The following is presented as part of The Columbian’s Opinion content, which offers a point of view in order to provoke thought and debate of civic issues. Opinions represent the viewpoint of the author. Unsigned editorials represent the consensus opinion of The Columbian’s editorial board, which operates independently of the news department.
Parker: Comparing Barr’s fate to Bee’s as strictly political wrong
By Kathleen Parker
Published: June 7, 2018, 6:01am
Share:
Call me naive — I’ve been called worse — but it never occurred to me that Roseanne Barr’s firing would be viewed by some as a political statement.
Alas, it seems I’m a mere babe in the thicket.
When I recently wrote about Barr’s racist Twitter attack on Valerie Jarrett, I was commenting on why this particular event was so foul. However, because I didn’t also address every other person who has been rude or profane, namely comedian Samantha Bee, or the alleged double standard in their treatment — Barr’s show was canceled, Bee’s was not — I’m somehow a liberal shill, along with various choice anatomical descriptors.
Since you brought it up: First, it has always been deeply depressing to me that Barr has an audience at all. Please see previous column. Second, until a few days ago, Bee wasn’t on my radar. For the record, what she said about Ivanka Trump, calling her a “feckless c—,” was disgusting. What else?
I’m reminded that when playwright Eve Ensler came out with “The Vagina Monologues,” one of the chapters — or episodic hysterias — concerned women’s reclaiming of the C-word. In Ensler’s play, which prompted me to pen a play in one word — “Ennui” — a woman spends an uncharitable amount of time saying and savoring the word with accompanying lingual histrionics.
The play, oft-performed on college campuses, apparently helped certain women liberate themselves from the word’s traumatic effects when uttered by a male. Women would own it, thenceforth, and could use it with impunity for their own unhinged purposes. Sorry, I meant to say, unchained.
Given said appropriation, might one conclude that Bee is within her monologist rights to use the term so long as she’s referring to another woman? Apparently, no. It seems that, to some people, it would only be OK if Bee’s target were also a liberal woman. Picking on the daughter of a Republican president is tantamount to attacking the entire Republican cohort, while the C-word seems secondary to the partisan point.
Sheesh.
Bee is certainly liberal if you’re an ultra-conservative, but the show’s executive producer describes those behind the program as “radical centrists.” But even if Bee’s a liberal, aren’t conservatives also concerned that immigrant children are being separated from their parents upon entering the country illegally — the point of Bee’s segment? By all means condemn the language. But a tit-for-tat firing makes sense only if your world is defined by politics.
Meanwhile, the fact that Trump likes Barr, who is a conspiracy theorist as well as a racist, is hardly reason to consider her a conservative victim or to believe that she was fired only because she attacked a liberal. She was fired because she ill-represents the values of her former network.
Trump’s shiny moment
Trump’s outrage about Bee’s remarks, appropriate to any father, is surely one of his shinier moments. But he’s hardly an avatar of moral rectitude and decency. Pop quiz: Which president put the P-word into public circulation? Also, thanks to Trump, everybody in the world, save for a few Sentinelese in the Andaman Islands, knows the name “Stormy Daniels.”
Finally, Bee’s remark doesn’t rise to the level of what Barr said, which has nothing to do with my knee-jerk moderate politics. As for my choice in comedians, I prefer that they be funny. Most, regardless of persuasion, poke fun at the powers that be. It just so happens that the current majority lends itself to the genre.
Comparing Barr’s fate to Bee’s as strictly political fails on its face. One uttered an obscenity; the other a mean-spirited slur that has caused immeasurable suffering. By referring to Jarrett as she did, Barr employed the same simian imagery that was used to rationalize the enslaving, lynching and terrorizing of African-Americans.
The Ku Klux Klan and Jim Crow could not have hoped for better, or worse, than Barr’s revealed mind — far more offensive than the C-word, which, remember, women now own.
Fact-based reporting from the largest newsroom of professional journalists in Southwest Washington. Subscribe today for $99/year
Your tax-deductible donation to The Columbian’s Community Funded Journalism program will contribute to better local reporting on key issues, including homelessness, housing, transportation and the environment. Reporters will focus on narrative, investigative and data-driven storytelling.
Local journalism needs your help. It’s an essential part of a healthy community and a healthy democracy.
