example, her screed about Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt’s charitable work.
angelina jolie and her vacuous hubby brad pitt make about forty million dollars a year in violent psychopathic movies and give away three of it to starving children trying to look as if they give a crap about humanity as they spit out more dunces that will consume more than their fair share and wreck the earth even more. (just sayin’).
Three million? Try $8 million last year and another $14 million this year from selling the rights to first photo exclusives of their newborn twins. Not that the pair are content to merely write checks. In addition to Jolie’s travels as a Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees — which included spending Christmas 2006 with Cambodian refugees in Cambodia — and Pitt’s establishment and efforts on behalf of the Make It Right foundation assisting victims of Hurricane Katrina, the pair have also established, funded, and recruited other celebrities to participate in the Jolie-Pitt Foundation to assist in humanitarian crises around the world.
Meanwhile, Rosanne Barr has done what, precisely? Well, Roseanne has ostensibly made some contributions to charity by donating some of the proceeds from her performances. Presumably the rest of the money went to the lapband, nose job, face lift, breast reduction, chin implant, and liposuction surgeries she’s said to have had recently.
Of course, Roseanne has since offered an apology of sorts, admitting that she doesn’t know Jolie or Pitt and based her opinion entirely on their representation in the media. But that, too, is an example of Roseanne’s “do what I say, not what I do” outlook on life. Just days before, she’d written an entry encouraging Americans to boycott such celebrity coverage because it funds “Rupert Murdoch’s piece of the right wing ‘war machine’ empire.”
Perhaps the problem is, as Elizabeth Snead at the Los Angeles Times considers, that Roseanne’s indulging in a bit of drunk blogging. Certainly her rants do come across the way Snead described them: “a bit boozy and reckless, like some angry, crazy old broad still sitting at the bar for last call.”
If that’s the case then Roseanne might want to consider acquiring another thing in common with Rosie O’Donnell, who famously blogged about her plans to give up booze.
But why look so deep when the reasons are far more obvious?
It’s not that Roseanne’s crazy; it’s that we are. Just ask the being from the other dimension who told her so.
I knew from a very early age that I was crazed and a witch by patriarchal definition. I knew too however, because I was shown it by a being from another dimension who appeared to me and said: “You will talk about the (female) Shekkinah and her temple priestess and be a witness for he/she/it. You are the only one in your world who is not crazy , and you will always need to reverse what is being said and then reverse it double. Here is the code you will use to stay sane in an insane world: You will see signs that tell you that you are right. If you do not see the sign immediately, then it is not a sign. Signs happen immediately and not outside the NOW. The sign that you are right will be: everyone thinks YOU are crazy.
Although it’s been years since Roseanne Barr has been remotely relevant in the entertainment industry, I have to admit it’s nice to know she can still make me laugh. Only now, she’s become the punch-line of her own joke.
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