ABC and 'Roseanne': Many warning signs before racist tweet

ENT

ABC and 'Roseanne': Many warning signs before racist tweet

2018-05-31 12:11 Last Updated At：12:11

An old picture of Roseanne Barr dressed as Adolf Hitler, wearing a swastika and pulling burnt cookies from an oven, splashed on the front of the New York Daily News Wednesday like a neon sign asking ABC executives: What were you thinking?

Given Barr's past incidents of bad behavior and questionable social media posts, ABC faced questions Wednesday about why it went back into business with her before it all blew apart. ABC canceled its successful reboot of "Roseanne" on Tuesday following the star's racist tweet likening former Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett to a cross between the Muslim Brotherhood and a "Planet of the Apes" actor.

Barr continued tweeting on Wednesday, at one point saying the offending tweet was composed at 2 a.m. after she took the insomnia drug Ambien. That led the drug maker Sanofi to say on social media that "racism is not a known side effect" of their product.

President Donald Trump, noting in a tweet that Robert Iger, CEO of ABC's parent Walt Disney Co., had called Jarrett to apologize, wondered why ABC hadn't apologized for "HORRIBLE statements made and said about me on ABC."

On social media, Barr wrote that what she said was indefensible, then retweeted several statements others made supporting her. She apologized to those who had lost their jobs because of her action, but also condemned cast members who threw her under the bus, in her words.

"I'm not a racist, I never was & I never will be," she wrote Wednesday. "One stupid joke in a lifetime of fighting 4 civil rights 4 all minorities, against networks, studios, at the expense of my nervous system/family/wealth will NEVER be taken from me."

Yet many saw a disturbing pattern being followed instead of a joke. Questionable actions date back to a cringe-worthy, crotch-grabbing rendition of the national anthem in 1990; a claim, later recanted, that she was an incest survivor; and the 2009 picture reprinted on the Daily News. Her social media past includes a racist tweet about former national security adviser Susan Rice and support for conspiracy theories like "pizzagate." On the same night as her Jarrett tweet, she posted a false claim about Chelsea Clinton that Clinton refuted.

ABC executives were not discussing their thought processes on Wednesday. It's clear, though, that Barr's social media habits were a sore point. She told USA Today earlier this year that "I had to get off social media because everybody's mad at me." In an Adweek article published only 10 days ago, she promised only to talk about what she's for, and not what she's against, when tweeting.

"Roseanne has said herself that she does not want what she says to overshadow the show in any way, and I do hope that she will continue to be thoughtful about what she shares on social media going forward," ABC Entertainment President Channing Dungey said in the same article.

Was ABC's gamble worth the risk to its reputation?

Opinion writer Roxane Gay wrote in The New York Times Wednesday that ABC did the right in canceling "Roseanne." ''But before it did the right thing, it did the wrong thing," she wrote.

"Everyone involved made a decision to support the show despite its co-creator's racism," Gay wrote. "They decided that their career ambitions, or desire to return to network television, or financial interests would best be served by looking the other way. It was only when Ms. Barr became an immediate liability that everyone involved finally looked at her racism and dealt with it directly."

ABC executives talked shortly after the 2016 election about a need to have more on the network schedule to reflect the point of view that got Trump elected. When Sara Gilbert began rounding up the old "Roseanne" cast for a reunion in early 2017, ABC fought Netflix for the rights to show it. The network — indeed all of broadcast television — needed some successful comedies.

The rebooted "Roseanne," where Barr played a Trump supporter, worked beyond anyone's dreams — logging 25 million viewers for its premiere in March and settling in as television's second most popular comedy after "The Big Bang Theory."

"I tend to be pretty forgiving to people who feel they can get a good show out there and keep the star in check, and you usually can, because a lot of stars can be problematic," said Garth Ancier, a veteran television executive who ran entertainment programming at Fox, NBC and the WB networks.

"I think it was a reasonable bet to take, and it worked until it didn't," Ancier said.

Ted Harbert knows better than most what Dungey and her boss, Ben Sherwood, went through. He was ABC's top programming executive during the first run of "Roseanne" in the 1990s. Barr was his headache then; he recalled having to go to her home where she was holed up with Tom Arnold for a few weeks and refusing to work in 1994, and coax her out.

"This is a person who, left to her own devices, is not totally in control," Harbert said. She has the temperament, and the tendency to go to dark places, that fuels many artists, he said.

Social media complicates the efforts of networks to keep stars working and things running smoothly, he said.

"How do you stop someone who does something like this in the middle of the night?" he said. "She blows up her own life and that of all those around her."

If he were in Dungey's position when the rebooted "Roseanne" was being considered — mindful that his job is to produce hits, or it won't be his job much longer — Harbert said he probably would have taken several meetings with Barr to figure out how she was doing. He probably would have made the same decision ABC made, he said.

Both former executives praised ABC for moving swiftly when presented with Barr's tweet. Ancier said ABC probably had a plan in place for that eventuality, given how quickly the show was erased from network web sites.

"A lot of comics say terrible things," Harbert said. "As long as they make us laugh, it's easy to forgive. What Roseanne said was not funny."

What marijuana reclassification means for the United States

2024-05-01 23:19 Last Updated At：23:30

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration is moving toward reclassifying marijuana as a less dangerous drug. The Justice Department proposal would recognize the medical uses of cannabis, but wouldn't legalize it for recreational use.

The proposal would move marijuana from the “Schedule I” group to the less tightly regulated “Schedule III."

So what does that mean, and what are the implications?

Technically, nothing yet. The proposal must be reviewed by the White House Office of Management and Budget, and then undergo a public-comment period and review from an administrative judge, a potentially lengthy process.

Still, the switch is considered “paradigm-shifting, and it’s very exciting,” Vince Sliwoski, a Portland, Oregon-based cannabis and psychedelics attorney who runs well-known legal blogs on those topics, told The Associated Press when the federal Health and Human Services Department recommended the change.

“I can’t emphasize enough how big of news it is,” he said.

It came after President Joe Biden asked both HHS and the attorney general, who oversees the DEA, last year to review how marijuana was classified. Schedule I put it on par, legally, with heroin, LSD, quaaludes and ecstasy, among others.

Biden, a Democrat, supports legalizing medical marijuana for use “where appropriate, consistent with medical and scientific evidence,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Thursday. “That is why it is important for this independent review to go through.”

No. Schedule III drugs — which include ketamine, anabolic steroids and some acetaminophen-codeine combinations — are still controlled substances.

They're subject to various rules that allow for some medical uses, and for federal criminal prosecution of anyone who traffics in the drugs without permission.

No changes are expected to the medical marijuana programs now licensed in 38 states or the legal recreational cannabis markets in 23 states, but it's unlikely they would meet the federal production, record-keeping, prescribing and other requirements for Schedule III drugs.

There haven't been many federal prosecutions for simply possessing marijuana in recent years, even under marijuana’s current Schedule I status, but the reclassification wouldn't have an immediate impact on people already in the criminal justice system.

“Put simple, this move from Schedule I to Schedule III is not getting people out of jail,” said David Culver, senior vice president of public affairs at the U.S. Cannabis Council.

But rescheduling in itself would have some impact, particularly on research and marijuana business taxes.

Because marijuana is on Schedule I, it's been very difficult to conduct authorized clinical studies that involve administering the drug. That has created something of a Catch-22: calls for more research, but barriers to doing it. (Scientists sometimes rely instead on people’s own reports of their marijuana use.)

Schedule III drugs are easier to study, though the reclassification wouldn't immediately reverse all barriers to study.

“It’s going to be really confusing for a long time,” said Ziva Cooper, director of the University of California, Los Angeles Center for Cannabis and Cannabinoids. “When the dust has settled, I don’t know how many years from now, research will be easier.”

Among the unknowns: whether researchers will be able to study marijuana from state-licensed dispensaries and how the federal Food and Drug Administration might oversee that.

Some researchers are optimistic.

“Reducing the schedule to schedule 3 will open up the door for us to be able to conduct research with human subjects with cannabis,” said Susan Ferguson, director of University of Washington’s Addictions, Drug & Alcohol Institute in Seattle.

Under the federal tax code, businesses involved in “trafficking” in marijuana or any other Schedule I or II drug can't deduct rent, payroll or various other expenses that other businesses can write off. (Yes, at least some cannabis businesses, particularly state-licensed ones, do pay taxes to the federal government, despite its prohibition on marijuana.) Industry groups say the tax rate often ends up at 70% or more.

The deduction rule doesn't apply to Schedule III drugs, so the proposed change would cut cannabis companies' taxes substantially.

They say it would treat them like other industries and help them compete against illegal competitors that are frustrating licensees and officials in places such as New York.

“You’re going to make these state-legal programs stronger,” says Adam Goers, of The Cannabist Company, formerly Columbia Care. He co-chairs a coalition of corporate and other players that’s pushing for rescheduling.

It could also mean more cannabis promotion and advertising if those costs could be deducted, according to Beau Kilmer, co-director of the RAND Drug Policy Center.

Rescheduling wouldn't directly affect another marijuana business problem: difficulty accessing banks, particularly for loans, because the federally regulated institutions are wary of the drug's legal status. The industry has been looking instead to a measure called the SAFE Banking Act. It has repeatedly passed the House but stalled in the Senate.

Indeed, there are, including the national anti-legalization group Smart Approaches to Marijuana. President Kevin Sabet, a former Obama administration drug policy official, said the HHS recommendation “flies in the face of science, reeks of politics” and gives a regrettable nod to an industry “desperately looking for legitimacy.”

Some legalization advocates say rescheduling weed is too incremental. They want to keep the focus on removing it completely from the controlled substances list, which doesn't include such items as alcohol or tobacco (they're regulated, but that's not the same).

Paul Armentano, the deputy director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, said that simply reclassifying marijuana would be “perpetuating the existing divide between state and federal marijuana policies.” Kaliko Castille, a past president of the Minority Cannabis Business Association, said rescheduling just "re-brands prohibition," rather than giving an all-clear to state licensees and putting a definitive close to decades of arrests that disproportionately pulled in people of color.

“Schedule III is going to leave it in this kind of amorphous, mucky middle where people are not going to understand the danger of it still being federally illegal,” he said.

This story has been corrected to show that Kaliko Castille is a past president, not president, of the Minority Cannabis Business Association and that Columbia Care is now The Cannabist Company.