The New York Times has poured gasoline on an already large tire fire.

Already under scrutiny from the alt-right and internet trolls for their recent hire of Sarah Jeong, New York Times announced today that not only were they expanding their online prescence by hosting a web talk show (to be named later), but also that Roseanne Barr, recently fired from her own show, would be the host of it.

Reactions around the Twitterverse have been rather subdued, unexpectedly, following such an announcement. I reached out to a few advocates for Social Justice on Twitter who I would assume would normally be against such a hire of someone recently fired for racist tweets, but while they were astounded that such a hiring occurred, they were hesitant to decry the move.

Conversely, when speaking to prominent alt-right twitter users who were all too vocal about NYT’s hiring of Jeong, had no comment with regards to the hiring of Barr. They seemed like they wanted to celebrate the hiring, but were so confused by the move that they weren’t sure it was right to do so.

I did speak to a few Reddit users who claimed to be “Radical Centrists”, but I suspect they were Russian trolls, bots, or possibly both. They were ecstatic with the news and but I found their responses too smug and hard to decipher the memespeak to quote any of them.

I did ask NYT for a comment, and got what appeared to be their standard media response for the hiring:

“We hired Roseanne Barr because of the exceptional work she has done in both fictional shows, as well as talk shows at a range of respected networks.

Her comedy and the fact that she is an outspoken Republican voting woman have made her a subject of frequent online harassment. For a period of time she tweeted publicly while taking Ambien as a result of her depression and difficulty sleeping. She sees now that this approach is not helpful and that she needs avoid social media while in this state. She regrets her actions and The Times does not condone it.

We had candid conversations with Roseanne as a part of our thorough vetting process, which included a review of her social media history. She explained that the tweet that resulted in her firing from her show was a mistake on her part in that she thought she was insulting a white woman. Given that insulting white people is within The Times’ social media policies, we are confident that she was be an important voice for the upcoming talk show we are planning and a superb host for it.”