Is there ever an excuse for racism? Such as … mental illness? Bill Maher seems to thinks so.
Amid the recent controversy surrounding Roseanne Barr’s racist tweets that resulted in her sitcom’s cancellation, Maher weighed in Friday night during his talk show, Real Time with Bill Maher.
Maher referred to Barr as his “friend,” saying the controversial comedian revealed she had multiple personality disorder in 1994, reports the U.K.’s Daily Mail.
“My friend Roseanne admitted that she had been admitted to a mental institution,” Maher told the audience. “She has said she has multiple personalities and, unfortunately, one of them is quite a racist.”
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In case you’ve been living under a rock, Barr’s now deleted tweets compared Valerie Jarret, Barack Obama’s former senior advisor, to an ape.
Maher went on to say that Roseanne will “always” be his friend, but “her world came crashing down this week with a series of tweets she put out on Tuesday that were so full of racism, conspiracy theories and personal attacks they were described as abhorrent bordering on presidential.”
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In an interview with Esquire Magazine back in 2001, Barr made claims that she developed Dissociative Identity Disorder (Multiple Personality Disorder) when her mother hired an abusive German neighbor to work inside their home.
“He used to torture me every day. I’d come home and tell my mother, ‘He’s hitting me’; he locked me in his garage and called me a Jew b***h and said Hitler was right!,” Barr said, adding her mother hired the man “just to prove me wrong. That’s how you get multiple-personality disorder. Or DID.”
According to the Daily Mail, the names of Barr’s different identities are: 2, Baby, Cindy, Susan, Nobody, Somebody, Joey, Heather, Roger, Kevin, Evangelina, Vangie, Martha, Mother, Piggy, Fucker, Bambi, Rosey, Roseanne, ONE.