Rex Huppke at the Chicago Tribune sees Roseanne Barr the way I do – trivial herself but a portent of the world we now live in.

Barr quickly defended her Tuesday morning tweet as a “joke.” She then tweeted that she was leaving Twitter. Five minutes later, likely feeling pressure from ABC — the network making stacks of money off Barr’s reboot of the old sitcom “Roseanne” — she returned to Twitter with a more formal and entirely unbelievable apology:

“I apologize to Valerie Jarrett and to all Americans. I am truly sorry for making a bad joke about her politics and her looks. I should have known better. Forgive me — my joke was in bad taste.”

When the only people who would consider your comment a joke are racist lunatics, you have to reconsider your definition of the word “joke.” And when you try to apologize for your obviously racist comment by calling it a joke, you have to reconsider your definition of the word “apologize.”

It seems more likely that Barr, who President Donald Trump has praised in part because she and her character in the sitcom support the president, felt emboldened by the Trump era and confident she could let fly a “this black person looks like an ape” comment without fear of retribution.

What I’m saying. So many people feel emboldened by the Trump era, and act on their emboldened feelings.

Barr is a perfect avatar for this moment in our history. She’s white, she’s loud, she’s mean (she also took time Tuesday morning to tie Chelsea Clinton to some bizarre George Soros-related conspiracy) and she rants about unhinged narratives based on nothing but lies, like the tale of a global child-trafficking ring linked to Hillary Clinton that is jaw-dropping in its stupidity.

And yet, with all that, ABC happily gives her sitcom a prime-time slot. Behavior that once would’ve rightly destroyed careers now gets rewarded. It’s America in 2018.

I don’t much care about Roseanne Barr. She can spew her crazy all over the Internet and follow Twitter loons down conspiratorial rabbit holes to her heart’s content.

What I care about is ABC, which seems willing to tolerate her idiocy and contribute to the ongoing normalization of racism, xenophobia and outright craziness.

PBS will be giving Steve Bannon his own show at this rate.