Facts Matter: Were Roseanne's other Twitter comments true?
Roseanne Barr's Twitter posts denigrating a former adviser to President Barack Obama led ABC executives to cancel her show “Roseanne” on Tuesday.
ABC Entertainment President Channing Dungey called Barr's statement “abhorrent, repugnant and inconsistent with our values.”
But Barr has a history of controversial comments, including these that also came Monday on Twitter.
Barr implied Chelsea Clinton is married to the nephew of billionaire liberal Democratic donor George Soros, simply stating “Chelsea Soros Clinton.” Clinton married investment banker Marc Mezvinsky in 2010, according to The Washington Post. The former first daughter answered Barr on Twitter: “Good morning Roseanne — my given middle name is Victoria.”
Barr later tweeted “Correction: Chelsea Clinton is not married to a Soros nephew. Her husband is the son of a corrupt senator …” Mezvinsky's father, a former member of the U.S. House of Representatives, not the Senate, was convicted of fraud in 2001.
As for Soros, Barr accused him of being a Nazi “who turned in his fellow Jews 2 be murdered …” and said the 87-year-old wanted to “overthrow” the United States. Both claims are baseless, according to The New York Times. In a statement, a Soros spokesman called the assertions insulting. “George Soros survived the Nazi occupation of Hungary as a 13-year-old child by going into hiding and assuming a false identity with the help of his father, who managed to save his own family and help many other Jews survive the Holocaust,” the statement read.
Following the cancellation of her show, Barr said, “I apologize. I am now leaving Twitter,” according to The New York Times. This ended up also being false as she returned to social media with more than 100 more comments on Wednesday.
President Donald Trump last week brought attention to a photo showing young-looking immigrants at the Mexico border posted on Twitter by some activists blaming the current administration for separating children from their parents.
But the photo was taken by the Associated Press on June 18, 2014, AP reported.
“Democrats mistakenly tweet 2014 pictures from Obama's term showing children from the Border in steel cages,” Trump tweeted, “They thought it was recent pictures in order to make us look bad, but backfires.”
The image of two female detainees sleeping in a holding cell was taken at a center run by the Customs and Border Protection Agency in Nogales, Arizona.
No free coffee
A claim circulating on social media falsely said Starbucks would award free coffee for a year to anyone who could break the coffeehouse's new shatterproof windows, according to Snopes.com.
The image, including a photo of a Starbucks window, said the chain spent three years developing the indestructible product and is offering a contest in which the winner would receive free coffee for shattering the new glass with a brick or rock.
The company said the claim is false.
Starbucks was in the news for taking a break from brewing Tuesday while employees attended anti-bias training. The sessions were planned after two black men were arrested in a Philadelphia branch in April, prompting a national debate about racial profiling, according to The Washington Post.
Nazi salute item miscast
A clipping from a January 1934 edition of the Australian newspaper the Advocate with the headline “Failed to give Nazi salute. German football club banned for 12 months” is making the rounds on Facebook.
The excerpt began appearing after the National Football League's recent announcement that all players on the field must stand during the national anthem, according to Snopes.com.
NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said the league's new policy is a compromise, according to The Washington Post. The debate began when former 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick knelt during the national anthem in 2016 as a protest against police brutality and racial inequities in the justice system.
Although the 1934 image is genuine, Snopes.com said, the cases are not alike.
The German team was not protesting the Nazi regime, according to Snopes. The Karlsruhe Football Club promoted Nazi policies, such as banning Jewish players. The story refers to a game on Christmas in 1933 in France. The French players refused to play if the Germans gave the Nazi salute. The Karlsruhe team skipped the salute to play the match.
The team was then prohibited from playing outside Germany for a year.
• Bob Oswald is a veteran Chicago-area journalist and former news editor of the Elgin Courier-News. Contact him at boboswald33@gmail.com.