Roseanne Barr lost her job Tuesday, and then many on the right lost their minds. If Barr was canned for comparing a former Obama aide to an ape, then. … Well, what about HBO’s Bill Maher who compared Trump to orange orangutan? What about ESPN’s Keith Olbermann who has repeatedly cursed just about everyone working in this White House? What about MSNBC’s Joy Reid who once had a habit of making graphic gay slurs on her blog?
The obvious answer: It doesn’t matter.
Life isn’t fair. Everyone doesn’t get what they’ve got coming all at once. Hollywood, especially, isn’t consistent. No matter how big the grievance-mongering parade of bigots, cranks, and lunatics gets, the excuses don’t change the fact that Barr’s repeated racist remarks easily disqualify her from having a national platform.
While the circumstances of every counter-grievance differ, each is derivative of the same playground logic:
It isn’t fair for someone that I like, someone who speaks like me and someone who talks about the things that matter to me, to get punished when the people I don’t like get a free pass.
A version of that tribal scream happens inside each of us every time justice is meted out inconsistently. It is perfectly natural, and that’s the problem, because one big chief or one big network executive isn’t around to make all the decisions. Plain and simple, opportunity shouldn’t be contingent on blood oaths, partisan politics, or any other appeal to authority. It ought to be determined by talent, contingent on general decency.
None of this is an excuse for Maher, Olbermann, or Reid. Obviously all of them are awful in their own way. Go ahead and condemn them in terms of their own stupidity. But any comparison of one awful person to another is counterproductive. By pointing out the inconsistency, some give the appearance of supporting Barr’s bigotry.
It would be better to first remove the celebrity plank from the collective eye of the Right, to more easily see and remove the even bigger beam in the eye of the Left. But that takes humility and patience. Obviously it’s more satisfying to gouge eyes until everyone is too blind to see reason.
