In Which Roseanne Appears To Get E. Jean Carroll's Story Mixed Up With Her Own
No, Roseanne, you're the one who had 'recovered memories' of sexual abuse that didn't happen.
There was a time when Roseanne, truly, was funny as hell. Sadly, we are no longer living in that time, and neither is she. These days, her idea of “comedy” — outside of getting wasted at Mar-a-Lago and going full Norma Desmond or freaking out about “Muslim Caliphates” — is swanning around a Bergdorf Goodman with a Gucci bag making fun of rape victims. Cute!
Someone (I imagine one of her sons) asks her, “Ma, are you okay? We’re in Bergdorf-Goodman.”
“No, I’m not okay because I just had a horrible flashback, a horrible memory. Right now I realized that 26 years ago, Joe Biden raped me right here in that dressing room in the shoe department, where I went in to change my shoes. He raped me right here, in the shoe department at Bergdorf-Goodman,” she said, clearly trying to reference what Donald Trump did to E. Jean Carroll, while also somehow not understanding how a shoe department works.
This would be a disgusting thing to do in any case, but in Roseanne’s it is especially galling and deeply hypocritical. She’s insinuating that Carroll “suddenly” remembered Trump raped her several decades prior, and also that she was lying about it. She did not. But you know who did do something almost exactly like that?
Roseanne. Except in this case it wasn’t just some creepy guy like Trump, it was her actual parents.
In 1991, Roseanne accused her parents of sexual abuse and incest, claiming to have suddenly recalled being abused by her mother even as an infant and being sexually abused by her father until she was 17 years old. She also claimed that he chased her around her home with “excrement” that he wanted to put on her head. She said she recovered this memories while in therapy.
The problem? It didn’t happen. Now, I’m not just saying that because her parents went on several TV news shows to say it didn’t happen and even took lie detector tests to show that it didn’t happen, or because it caused a serious rift between her and her sister Geraldine who had basically done everything for her her whole life, or even because the whole recovered memory thing, in my opinion and in the opinion of scientists who study memory, is nonsense that flies in the face of literally every single thing we know about how memory works. I’m saying that because she admitted it herself not too long ago.
Now, perhaps this is now how Roseanne Barr thinks accusations of sexual assault work. People just suddenly remember outlandish things that didn’t actually happen! Wild things like their fathers chasing them around the house trying to put excrement on their heads! But no, no. That’s actually not how things work for people other than Roseanne. Carroll has very clear memories of what happened to her, because when something horrible happens to you, you are actually more likely to remember it due to being unable to stop replaying it in your head over and over again. Thus, PTSD.
It is common for people to assume that everyone else in the world operates the way they do, but unlike Roseanne, most of us take sexual assault pretty darn seriously and would not make up a story like that. What would even be the point? Are there people out there who are currently voting for Trump who would change their mind were they sure he was a rapist? I’m going to assume no! In fact, I’d say he could go and rape someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue, on camera, and his people would be fine with that. After all, they’re fine with every other horrific thing he has said and done.
In fact, they really should not flatter themselves to think that anyone thinks they would care about such a thing.
I still hope that Roseanne someday gets the help she so clearly needs, because it’s still pretty heartbreaking to see someone who used to be so very talented devolving in this way. I don’t necessarily need to hear from her, but I hope she finds peace, the right medication and, frankly, a new hair stylist.
In the meantime, she should maybe tone down the projection a little bit.
PREVIOUSLY:
I have been raped. I wish like hell that I could forget it.
I feel nothing but abject contempt for Roseanne Barr, but for the sake of avoiding the loving impact of the Ban-Hammer of gentle correction I will shut the fuck up now.
You're far too kind.
This asshole is making it more difficult for sexual assault survivors. What she deserves I can't say here due to rules.