Do we like Roseanne Barr?
Our score: 2 out of 10. A long record of her own harmful posts and conspiracy theories, and only a comeback and her sitcom past to set against it.
Roseanne Barr was the star of ABC's Roseanne, a sitcom that was revived in 2018. Then the revival ended in about a day. In May 2018 she tweeted that the Muslim Brotherhood and Planet of the Apes had a baby, with initials pointing at Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett, and the network pulled the plug.
She first called it a joke, then apologised to Jarrett and quit Twitter. Weeks later she told ABC's audience she'd been mistaken, saying “I horribly regret it” and “I thought she was white.” Her later line, in a 2025 interview, is that the tweet was political criticism and not racist, so she's apologised and she's also kept relitigating it.
The harm check is where it gets rough, and it's mostly her own typing. In 2012 she attacked a trans woman who used a women's locker room, writing “If she has a penis, she's not allowed in,” according to The Advocate's account of her record. In 2019 she posted a video saying “I put the Q in LGBTQ,” which is a funny thing to say after that history. The Advocate piece is an opinion column, so weigh its framing accordingly.
Then there are the conspiracy theories. In March 2018 she tweeted that Trump had “freed so many children held in bondage to pimps,” which The Daily Beast tied to the QAnon theory. The same week she replied “NAZI SALUTE” to a photo of Parkland survivor David Hogg, deleted it, and said the picture must have been doctored.
The recent thing is the Fishman stoush. After Michael Fishman said in an Instagram video that the show was “rightfully cancelled,” Barr went on the Can't Be Censored podcast and called him a “brainwashed bigot.” She said she's “explained it 10,000 times” over nine years. That's a lot of explaining for someone who also says she's sorry.
On the good side of the ledger, the record we could open is thin. She built a famously working-class sitcom and she's got a comeback going, but we couldn't verify any charity work. That's honestly the whole list.