Updated: Wednesday, May 30, 2018, 10:15 a.m. EDT: Earlier this morning, The Root reached out to drug manufacturer Sanofi, the company behind Ambien, to ask what it thought about the fact that Roseanne Barr blamed her racism on its sleep aid. Ashleigh Koss, head of media relations, had this to say:
People of all races, religions and nationalities work at Sanofi every day to improve the lives of people around the world. While all pharmaceutical treatments have side effects, racism is not a known side effect of any Sanofi medication.
Basically, Sanofi is like, “Keep Ambien out of your racism.”
Earlier:
On Tuesday, Roseanne Barr said that she was leaving Twitter after she compared former presidential adviser Valerie Jarrett to a primate. And that was before Barr’s show was canceled by ABC. Apparently, like crack, Twitter keeps calling her and calling her, because on Tuesday night and Wednesday morning, Barr’s Twitter fingers were back at it.
In addition to retweeting every follower who showed support for her, Barr alleged that she didn’t even know Jarrett was black when she compared her to a monkey from the Planet of the Apes. Barr tweeted that she thought Jarrett was “Saudi” and didn’t realize the racist implications of her post.
“Don’t feel sorry for me, guys!!” she wrote. “I just want to apologize to the hundreds of people, and wonderful writers (all liberal) and talented actors who lost their jobs on my show due to my stupid tweet.”
And then Barr strangely blamed her racism on the sleep aid Ambien.
“It was 2 in the morning and I was ambien tweeting-it was memorial day too-i went 2 far & do not want it defended-it was egregious Indefensible,” Barr tweeted. “I made a mistake I wish I hadn’t but...don’t defend it please. ty.”
Let’s see the side effects of Ambien:
Yeah, notice racism is not listed. Barr definitely must have had one of those unreported side effects only 0.00 percent of Ambien’s users experience.
Since Barr’s life has come to a screeching halt, her co-stars have been distancing themselves from her, but it hasn’t stopped her from hitting back at them:
Now that she’s unemployed, Barr is prepping to tell her story to Joe Rogan on Friday, because two assholes are better than one.
DISCUSSION
Funny how the people I know who have been prescribed ambien for various sleep and anxiety disorders never seem to have moments of unprompted racism (or even prompted racism either). I’m thinking this isn’t an ambien problem but more an “I don’t want to take responsibility” problem.