A couple of radio folks raised some good points, some of which I think are covered elsewhere in this thread, and some of which I'm regurgitating here. On the one hand, you have ABC, which is owned by Disney. Disney, throughout its history, hasn't been a hotbed of progressivism, but it's pretty clear that, today, they have a different standard than HBO or Comedy Central.
I don't think Bee should have apologized. I don't care if Roseanne apologizes, or doesn't, or does but sideswipes it two minutes later. That's my opinion. Yay me. Part of it is that Bee's joke, within the context it was uttered in, was actually funny. If Roseanne's tweet was supposed to be funny, it missed. Within the wider context of Roseanne's public personality, deeming her tweet racist is hard to avoid. Within the wider context of Bee's public personality, declaring her joke misogynistic, and therefore an equivalent of Roseanne's tweet, doesn't make sense.
In the BlehBlah ideal world, Bee would have responded by tweeting something along the lines of, "Man, it's tough that Roseanne got fired, because I, for one, support every pithecoid stunned-cunt who's trying to make an honest living in the rough and tumble #metoo world #MAGA".
Humour, like pornography versus art, has many subjective elements, but at the same time, art without exposed breasts isn't going to be mistaken for porn, as a general rule (standard Internet safe harbour statement). Blazing Saddles drops n-bombs all over the place, and dropping the n-bomb is undeniably racist in isolation, yet the movie is not racist. Roseanne's tweek is not part of a wider satire; it was, however wide one makes the context, racist. Had Kanye West tweeted the same thing, the reaction would have been different; surely still negative, but much different. Context matters.
Roseanne is an asshole. There is a part of me which feels for her, because I'm a big softy, and she has accomplished pretty amazing things while being dealt a shit hand, but she has made her asshole-ness obvious - indeed, part of her public persona - for a long, long time. Trump is a gigantic asshole, and the effect is magnified as he sits behind the most powerful desk in the world, between golf outings.
What I don't see is Roseanne going full-victim (never go full-victim, it's no way to win an Oscar). Yes, she's thrown a few limp rationalizations out there (
Ambien - not even once, people). Trump, on the other hand, has inserted himself into this - by invitation, certainly - by playing-up the victim card. He is, as has done over and over, masterfully distracting from all the other dumb shit he's pulling-off. It is amazing that a guy who was handed a fortune, has nurtured a public image via race-baiting to the point where it helped him gain the highest office in the land, a guy who is obviously a misogynist, is able to successfully have a large portion of the American public follow his line that if Roseanne was fired for being an unfunny racist, then Trump deserves an apology from ABC.
That isn't to say everyone should have a no-holds barred attitude toward Trump, but let's face it - this is a guy who was fine with Howard Stern calling his daughter a hot piece of ass, has had no apologies about birtherism, bragging about pussy grabbing, his role in the Central Park Five, and on and on and on. He is one of the most aggressively offensive people to hold high office, yet Roseanne being fired is magically about how the media owes him an apology less the hypocrisy of the biased left-wing fake news be proven true? It's ludicrous, and it's working.
Back on that group of radio folks; one noted that it's not exactly difficult to find a funny person around whom to center a show about the struggles of a working-class family. It's not difficult to find someone to host a topical weekly comedy show, either. Roseanne brought some hefty ratings with her, but she made it obvious that her values weren't aligned with Disney. Ultimately, though, she, and her show is replaceable. She's Michael Richards, not Jerry Seinfeld.
A quantum state of signature may or may not be here... you just ruined it.