OK. Jerry Seinfeld, producer and creator of Seinfeld, a show that, like most other New York City-based sitcoms of the ’90s (see Friends, Sex and the City, etc.), had no black people in them, has expressed bewilderment and perhaps sadness that ABC fired Roseanne Barr after she referred to a black woman as an ape, calling the move “overkill” and saying that he hates to see a comic lose a job.
“I don’t even know why they had to do that,” Seinfeld said Monday, according to USA Today as he promoted the upcoming season of his Netflix series Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee. “It seemed like, you don’t need to murder someone that’s committing suicide. I thought the firing was overkill. She’s already dead.”
The 64-year-old actor also told Entertainment Tonight the same: “I didn’t see why it was necessary to fire her. Why would you murder someone who’s committing suicide?”
No word on why Seinfeld is using death metaphors so loosely (is he being facetious?), but it’s not as if ABC is totally 86ing Roseanne; the show will have life after death with The Connors, which will be about the working-class family sans its crazy matriarch.
Apparently, he has some thoughts on that as well.
“I think they should get another Roseanne,” Seinfeld said. “They brought Dan Conner back; he was dead and they brought him back. So why can’t we get another Roseanne? There [are] other funny women that could do that part. You need to get the comic in there. I hate to see a comic lose a job.”
And I hate to see a racist continue to be coddled and rewarded for dangerous behavior.
Maybe I, unlike Jerry Seinfeld, would bear the brunt of the casual and pervasive racism and its foolish minions, whereas Seinfeld can loftily pontificate from his perch of privilege, yadda, yadda, yadda.