Posted on 05/30/2018 6:12:37 AM PDT by Kaslin
A network TV show rolls out with a favorable treatment of a Trump supporter, replete with plot developments that portray middle American values (and foibles) without the ridicule usually heaped upon them by Hollywood. It couldn’t last.
But no one figured it would be a suicide.
The epitaph for the “Roseanne” TV reboot will read: born 2018, died 2018. Cause of death: the star’s inability to understand one basic fact, and it’s not the one you might think, about watching what you post on Twitter. Liberals can post whatever hateful slime they wish, with few if any career consequences.
No, Roseanne’s blind spot was to an even broader truth: the moment you align yourself with conservatives, you enter a world of zero tolerance. If you are a vulgar comic spewing unprintable hate about President Trump and his family, you get a Netflix show. Roseanne Barr’s show gets canceled for one stupid tweet.
Make no mistake: the tweet was profoundly stupid. Even within the context of a “joke,” the universal Teflon often attempted in moments like this, it was a tragic unforced error that committed the compounding sin of invoking racist imagery.
All together now: What in God’s name was she thinking?
The answer is obvious. She wasn’t. No one ever is when they commit blunders like this. Something about social media has removed some people’s usual brain barrier that exists between thinking something and actually posting it.
That doesn’t matter in this case now. What’s done is done, and what’s done is horribly unfortunate.
I don’t think John Goodman will be missing any car payments, but the rest of the cast no longer stands to benefit from another season (or more) of shows watched by millions, featuring themes that made the show important, an adjective not attached properly to a sitcom since “All in the Family” almost 50 years ago.
It was important not just because it affectionately portrayed a Trump supporter, even though that was a rare and precious attribute. It also caringly painted scenes featuring Roseanne’s thoroughly liberal sister and daughter. In its funniest and most honest episode, the tensions between her and a Muslim neighbor family led to a scene featuring Roseanne standing up for her new Islamic acquaintance in the face of racism from a store clerk.
As fresh as today’s headlines, the final episodes of the first (and now only) season kicked off with Roseanne’s addiction to painkillers. As real as the struggle faced by countless American families, the scripts then turned to husband Dan’s anguish over how to pay for his wife’s expensive knee surgery as his construction jobs dried up and the credit cards maxed out.
Viewers saw their pain, their mutual devotion and their struggle, but the show never forgot to be funny. This is a profound loss. Roseanne’s comic genius made it possible, and her mouthy Twitter politics made the ride even more fun.
But the fun had rules. She had to know that as a rare actress willing to show empathy for Trump and his voters, she would face critics waiting gleefully for her to stumble. She gave them exactly what they wanted, and in so doing gave the left an overhand smash in the form of “There you go, that’s how Trump and his voters feel.” So we not only lose a show we could actually watch, we get to spend some time beating away a slander as well. Great day all around.
Will another network revive “Roseanne?” No time soon. We are often a very forgiving country, but that forgiveness is not afforded to all. Float monkey imagery in a reference about an African-American woman, and you’re going to be done. For a while.
It would be easy to list the constant brutal slurs floated by the Hollywood left against Trump, by entertainers who are still employable, some specifically because of their political and personal venom. None of this matters. It is what it is. Is it unfair? Of course. Is it exemplary of differing bars of outrage for different people? Absolutely.
But everyone in any realm of public life should know that this is the way the field is striped. Maybe it will change someday. Until it does, anyone with a brain stem has to know that a tweet like Roseanne’s is going to detonate a reputational atom bomb.
I am grateful for the one special season of a show that did not insult the minds and hearts of the voters who gave us the Trump presidency. ABC had supposedly made noises about toning down the politics of the show in the recently approved second season. I don’t believe that would have happened. This cast and those writers believed in what they were doing—not a sop to conservative audiences, but a rare and honest snapshot of character types found in countless households rarely represented in the popular culture.
I will always be grateful to Roseanne Barr for bringing this show to life. Now I have to find a way to forgive her for killing it.
Val Jar is Iranian, and not of african descent.
She is indeed associated with the muslim brotherhood. She and O’Bola infested the gov’t with the MB.
Yesterday, we saw the swift erasing-vanishing of someone from “TV” (satellite, cable). I attempted to watch my nightly few episodes of the old Roseanne, and low and behold, LAFF Channel on Dish had erased the old episodes from their schedule.
Just last weekend, TV Land Channel featured old Roseanne episodes.
So, day before yesterday, old Roseanne episodes were “good”, and yesterday and forward, they are banned?
This is a perfect example of Nazi-like, Stalin-like, control of media for pubic consumption. The evil leftists here in our country are no different in their zeal to disappear anyone who dares to have their own views that are not the same as the current Nazi propagandists.
Roseanne was foolish to tweet foolish things. However she has a right to free speech.
Never cared much for that potty mouthed slob anyway.
Conservative drama queens are a strange lot.
What might have been done? Management might have simply ignored it and let left leaning commentators reproach her. Management might have quietly given her a warning. And finally management might have given her a public rebuke. Any of those alternatives would have been superior to what was done.
I am disappointed that none of the many Fox pundits weighing in on this had remarks like these. Fox is “PC” phobic like the rest of media.
Black females are not running things. They are acting out loud, prone to violence and are being handled with kid gloves by society. But when your demographic has difficulty passing a Burger King without a riot breaking out, you are not running things.
Who didn’t know Roseann was going to go down like this? I’m just surprised that it didn’t happen closer to the election. She is *not* a conservative or even close to one, even if she plays a blue-collar Trump fan on TV.
what Rosie said was true! VJ does look like a beast. Just because Rosie was rude doesn’t mean it is not true.
aand she is entitled to her opinion, as am I, as are whomever disagrees.
Roseanne wasn't on the clock, at work, when she made that tweet. Now most entertainment and media companies have a Morals Clause in the contracts of the Talent, and wide leeway in interpretation. So that is what ABC hung their authority on to fire her.
The larger mess of this firing is all the cast and crew that lost their paychecks. Add to this all the other outlets that dropped the old reruns of the Roseanne Show. How many people of the cast were getting residuals from those reruns and may depend on that money to live?
The shortsightedness of the whole episode is disgraceful. Not to mention that ABC needed that hit show for it's TV lineup and to prove a PC point they canceled the show without any real thought. It just made them feel good and superior.
The double standard of punishing anyone with different political views from the Morally Bankrupt Left and their minions is repugnant and should be to everyone.
All those outlets pulled all reruns of the show. New one and the old one.
“She didn’t blow it. She exposed the left, bigots all.”
It was only a matter of time before ABC found a reason to cancel her show.....she is a President Trump supporter, and her show was popular with ‘fly over’ country voters and that could not be tolerated by ABC.
“She didn’t blow it. She exposed the left, bigots all.”
It was only a matter of time before ABC found a reason to cancel her show.....she is a President Trump supporter, and her show was popular with ‘fly over’ country voters and that could not be tolerated by ABC.
I suspect you will find many in good standing at ABC.
I never viewed Rosanne as a savior of anything.
It’s all about optics. I am not sure how this necessarily helps the left because they hated Trump supporters before this. I do know this hurts Trump supporters who get more sh*t slung upon them because it becomes another liberal media talking point.
If You Can See Her, from Cabaret.
How can I speak of her virtues?
I don't know where to begin!
She's clever, she's smart, she reads music.
She doesn't smoke or drink gin. (Like I do.)…
I understand your objection.
I grant you the problem's not small.
But if you could see her through my eyes...She wouldn't look Jewish at all.
-PJ
Bingo! ABC was going to find a way to remove this show regardless. Rosanne just made it too easy for them. Can't have a positive show about Trump supporters with huge viewership countering THE narrative.
I predict this will backfire on the network(s). The people aren't stupid and this PC culture has run its course. The people are sick of it. The problem of course is academia has had 30+ years to perfect their indoctrination methods so young people can take a while to wake up from their brain washing. Some never do. Clearly most of Hollyweird never did.
Take some ambien , mark.. then answer your tweets.
Still figuring out how the comment was Racist unless Barr knew that Valier’s Father was a Commie loving Mulatto like Obama was.
I had no idea about her lineage, outside of being Iranian, until that fact leaked out and I am pretty Political.
I doubt Roseanne had a clue but she has now made Valerie a sympathetic figure, much like Che.
She didn’t compare VJ to an ape, she said “Planet of the Apes” which is a fictional movie. The creatures in that movie resemble apes loosely, however, they were intended to represent tyranny and oppression against a minority. It’s a stretch to call it racist when it was intended to be a critique of ideology, which is more than deserving of critisism.
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