Roseanne Barr. Photo courtesy of ABC.
Summary: Roseanne Barr was recently fired from her hit TV show because of a racist tweet.
This week, conservative actress Roseanne Barr sent out a shocking tweet comparing an African-American woman to a monkey, and the network that hosted her show swiftly acted by canceling her program, “Roseanne.” While Barr has been tweeting out a defense for herself, she is not the only star to have fallen into hot water after saying something racist. The following are six instances where celebrities or those in power were fired because they couldn’t keep their bigotry under wraps.
Roseanne Barr
Roseanne Barr is a successful comedian whose hit show “Roseanne” was rebooted on ABC this year. The reboot was massively successful, and ABC had ordered a second season. The second season was about to start production when Barr said she took too much Ambien and sent out a racist tweet, comparing Valerie Jarret to a monkey from the “Planet of the Apes” movies. Jarret, a former aide to President Barack Obama, is African-American, and Barr’s racial slur was widely condemned. Hours after the tweet was sent, ABC stated that they were canceling her program.
Paula Deen
Paula Deen was famous for her southern cooking and putting butter in almost everything she made, but her career ended after it was discovered she had made racist comments to her staff. The revelation came to light when a former employee sued her for discrimination in 2013, and once people knew Deen freely used the N-word, she was dropped from the Food Network and her numerous endorsement deals.
John Galliano
Fashion designer John Galliano was the head of Christian Dior in 2011, but he was fired after a drunken video of him blasting Jewish people surfaced online. In France where he lived, making antisemitic comments is illegal, and he was found guilty and sentenced to pay a fine. He has since worked with the Anti-Defamation League, and in 2013, he was welcomed back in the fashion world.
Donald Sterling
Donald Sterling once owned the Los Angeles Clippers. However, his basketball career ended in 2014 when TMZ published a leaked recording of him telling his mistress not to bring black people to any games.
“It bothers me a lot that you want to broadcast that you’re associating with black people. Do you have to?” Sterling said in the recording. “You can sleep with [them]. You can bring them in, you can do whatever you want. The little I ask you is not to promote it on that … and not to bring them to my games.”
The racist rant angered the NBA, which banned him from the league for life and gave him a $2.5 million fine. Because of the ban, Sterling was forced to sell the team.
Justine Sacco
While not a celebrity, Justine Sacco had a high-profile job at IAC at the age of 30, but her life changed when she sent out an offensive tweet. Before boarding a plane to Africa, she tweeted out, “Going to Africa. Hope I don’t get AIDS. Just kidding. I’m white!” to her few hundred followers, not realizing that her tweet would soon be seen by millions. During her hours in the air, Twitter users called for her firing and dubbed her a racist, and after she landed, she soon learned that she was terminated from her job and an infamous internet cautionary tale.
Charlie Sheen
Charlie Sheen has been known to be a drug user and playboy, but his wild antics ended his career on the hit show “Two and a Half Men” when the actor went on an antisemitic tirade against the show’s creator, Chuck Lorre. Sheen was fired and replaced by Ashton Kutcher, but he later found another show to star on–“Anger Management.”
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