Rosanne Barr, Eric Greitens, Puerto Rico

Today there is important news and unimportant news. The unimportant news is that ABC canceled the new Roseanne series after Roseanne Barr tweeted about Valerie Jarrett of the Obama Administration: “muslim brotherhood & planet of the apes had a baby=vj.” Barr’s agent dropped her also.

The tweet prompted swift outcry online, including from members of the Hollywood community. The outspoken, controversial Roseanne creator and star initially defended her words as “a joke,” then later issued an apology: “I apologize to Valerie Jarrett and to all Americans. I am truly sorry for making a bad joke about her politics and her looks.”

But the damage was done. Roseanne writer and consulting producer Wanda Sykes on Tuesday tweeted her resignation from the show, and a little over an hour later ABC Entertainment president Channing Dungey canceled the hit comedy, whose first revived season set viewership records and prompted a swift renewal for season two.

I haven’t watched any of the series, so I cannot comment on its merits. But I have no problem with sending Rosanne Barr into retirement.

Now, on to important news.  Matt Shuham at Talking Points Memo reports that Missouri Governor Eric Greitens is expected to resign any minute now. Sending him into retirement wouldn’t bother me, either. He’s been increasingly embarassing. Most recently he’s been running a demented television ad blaming George Soros for the charges against him. I’m serious. If I can find a video of the ad I’ll post it sometime. It’s fascinating, in an oh look at the road kill kind of way.

Update: Yep, he just resigned.

The announcement came hours after damaging testimony by a former campaign aide to a House committee investigating Greitens, and a separate ruling by a judge forcing the governor’s campaign to reveal fundraising information.

This is in relation to impeachment hearings, so by resigning I assume he can avoid revealing the fundraising information, at least for now. The Lieutenant Governor who will step into the govenor’s job also is a Republican, so I’m not expecting anything to improve.

A Harvard study estimates that at least 4,645 died in Puerto Rico as a result of Hurricane Marie and the inadequate response to it. The Trump Administration still claims that only 64 people died. This is from WaPo:

A new Harvard study published Tuesday in the New England Journal of Medicine estimates that at least 4,645 deaths can be linked to the hurricane and its immediate aftermath, making the storm far deadlier than previously thought. Official estimates have placed the number of dead at 64, a count that has drawn sharp criticism from experts and local residents and spurred the government to order an independent review that has yet to be completed.

Many of the deaths were caused by disruptions in medical services to the chronically ill and the loss of electricity and clean water.

16 thoughts on “Rosanne Barr, Eric Greitens, Puerto Rico

  1. Good for Roseanne… I guess she wasn't expecting that kind of reaction. Gee, it must be puzzling for her to see that Trump gets to spew his racist comments all over the place without any kind of accountability, but she gets slammed for one little racist infraction. It must be sexism, huh?

    Maybe Donnie the coiff can give her some pointers going forward on the subtle art of being a racist, and not being held accountable.

  2. Good for Grietens… I don't want to get my hopes up, but could we be seeing a swing back to decency?

  3. All good points.  The only thing I want to add is that this all demonstrates how corporate media fails us.  Because of the overwhelming right-wing spin across U.S. media, American democracy is driven by ignorant fools.

    Mika and Joe Scum (remember, he had an intern magically show up dead in his office) did more to catapult tRump than anyone on your Tee-Vee.

  4. I'm too angry to comment on this.  Some of my old friends still live on St. Croix, which also got swak'd as did Dominica.  Those are unspeakable tragedies.  I have the horrible suspicion that Trump and his friends just had their eyes on prime real estate that they could pick up on the cheap.

    I wish I could believe that there was a Hell for them to burn in.

    Thank you for posting.

  5. Roseanne was not cancelled because of content. It was renewed and the audience liked the political back-and-forth. That's fine with me, too. At some point in time Trump will be outed for the crook he is and how Roseanne was going to react to facts was something I wanted to read about. I haven't seen the show. Her fans will claim it's the librul media. I'd be willing to bet Trump has already asked Fox to pick up the show. They won't – RB was too racist and Fox can't overtly embrace open racism. Trump sill stew and tweet about the injustice. 

    OT – Am I the only one seeing a surge in FB conservative propaganda on the NFL and the kid from Florida who is kicking the NRA's ass?

     

  6. Re: Eric Greitens, you always know when a wing-nut is cornered and can't win on the facts, they always play the George Soro's card! I've never seen this mysterious Soro's, does he even exist?

  7. uncledad..  ♫ Out of the night,when the full moon is bright, comes the S that stands for Sorros. â™«

     

    • ♫ Out of the night,when the full moon is bright, comes the S that stands for Sorros. ♫

      Love it.

  8. None of these are a shock to me, nor should they be to you.

    We've seen all of this before.

    Imus lost his radio and TV gigs back in early 2008.  Tubbo limpd*ck lost an ESPN TV gig in the early 2000's – and more recently, a boycott of his show after yet another in a long line of racist rants, has cost him millions, and nearly wiped out his employer.

    Greitens, not satisfied to be a typical Republican and get into either a sex scandal or be caught with his greedy, grubby mitts in the cookie jar, decided to go for broke, and do both.

    But I think this big a willing underestimation of Reported v. Real deaths in a natural disaster, might be unprecedented – at least in America in the 21st Century.

    All-in-all, just another day in 'making America great again.'  

     

     

  9. @ freetofu,

    I remember seeing appeals for Puerto Rico just after the hurricane and ignored them.

    I am not from the USA and I assumed the richest country in the world could probably find the resources to help the island. Any aid money I had could go to independent Caribbean countries.

    I may have been mistaken.

  10. I'm absolutely not defending the failure to help Puerto Rico. It was absolutely criminal. I'm just referring to the data on the death toll. 

    That Vox article I linked above includes this sentence, "The study also shines a light on the lack of transparency from the government. The Puerto Rican government ceased sharing mortality statistics with the general public late last year and didn’t work with researchers as they tried to get information."

    I had to click a few links to find what that's a reference to, but it must be the following passage from the "Discussion" section of the study: "Although the government of Puerto Rico stopped sharing mortality data with the public in December 2017 (our request for these data was also denied), in April 2018 the Institute of Statistics of Puerto Rico, an autonomous government entity, adopted a resolution to improve the counting of disaster-related deaths and publish all mortality data online without further delay."

    But apparently the reason the Puerto Rican government withheld data was that that the hurricane made collection difficult, as you'd expect.

    • freetofu — plenty of blame to go around. However, anyone paying any attention at all to Puerto Rico should have known that the conditions on the island were dangerous and would ressult in more deaths. That was obvious. Yet Trump congratulated himself on his great response — he threw paper towels at people, after all! while grossly under-responding.

  11. No argument. My point wasn't really a big deal to me, just thinking about that article I'd just seen.

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