What Frightens Me Most About the Roseanne Mess

Do you know what frightens me about the Roseanne scandal this past week?

                Not the repulsive sentiments expressed, or the stubborn refusal to condemn them by some members of the right.  Not the media firestorm it created, or that our President seems more preoccupied with Hollywood then the myriad of problems facing the United States.  Not the undeniable fact that she’s expressing what millions of Americans carry silently in their hearts.

                It frightens me that it took ten seconds and one Tweet to destroy her career.  Two hundred forty characters sent over two hundred people to the unemployment line, tanked her comeback, and condemned one of the most successful comebacks in history to the scrap heap.

                 As someone who deals with words and is somewhat of a public figure (the way that your neighborhood Good Humor Man is somewhat of a public figure) I find that extremely alarming. 

                I have always expressed strong opinions on social media, and can get a little emotional in heated exchanges, so I find it terrifying that you can destroy your life and everything you’ve worked so hard to achieve so quickly.  Doesn’t seem right to me.

                To be clear, I find her words repugnant.  And, I found Samantha Bee’s words a few days letter (in case you are unaware, she described Ivanka Trump as a c u next Tuesday) equally abhorrent.  It was unfortunate that Samantha resorted to name calling, especially in this climate.  And I’m weary of hearing the justifications from both the right and the left about why it was okay for their “side” to engage in shitty behavior.  Wrong is wrong, as Tomi Lahren said. Cue The Twilight Zone theme music in honor of me quoting her.

                “But what she said wasn’t…” but nothing.  The c word and the n word (I sound like a middle schooler but I can’t bring myself to type either of those words so bear with me) spring from the same well.  They express anger, hatred, and derision at a targeted group, in one case, black people, in another case, women.  I’ve read “words don’t matter,” from some people, and I once agreed.   I’ve changed my mind.  As someone who writes as a profession, I can attest to the fact that words matter.  They certainly do.   And since words are our primary way to express what is in our hearts, they matter a lot.  They can condemn.  They can also redeem.

                I’m not sure Roseanne (Barr? Not sure what surname she goes by these days) will find redemption.  Her flailing attempts to diffuse the bomb she dropped were extremely sad, as she first tried to claim she didn’t know the woman was black, then claimed to be under the influence of Ambien.

                 Sorry, Roseanne.  I don’t follow you on Twitter (Lord knows my blood pressure is probably high enough these days) but I’d heard about the nature of your Tweets long before this episode.  I gave you the benefit of the doubt.  I thought you were just trolling Hollywood and didn’t really believe the sentiments you were expressing.  After all, the original Roseanne show was groundbreaking.  The Connors had black and gay friends.  The show resonated with many groups of people, gay, black, struggling working class, and even women like me portrayed in the persistently single Jackie.  I loved the show so much I watched it often in reruns in TV land.  Which I won’t be doing anymore, as they were pulled from every network due to the brouhaha.

                As the Roseanne debacle demonstrates, freedom of speech doesn’t mean freedom from suffering the consequences of your speech.  People forget that.  I see a lot of bitching, particularly from the right, about how this infringes on her freedom of speech, and that’s bullshit.  Don’t believe me?  Well, then, I challenge you to curse your boss out on Monday and see what happens.

                 Roseanne was fired from her job.  The troubling thing is, we could all be fired from our jobs for our social media expressions.  Everything from that photograph of you partying with your girls in college to you losing it and calling someone a dumbass could potentially fuel your termination.  And, I have to wonder, how long before employees start using this?  How long before they start combing through Tweets and Facebook postings to eliminate employees that are old, or sick, or whom they plain just don’t like?

                As a writer, my primary medium is words.  The knowledge that words can bite you in the ass has always been foremost in my mind.  After all, some of the events in my novels have the potential to turn people off me for good.  In one book, two children engage in a sex act.   In another, a woman gone mad with pain and fury from her lover’s rejection burns down his house with his children in it.  In still another, a teenager is preyed on by a much older man who warps her mind into believing the world has ended. 

                I’ve been fortunate that most of my employers have not been interested in what I write.  As long I show up for work and my words don’t reflect negatively on them, they’re okay with my hobby.  And it has always been my hope that by the time the distant day rolls around where the people I work for are not okay with it, I’ll be able to make a living as a writer anyway.  (Then again, I’m a paralegal who works for lawyers who all champion the first amendment, so this may never happen).

                I’m just frightened to be living in a world where you can destroy yourself, the people around you, and everything you’ve worked for so quickly.  There is tragedy in that.  And as for me, while not staying off Twitter, I’ve once again made my Tweets personal, only visible to my followers.  It’s just not worth the aggravation.  I see what happened to Roseanne not as a comeuppance but as a warning.  That could be us, so easily.  Even if you don’t make racist statements, words can be twisted to have a meaning you didn’t intend.  We all need to take heed of this warning and realize that could easily be us.  We could be the ones out of a job because of something it took ten seconds to say.  As I said before, I find this profoundly frightening and unsure where that leaves the rest of us.

                I suppose in the end, I think the show shouldn’t have been cancelled.  The best thing would have been to let America decide what they thought of her sentiments and express that with ratings.  As much as I understand words have consequences, we should be the ones to decide what we’ll tolerate and what we won’t.  In the end, she was one person on a show that employed hundreds.  One person should not have the power to impact so many lives in a profoundly negative way in a ten second Tweet. 

                If it took ten seconds for her to destroy so many lives, how many would it take to destroy ours?  Such strange times we live in.