Well that should just about do it for the Roseanne reboot! I can’t imagine ABC’s parent company Disney is going to be too thrilled that these pictures have resurfaced.
https://twitter.com/kurteichenwald/status/979413456150515712
Apparently these have been bouncing around since 2009! From Jewish Journal:
Not too many people are laughing at Roseanne Barr’s portrayal of Hitler on the cover of Heeb magazine this month. Yet there she is: a real-life Jewish grandmother dressed as a “Nazi domestic goddess.” She even figured in the trademark Hitler mustache and swastika armband, and bakes a batch of “burnt Jew cookies,” you know, for emphasis. Extra TV did a segment on the cover last week calling it “not funny” and shaming the controversial choice. But Heeb publisher Josh Neuman defended it, saying the cover was meant as “satire” and not done for “shock value.”
OK, you mean to tell me putting a Jewish woman on the cover of a Jewish magazine costumed as the man who burnt Jews in ovens (while she burns things in ovens) has no shock value? Since we’re being a wee bit insensitive to the remaining Holocaust survivors and their children, let’s at least call a spade a spade here, folks.
But if you’re mad, don’t blame Heeb. It was Roseanne who wanted to be photographed as Hitler. According to the magazine, she has a theory “that she may in fact be the reincarnation of Adolf Hitler,” and thus requested to create a kind of Jewish Halloween nightmare in order to make a personal statement. Writer Oliver Noble accompanied Roseanne at the photo shoot and wrote about the strange atmosphere on set:
Noble wisely decided to go with the flow. He writes that he greeted Roseanne with a “Sieg Heil,” in honor of the shoot.
As the “Domestic Goddess” dons the famous moustache, transforming into “Domestic Goddess Hitler,” I notice that she’s beginning to have fun. She nails the Fuehrer’s facial expressions with twisted glee, and as she takes the burnt gingerbread “Jew Cookies” out of the oven it occurs to me that Barr may be the last celebrity utterly incapable of giving a fuck.
I’ve got a very dark and morbid sense of humor. And I don’t get all wrapped around the axle about things being tasteful or tasteless – to each their own. I’m all for ridiculing Hitler and the actual NAZIs, but that’s not what this is.Even with the context they’re still disgusting! I’ve got nothing…
Stay frosty!
Open thread.
wenchacha
New note to 45: DO NOT CONGRATULATE.
Adam L Silverman
@wenchacha: I’m sure Mnem will have some thoughts, but with these back in circulation, I cannot imagine Disney is going to be happy about this.
rachel
Is this Roseanne Barr’s Kathy Griffin moment?
West of the Rockies (been a while)
Donald Trump: “Hold my beer….”
jl
I was going to go to sleep. But no, I had to click just one more time.
What the hell is ‘Heeb’ magazine? This was published on the cover in 2009 and it didn’t end Barr’s career? And Barr is Jewish?
I’m out of here for the evening. Good Lord.
Adam L Silverman
@jl:
heebmagazine.com/about
Gretchen
@rachel: No. She’s a conservative, so all is forgiven, always.
West of the Rockies (been a while)
Who among us hasn’t donned a Hitler costume and made light of the slaughter of six million people?//
westyny
Well, she’s Reformed!
Adam L Silverman
@West of the Rockies (been a while): Who indeed?
Gretchen
I grew up in Detroit post-WWII, where refugees and immigrants could make a good living without being able to speak much English. Many of my friends’ parents came from Europe after the war. My high school best friend’s dad spent the war in a Nazi POW camp, and her mother in a Nazi slave labor camp. She wasn’t quite right after that experience. They met in a displaced person’s camp after the war ended. When my kids were little, one of the dads was crippled, and my first thought was « The Nazis did it », because that was the most likely explanation in post-war Detroit. It was a revelation to find out that the cause was a motorcycle accident. It was a relief to realize that nobody had deliberately done that to him. Maybe as the people who actually lived through it die out younger people just can’t imagine the evil. Or maybe Roseanne is just a sick bastard who should be banned from polite society. Yeah, that’s my vote.
oatler.
It’s weird to see ABC shows like “The View” plug the show. Oh, Joy.
Amir Khalid
@westyny:
If this is what Roseanne is like after being Reformed, what was she like before?
Amir Khalid
@West of the Rockies (been a while):
You mean, like this?
westyny
@Amir Khalid: Less Reformed. /old Woody Allen joke.
Adam L Silverman
@oatler.: They most likely had no idea about these pictures. My guess is Disney/ABC didn’t know either. Heeb magazine was online only and not particularly well known or widely read. I’d never heard of it before and when I started working on this post I had to go to the about page to make sure it wasn’t some neo-NAZI site like those Daily Shoah asshats. I’d never seen, let alone heard of this photo spread and interview before tonight and I track this stuff.
Ninedragonspot
@Adam L Silverman: I remember seeing a tiny bit of “Heeb” back in its heyday and thinking, “They’re trying too hard.” At the time, I also considered the possibility that I was a young fogey who didn’t get it. I feel better about myself now.
oatler.
@Adam L Silverman: Could be true but I stick with the position that ABC goes with the money (“it’s always the money”)
hervevillechaizelounge
And all the hatemongers who demanded Kathy Griffin’s execution will be fine with this; I foresee another NYT op-ed about the intolerant left in our future.
Am I crazy or is it possible to buy NYT editorial space? Someone rich should pony up and print a screed about vivisecting NYT writers—then we’ll see who the real intolerant fascists are.
I never watched Roseanne in my youth but so many of my friends are crestfallen to learn she’s a Trump enthusiast; considering the only two things I remember about her are her claims of MPD and crotch-grabbing national anthem I’m not the least bit surprised. I can’t quite remember the details but didn’t she and Tom Arnold beat up a pregnant lady for using their parking space?
The first time someone shows you who they are…..
Jay
I’m named for a premature anti-Nazi
I’ve given up on parseing all the different flavours of Nazi,
They are all Nazi’s,
Rosanne Barr’s gone full Nazi, with out realizing at best, she is a Kapo,
FTFSH
Amir Khalid
@Adam L Silverman:
Now that they know about these pictures, Giant Evil Corp will be freaking out for sure. Heeb must have had an editor or someone on scene. I wonder why they didn’t gently suggest a less edgy theme, or threaten to call off the shoot.
Mnemosyne
@Adam L Silverman:
My thought: she’s toast. She may even get fired by Iger personally.
And the executive who championed bringing her back is sweating bullets right now, wondering if s/he’s going to get fired, too.
Cardinal rule in entertainment — or any job, really — do not blindside the CEO with an incident that damages the company.
(Note: I have zero inside information because of how the place is siloed, but firings are probably happening as we speak.)
magurakurin
@Adam L Silverman: actually, what she did yesterday is probably worse and certainly more relevant to the events of the day. She accused David Hogg of being a Nazi and throwing a Nazi salute. She has since tried to walk it back, but the truth is…she’s a Deplorable, through and through. There will be issues with her and this show going forward. Bigly ugly, I reckon.
BillinGlendaleCA
@westyny: You win the thread.
Adam L Silverman
@Amir Khalid: If you read the excerpt from the article about her photoshoot and interview that I put in the post, this issue is addressed. And there’s more at the link about it at Jewish Journal.
Fair Economist
@wenchacha:
Everything Trump Touches Dies
BillinGlendaleCA
@Fair Economist: He’s Shit Midas.
Mnemosyne
@magurakurin:
Given her previous track record, I would not be surprised if there’s a clause in her contract saying she can be fired for bad behavior.
This news combined with the Twitter thing means she’s already gone. She damaged the brand.
George Spiggott
Since Roseanne dragged Hitler into this, under Godwin’s Law the retread is over, with her as the loser.
Too bad, Roseanne!
Adam L Silverman
@Mnemosyne: Given that the Heeb articles on this are now 404 pages and dead links and the one synopsis page about this that’s still up has dead image icons, someone who had clearly seen these and had them decided to put them back in circulation. I can understand no one at Disney knowing about them because of the dead links/missing pages/missing icons because the site this was done for and the article was posted at is infrequently maintained these days. But someone decided this needed to come out and come out now. It will be interesting to see if we find out who.
And my impression of what Disney is likely to do is similar to yours, but we’ll have to wait and see.
Amir Khalid
@Mnemosyne:
If Disney does sack Roseanne Barr, what will it do with the unaired episodes of Roseanne?
Mnemosyne
@Adam L Silverman:
This week, I went to a 90-minute presentation about the GEC’s dedication to diversity & inclusion and how we are going to be industry leaders in the field.
She’s toast.
EBT
@hervevillechaizelounge: Likely because the Conners (Roseanne) and the Bundys (Married… With Children) were a fuck load more like my family than the Tanners or the Winslows. Also she was pro gay back in the day which was new for television.
Mnemosyne
@Amir Khalid:
Again, strictly a guess, but probably shelve them. It sucks for Sara Gilbert, because this was her big break as a TV producer, but them’s the breaks when you try to work with Roseanne.
hervevillechaizelounge
Okay, I did more digging and maybe I misremembered the brawl over the parking place; the closest thing I could find was a situation where Julia Louise Dryfus accidentally parked in the Barr/Arnold space so they scrawled “”Julia Loser Dry Puss” on her car.
I did manage to find an oddly-prescient blog post by her stand-in on the original show.
Sound like anyone we know?
Adam L Silverman
@Mnemosyne: By tomorrow morning it will be on Joy Ann Reid’s twitter feed because she’s friendly with Eichenwald. Malcolm Nance has already retweeted and tagged the Auschwitz Memorial, which he recently visited. Once Reid picks it up, the other MSNBC hosts will too. And if it isn’t covered in their 4 to 11 PM block tomorrow, my guess is she’ll cover it on Saturday. Most likely by having Eichenwald on. So if Disney isn’t moving fast, they’re going to get a lot of pressure in short order.
Ninedragonspot
So who hires post-Hitler Barr first – James Bennet’s NYT or Jeffrey Goldberg’s Atlantic?
Gretchen
@Mnemosyne: This makes me happy.
Adam L Silverman
@Mnemosyne: Even Fox News covered it at the time, albeit their online site:
Mnemosyne
@EBT:
It wasn’t a terrible idea to revive the show. It was a terrible idea to think they could make a loose cannon like Roseanne behave herself off camera. This kind of shit is what she does.
Adam L Silverman
@Mnemosyne: And here’s her explanation from 2011:
forward.com/articles/142639/roseanne-barr-aims-to-bring-justice-to-women-and-p/
Sure you did lady, sure you did.
Mnemosyne
@Adam L Silverman:
It’s only midnight here. Again, only a guess, but I’m betting the PR folks are drafting press releases for 9 am Eastern time even as we speak. And not the junior ones, either.
That speech Ned Beatty gives in Network? Her ears are probably still ringing from the GEC’s version right now.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Mnemosyne: Don’t fuck with The Mouse!
Amir Khalid
@Adam L Silverman:
Well yeah, but the problem with this kind of humour, as Jewish Journal itself notes, is that too many people won’t get it, and will instead see it as a validation of their bigotry. It sounds like no one at the shoot (or, later on, among the editors) had the presence of mind to avoid an obvious potential controversy.
I say this with hindsight, of course: Roseanne’s idea was questionable, to put it politely. Either no one at Heeb thought to raise the question, or no one at Heeb dared to. Maybe they were overawed by her stardom.
Viva BrisVegas
@Adam L Silverman:
Any moment now the right wing illiterati will start complaining about the stifling of dissent and liberal intolerance.
Then it will dawn on them that she claims to have done it in support of Palestinians.
Heads will explode.
Amir Khalid
@Mnemosyne:
There’s also a matter of lost residual income for quite a few innocent parties, isn’t there?
BillinGlendaleCA
@Viva BrisVegas: You forgot the part where liberals have no sense of humor.
John Revolta
@Mnemosyne: I thought of that too.
Lenny Bruce (who had some Hitler bits of his own!) had a show the night Kennedy got shot. He came out on stage all somber, and then he said “Man…………….poor Vaughn Meader!”
When I saw this shit my first reaction was “Man……………poor Sara Gilbert!”
The Simp in the Suit
That she just called the Parkland student a Nazi has even greater impact on me. If she was and is truly serious about the underlying statement she claims she was making with the Hitler home baker photoshoot, she would not have tweeted out that the student is acting like a Nazi.
“poor Sara Gilbert” — maybe. But John Goodman? What the hell is he thinking? Who would want to work with hi now?
Viva BrisVegas
@BillinGlendaleCA:
Of course liberals have no sense of humour.
Anybody who doesn’t laugh at a cripple being mocked is obviously humourless.
NotMax
When it comes to Disney, Walt would have had a “Where’s the problem?” reaction.
Just sayin’.
John Revolta
@The Simp in the Suit: Goodman will be fine. Nobody’s gonna blame him for this, and he’s a major star in his own right.
Lalophobia
Man, I’d heard she was crazy but….dear God.
I’d really, really rather she’d not have done this, but if it gets her Trump normalizing show off the air, well, that’ll be a plus. And the more shit like this gets associated with Trump and Trump’s supporters the better.
Fair Economist
@Viva BrisVegas:
It really was an amazing stunt in that it will seriously offend EVERYBODY.
JR
@jl: Heeb is/was a Jewish-centric GQ/Esquire. I remember my roommate used to subscribe way back in the early aughts. I don’t remember stupid shit like this, but what can you do.
PST
The claim that this stunt had some political meaning involving the Palestinians sounds made up long after the fact. This was nothing but sophomoric, attention grabbing edginess.
The Thin Black Duke
After the noise is over, I don’t think anything is going to happen. The TV show is making money, and that’s all they care about. Expect the usual non-apology and a well-publicized donation to a charity.
oldster
If nothing else, it makes you appreciate how much time and attention Mel Brooks spent on giving *context* to his Hitler-jokes in “The Producers.”
Is it possible to joke about Hitler? Sure! In fact, Mel thought it was morally necessary.
But it’s hard work getting the details right. And the details matter. If you want to tell edgy jokes, you sure as hell have to set up the punch-line with consummate care.
There was no deep thought here, from the evidence. It was just a weird Hitler-kink expressing itself in an ugly way.
And then her invocation of the Palestinians adds insult to injury.
I hope she goes down for this, and that we don’t have to hear from her again.
Gvg
Hmmm, I think Rosanne has undiagnosed and untreated mental issues. She is too unstable. Being a star has not been good for her.
I never knew when her show was on TV that she was supposed to be a liberal type. All the attention I saw showed her as a foul mouthed fight picker. Didn’t appeal so I never watched.
Barry
@Viva BrisVegas: “Then it will dawn on them that she claims to have done it in support of Palestinians.
Heads will explode.”
That would require subtle thinking on their part.
The Red Pen
Wife: Isn’t she Jewish.
Me: Yes.
Wife: So she gets the in-group dispensation… but you know, there are limits on that.
BruceFromOhio
Didn’t care for the show or the comic the first time around.
Don’t care for any of it now.
Should these prove genuine, supports the corollary that dumpster fire fans are awful humans, and should be treated as such. Of course, they will also love that it ‘upsets the libtards uhhuhhuhuhhuhh’.
sp98
@Adam L Silverman: Without the original issue to provide context it’s hard to verify her claim that it was a Gaza protest; but just as a visual “joke” wouldn’t that be more convincing if she dressed as Hitler, but with a Star of David instead of a Swastika on her armband, and something to identify the cookies as Palestinians? Color me skeptical of her explanation.
different-church-lady
@oldster: Good point. In the Producers, Hitler was intended to be a way for the non-sympathetic protagonists to deliberately fail by using the most morally repellent thing they could come up with, and the joke was that it backfired in a massive Wile E. Coyote way. You were supposed to find them funny because they were pathetic, not clever. The joke is not by them, the joke is on them.
Ohio Mom
@West of the Rockies (been a while): Eleven million.
Not everyone killed was Jewish. Lots of gays, Roma (gypsies), mentally and physically disabled, Poles and other Slavic people, Jehovah’s Witnesses, political opponents…the list goes on.
It is a pet peeve of mine that the part of the Jewish community that maintains that only Jews were victims seems to be winning the PR war on this subject, as evidenced by your innocent mistake of using the wrong number.
It is a peculiar type of Holocaust denial to not count that other five million.
@Gvg: I think Roseanne has actually had her mental health conditions diagnosed. She is not forthcoming about that and makes up a lot of stories in her usual attempt to be provocative.
I’m guessing a lot of last week’s viewers were curious to know what happened to the family in the intervening years. Now that they’ve been updated, I wonder how many are going to tune back in. The show might die a natural death from low ratings.
debit
Remember when Ted Danson wore blackface? It didn’t kill his career, just his relationship with Whoopi.
sherparick1
@Adam L Silverman: I went to this and said, and wonder if she would say that she was trying for something like “The Producers” and it fell flat. But no, she meant to hurt other Jews because something something Palestinians, and now she is all in for Trump who is all in for Bibi just seven years later.
But I guess we are the cruel “Left” just trying to stomp on the pro-Trump dissenters.
MattF
I’ve always been uncomfortable with Barr– this business illustrates why.
Just the Facts
This doesn’t appear to be getting traction yet. Interesting. Maybe MSM can handle only one Trump-loving Nazi story at a time (Laura Ingraham at this moment).
Washburn
If she were making hundreds of millions for Disney like Weinstein or Lassiter, she might get a few months this me out like the doled or to Lassiter
But I assume she’s only making a few million for Disney so she’s toast.
Darrin Ziliak (formerly glocksman)
My impression is that she tried to out Mel Brooks Mel Brooks (who is known for Hitler parodies) and instead came out looking like a lunatic anti-semite.
Grover Gardner
I predict her viewers won’t care because, to be honest, it’s too damned bizarre to figure out what it was even supposed to mean. I suspect most people will think she was making fun of Nazis and leave it at that.
J R in WV
Sometimes comedians have a method to their humor that escapes some people totally.
“Why would anyone laugh at that?” is the question that comes to those people. Like Dice Clay was it? who smashed food with a giant mallet, on stage? Not funny after the first smash the first time he did that.
Roseanne Barr is like that for me. Not funny, why waste my time being not amused. Plus now I know she’s a political idiot.
Mnemosyne
@Washburn:
ARGB, if you really wanted to fool people into thinking you were a new commenter, you probably should have abandoned your weird obsessions.
Just sayin’.
father pusbucket
Cabinet post in her future?
Brachiator
This was on the cover of Heeb Magazine?
Sorry, bad taste, even offensive taste, is not the same thing as deliberate racism.
Bobby Thomson
It’s OK IF You’re A Racist
JaneSays
Should this be the end for the Roseanne reboot? Abso-fucking-lutely.
Will it be the end for the Roseanne reboot?
Does not appear so – it just got renewed for a second season. AFTER the Eichenwald tweet went out.
deadline.com/2018/03/roseanne-revival-renewed-second-season-abc-season-11-1202356132/
Barf.