Episode 87 - Roseanne’s Ambien Defense
Date: 2018-06-14 | Duration: 26:16
Topics
Ambien is classified as a “hypnotic” drug Roseanne says tweets were at 2AM on Ambien Ambien manufacturer (Sanofi) says racism not a known side effect Sanofi took a despicable position on the matter Sanofi blamed the likely VICTIM of their drug
Transcript
[0:05] Hey everybody, come on in here. We got more news about Roseanne. It’s getting interesting now. If you haven’t seen the latest news—and by latest, I mean just apparently in the last few hours—Roseanne has attributed her offensive tweet about Valerie Jarrett to taking Ambien and tweeting at 2:00 AM. How do you believe the media and the world is receiving this explanation from Roseanne? Well, they’re not believing it, that’s for sure. But even better, the drug maker who makes Ambien, Sanofi, tweeted a response.
[1:05] Sanofi tweeted a response that said, quote, “While all pharmaceutical treatments have side effects, racism is not a known side effect of any Sanofi medications.” Very much like a court trial where you don’t open up a line of questioning unless you really want that line of questioning opened up, Sanofi has opened up the topic of whether their drug could cause racism. Now, I looked at Joe Rogan’s—not his article, but he tweeted around a Huffington Post story that talked about the side effects of Ambien.
[2:06] The side effects of Ambien are… and by the way, did you know that the class of drug that Ambien belongs to are called—and this is the official name, this is not my funny name I’m putting on it—the official name for the class of drugs that Ambien is in are hypnotics? Hypnotics. That’s the actual class of drugs. Now, if you’re taking a hypnotic drug, there appear to be a number of reports where people did not make decisions the same way a person not on the drug would make. For example, people don’t remember that they were eating sandwiches that had butter and a full egg with the shell that they squished on the piece of bread, and they wake up the next morning and they have no memory of it.
[3:07] Now, if you ask the Ambien people, “Hey, would your drug make somebody make a sandwich out of an egg with its shell on while you’re asleep?” They might say yes, they might say no, they might say, “We don’t know, it’s hard to tell.” But one thing that I think that everybody does agree on is that it causes you to do things you wouldn’t do in your regular mind. So let’s compare the two hypotheses we have in front of us. One: Roseanne Barr knew she was sending an offensive, racist tweet and did it anyway and then destroyed her life and the lives of all the people she loved completely intentionally—because anybody who sent a racist tweet would certainly know that was going to happen. Compare that to the alternative hypothesis which she has provided. Let’s just look and see which one fits the facts better.
[4:08] Number one: Is Roseanne known for saying things she doesn’t believe to be true? I don’t think so. If anybody has some counter-evidence, please send it to me. But in fact, I think she is actually blamed for being a straight shooter who maybe should say less of the things that she believes, her critics would say. So the first bit of fact is: Would she lie? This seems to suggest that if she said she was on Ambien, that was almost certainly true based on her track record. She’s not the kind of person we think—again, if you have any counter-evidence I would look at it—but she probably was taking the drug, which is different than saying the drug was responsible. Those are separate. So, let me ask the jury—you are the jury—I will present the two cases as adequately as I can.
[5:10] Jury, do you agree that the most likely explanation of whether she took the drug or not—forget about what it caused or didn’t cause—do you accept into evidence that she took an Ambien and it was two o’clock in the morning when she made the tweet? Go. Jury, do you buy the first piece of evidence as true or at least most likely true? We’re getting a lot of “yes” here. Now, the first piece of evidence suggests that she took it, but this does not in any way absolve her. This is just a fact in evidence. Certainly, people take Ambien and make good decisions, and certainly they take Ambien and make decisions that are true to their nature. So we can’t say that just because she took it…
[6:10] …therefore she wasn’t in her right mind. Now, I can produce a witness, but I won’t—if I had to, I suppose I could. I can produce a witness to say that my first reaction to the story was not that it was racist, but that it was mental illness. In other words, the tweet looked to me not so much like an example of obvious racism even though that was the outcome. On its face, it’s offensive and nobody defends it, including Roseanne. Even Roseanne doesn’t defend the tweet. So zero people defend the tweet; it had the effect of being quite offensive. But do you believe that this is more likely, or the following story? Story number one: Which is more likely? Is it likely that she…
[7:13] …didn’t know she was sending a racist tweet when you and I and everyone else who saw it immediately said, “Holy… what? This is obviously trouble.” So let me present this to the jury: Do you find it likely that in her right mind she would have sent that tweet? Even if you are a racist—and here’s the beautiful part—even if you imagined, doing some mind-reading, and you say, “Well, I think she is a racist in her secret thoughts,” even then, would she send a tweet which so obviously would destroy her life and then the lives of all the cast members and all the people who loved her, even if she was a racist? Now, likely? In fact, somebody said “maybe,” and I think that’s a fair answer.
[8:14] People do dumb things. People can be racist. People can be racist and then admit it. So those things happen, but it’s pretty unlikely. My first reaction was, “Gosh, I see why it looks exactly like racism.” People should not be blamed for taking it exactly that way. Again, I disavow the comment, as does Roseanne. But did it look like it was something that came from a sane person who knew what she was doing? You said no. So we have in evidence, or at least the determination of the jury, that the most likely explanation is that she wasn’t in her right mind and she’s being honest about that. Because somebody who was in a, let’s say, their normal mind—even if you think they’re a little crazy—if her normal personality sort of…
[9:18] …agreed with the tweet, wouldn’t she defend it a little bit? She’s actually publicly asked other people not to defend it. That’s as much “not defending” as you can get. You’ve been on Twitter. What do people do when they say something they meant to say and then the rest of the world points it out for being a terrible thing to say? What do people do almost every single time? They double down. People who mean it, or even mean any version of it, always double down. Always double down. Because keep in mind, she already lost everything. There’s not much left—basically all she has is her honesty. That’s sort of the game right now, because she lost everything and it’s not coming back.
[10:18] She’s not going to be back on ABC. So here’s my problem: the name of the company that makes Ambien is Sanofi. I want you to hear that name. Sanofi’s tweet saying, “Our drug does not cause racism,” brands her as a racist. When they create a drug which clearly—I think even they would agree—for some people causes them to make judgments that you would never make in your normal mind, the obvious most likely explanation is that she made a tweet that she simply wouldn’t have made in her right mind. And because she is a straight-shooter, it’s almost impossible for me to believe—it’s possible, but it’s almost impossible to believe that Roseanne in particular… I wouldn’t say this about every other person. Most people are big liars, but…
[11:19] …she’s got a pretty long track record of telling it like she thinks, even if she’s wrong. So if she tells me that she took an Ambien and she made that tweet, I’m going to believe that. She has earned that credibility. Now, she did not earn the credibility of being a racist or not a racist, because there are things that people look at—and you can’t read their minds and stuff like that—but for Sanofi to blame her for being a racist and not take any responsibility for their drug being even potentially a contributing factor is one of the most [fucked] up things I’ve ever seen in my life.
[12:20] She apologized and she asked other people to not defend it. That looks like a person who knows that something happened that shouldn’t have happened and tried to—not fix it, but at least put it in context, let people understand what was happening. What Sanofi did was the most despicable thing I’ve seen in a long time—to brand her as a racist just to get their corporate asses out of the heat. It was clever, I’ve got to say it was clever, but it was despicable. Despicable. Ambien, you also made a big persuasion mistake. What you should have done is stayed out of it. Now we’re going to talk about you like a bad lawyer. You’ve introduced into evidence something you shouldn’t have introduced into evidence. Now let’s all talk about the [problems] with Ambien. Because if it makes you…
[13:20] …make decisions that are not your normal decisions, some of them are going to look like you’re a murderer. Some of them are going to look like you like to eat eggs with the shells on. Some of them are going to look like you drove over people that you didn’t mean to drive over. Some of them are going to make you tweet things that, in your normal mind, you never would have tweeted because, “Oh my God, anybody in their right mind can tell this looks racist.” Sanofi, you screwed up badly. I would have given Ambien a pass. I would have said, “I get that pharmaceuticals have side effects.” Ambien, for a lot of people, apparently solves a problem. It’s a medical problem. It’s a calculated risk; if people are well-informed, they can take the risk or not. We don’t know how big the risk is, but you hear enough stories…
[14:21] …you have to wonder about it. But for them to say that this was not caused by them, it was caused by her being a racist—bastards. This is the company that should be driven out of business. Now, I don’t support boycotts, so I’m not going to recommend a boycott, but in terms of corporate malfeasance, I’ve never seen worse. This is a 10 out of 10 for malfeasance. Corporate irresponsibility, corporate dickish behavior, corporate awfulness at a level… they’re literally blaming the victim of their freaking drug. They called somebody who is probably, in my guess—and of course we don’t know, but I’m going to go with the interpretation that makes most sense given the evidence we have—it looks like the Ambien people…
[15:25] …decided to blame Roseanne and label her a freaking racist for something their drug likely—we don’t know, but given the evidence—likely was a contributing factor. How many of you have ever made a tweet when you were not in your normal mind? In other words, you drank, you took a drug, you were tired, you were angry? Has anybody done a tweet that, even after you looked at it, you said, “Whoa, that’s not my normal mind. I wouldn’t have done that if I were completely awake and sober and everything”? This is a common… yeah, very common. So Roseanne has presented to you a common, far more likely explanation for what happened compared to, “Oh yeah, I think…”
[16:25] …”I’ll just tweet some racist stuff while I’ve got a brand new TV show. I don’t see how this could go wrong for a Trump supporter.” People, that didn’t happen. Now, we might not know exactly what did happen. I always caution people that just because you can’t imagine the alternatives doesn’t mean they don’t exist; it could be a failure of your imagination. But in this case, she told us the alternative, and it looks pretty likely. The story, as it’s being reported, of course, is tinged by politics. So everybody’s going to say, “Well, Trump supporter,” or “Here he goes, it’s clearly racist.” There you go. Somebody says, “I kind of disagree with you overall.” Well, I’m welcoming you right now to give me just a quick reason. It doesn’t have to be complete, but tell me what point you think is weak in what I…
[17:27] …just said. I’m open to that. This is a brand new thought for me, and if I’m getting something wrong, I’d like to know. Somebody said they should have said, “Even Ambien isn’t powerful enough to cure racism.” Well, that would be the same weasel play. Am I taking Ambien now? I never would. I would never take Ambien. Are you kidding me? If you label a drug a hypnotic, I’m not putting that in my body. I don’t know how many hypnotists will take a drug called a hypnotic, but probably fewer hypnotists are taking it than other people, if you know what I mean. So what Ambien got out of this was, instead of, “Hey, leave us alone…”
[18:27] …instead of, “Hey, leave us alone,” it’s “Roseanne’s a racist.” It’s a whole lot of publicity that’s only going to get worse. There are serious side effects to this drug, real or alleged. I’m no doctor, so I don’t want to get sued. Let me just say as clearly as possible: I don’t know what the side effects of any drug are. I’m not a doctor. I haven’t studied anything. But their own tweet said pharmaceuticals have side effects, so let us accept their own tweet, because they’re the experts, that there are side effects. But we’re going to be talking about those Ambien side effects quite a bit now. This also smacks of blaming people who take drugs that they need medically. I don’t know if she needed this medically, but people take it for their health, meaning that they want to sleep.
[19:31] What is the stock ticker for that company? It’s a foreign company. I don’t know who makes it. What company? What country? Somebody Google that for me. What country is Sanofi in? I don’t have access to a browser right now. “Scott, would you agree liberals are treated differently than conservatives?” Differently, but not worse. There are things which conservatives get accused of because it fits the confirmation bias. There are things that the liberals, the Left, get accused of that fits their bias. I don’t think one side is worse, but they definitely are different. Sanofi is French, somebody is saying. Several people are saying. Somebody says, “Why do you not…”
[20:36] …support boycotts? I support individual people making individual choices. Boycotts… I suppose that I have an emotional reason on top of whatever rational reason, which might be a rationalization. If you’re the type of person whose job is the subject of almost daily boycott threats… I rarely go a day without somebody on Twitter saying, “Hey everybody, stop buying Dilbert books! The boycott is on!” That’s just sort of my everyday now. And I’ve lost probably a third of my income to a half of my income—it’s probably up to a half of my income because of informal boycotts about somebody being mad about something taken out of context that they think I said.
[21:36] Because it happens to me, and I’ve seen that when it happens to me it’s almost entirely based on fake news. As soon as you get into that “boycott is a good thing” attitude, some of them might be valid, but a lot of them are going to be based on fake news. You don’t want fake news driving the economy, unless it’s fake optimism. Fake optimism actually is a good way to drive an economy because it makes people optimistic and they invest. But you wouldn’t want to take down a company with fake news, and probably the fake news is three-to-one to the real news. So if boycotts become a thing, you don’t have to worry about the slippery slope because it starts bad. Three out of four on day one of “Hey everybody, let’s do boycotts”—day one, three out of four companies go down with fake news. That’s not a country you…
[22:36] …want to live in. Now I expect you’re going to see lots of stories surfacing about Ambien-related, or at least alleged Ambien-related, problems that people had. So if this is what Sanofi had in mind by calling Roseanne a racist, that’s what they got. I would say this is not a boycott situation so much as karma. They did a really shitty thing with that response—a super shitty thing, like worse than just about any corporate behavior short of actually stealing stuff.
[23:40] I always get these trolls who come on and they somehow do something where they can’t be blocked. So if you’re seeing some racists go by in the comments and they’re unblockable… I can select them, but the block thing isn’t active. I think what they’re doing is they’re coming in with a fresh account that just comes in, does a comment, and then it turns off. So if you see them, you can block them if you can get there, but they’re not blockable. They have some kind of unblockable technology going on. “Roseanne has a black son,” somebody said. True? Or do you mean on the show? Not on the show? Does Roseanne actually have a black son? I don’t know if that’s true, but it doesn’t necessarily prove anything. But it would be… Oh, god…
[24:40] …son. Okay, so it would be an interesting data point, but again, one data point doesn’t prove anything. I’ve said what I need to say. I just saw somebody in the comments refer to Ambien as “the racist drug.” Sounds like a linguistic kill shot to me. The racist drug. They brought that on themselves. Did somebody say Ambien is now called “the racist drug”? That’s an interesting nickname. I wonder if it’ll be sticky. Let’s see… fits with the confirmation bias. That might be a problem for them because, having had this conversation, can you imagine any time in the future that name comes up…
[25:42] …that you’re not going to say “the racist drug”? If your spouse says, “I need an Ambien,” are you going to say, “Well, don’t take the racist drug”? Yes, you are. Who brought that on? Sanofi. The makers of Ambien. Sanofi brought that on by saying one of the worst things I’ve ever seen a corporation say in public. So, score one for Sanofi. That’s all for now.