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Thanks, Roseanne, You Blew It for All of Us
Townhall.com ^ | May 30, 2018 | Mark Davis

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.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial
KEYWORDS: abc; hollywood; roseanne; roseannebarr; valeriejarrett
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To: miss marmelstein

I think that the putative “right”, at the highest levels, values the gravy train and not much else. With them, it’s not good manners, it’s complicity.


41 posted on 05/30/2018 6:42:59 AM PDT by mrsmel (I won't be reconstructed and I do not give a damn.)
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To: Kaslin

Mark Davis is a cuck.


42 posted on 05/30/2018 6:43:02 AM PDT by Arm_Bears (Hey, Rocky--Watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat!)
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To: Kaslin
I can't feel bad for the rest of the cast. The newcomers got experience and can move on from the there. The rest of the returning cast either had other careers to go back to, or got a one-season revival of their careers thanks to Roseanne. There was no guarantee that the season would be the hit that it was, so I hope they enjoyed the ride while it lasted. A show coming back like this is unprecedented, so it was bonus work for them.

Whether another network sees the money train and decides to pick up or Roseanne or whether it's become so toxic no one will touch, neither option would surprise me.

43 posted on 05/30/2018 6:43:11 AM PDT by Tanniker Smith (Rome didn't fall in a day, either.)
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To: Kaslin

As we all know, Liberals possess a racial social threshing machine that is constantly churning at full power. This racial threshing machine is explicitly designed to immediately destroy all nearby flesh. Until the Liberal’s machine of death is dismantled, one needs to be wise enough to stay away from the hacking blades and not get thrown in it.


44 posted on 05/30/2018 6:43:11 AM PDT by Obadiah
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To: ChronicMA

“I think its possible for the show to continue

Rename the show “The Connors”

Write in her death as a story line

Heavily ignore her previous existence in every episode

I’m sure they’d love to continue the cross-dressing boy and other story lines”

They could make it that the Trump admin was somehow responsible for Roseanne’s death and now the whole family has gone MSNBC leftist and hates him. Make the cross dressing gender confused gay kid the focus of the show. That should get them all the lefty brownie points they need to stay on the air forever.


45 posted on 05/30/2018 6:43:19 AM PDT by Brooklyn Attitude (The first step in ending the war on white people is to recognize it exists.)
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To: woweeitsme

‘If I’m not mistaken, there were many times President Bush was referred to as a “monkey”

big difference; Bush is a white male...look, we all might as well just face it that black females are going to be running things for a while, a long while...and the entire time they’re enjoying their ‘supremacy’, they will be screaming about oppression, and getting even more goodies tossed their way...


46 posted on 05/30/2018 6:43:51 AM PDT by IrishBrigade
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To: Kaslin

Animalization of groups was done long before white Europeans discovered black people.

Racism is denigrating an entire group. If you called all blacks “apes” then you are a racist.

Calling a single person an “ape” is an insult. Just as calling George W Bush a “chimp” was an insult.

Why?

Because when you call one person a name, you do not know what is in the heart of that person.

If I called Valerie Jarrett a “dog”, am I a racist, an islamophobe or a misogynist? She is a member of all three groups, but you do not know why I called her a “dog”, therefore, I cannot be any of the three. I simply insulted her.

It is time we stop allowing the dilution of the term “racist” by those who cannot debate or take an insult.


47 posted on 05/30/2018 6:44:05 AM PDT by Erik Latranyi (Liberal bastions are full of misogyny, drugs, pedophilia and racism (Hollywood, Academia, DC))
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To: Kaslin
Thanks, Roseanne, You Blew It for All of Us

Yes. She should have known that Freedom of Speech only applies to liberals! /sarc

48 posted on 05/30/2018 6:44:14 AM PDT by The Sons of Liberty (Deplorable Charter Member of The Vast Right Wing Conspiracy.)
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To: nevergore

The caterers? What caterers? The show was filmed at ABC studios which has its own commissaries run by full-time employees. You’re thinking of movies. No janitor has been harmed in the making of this tv show, lol.


49 posted on 05/30/2018 6:44:37 AM PDT by miss marmelstein
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To: DouglasKC

Yes, the left uses the racist accusation like an all-purpose cudgel against conservatives, but they never, ever apologise for their own anti-white racism. We have got to stop letting them define our every thought and utterance, where do they get off?


50 posted on 05/30/2018 6:45:47 AM PDT by mrsmel (I won't be reconstructed and I do not give a damn.)
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To: nevergore

This whole thing reminds me of when Jerry Falwell slammed Desmond Tutu.

It was almost impossible to find the actual quote, but everyone was quick to condemn Falwell with all sorts of slander. He was absolutely vilified by the press of all stripes. We didn’t have the internet then so it was hard to find what he actually said. Naturally, I just assumed it must have been pretty bad, but was frustrated that nobody was reporting what he actually said. Then one day I found it. Here is the offending remark:

‘’If Bishop Tutu maintains that he speaks for the black people of South Africa, he’s a phony.’’

The thing is, not only did he say, “if”, but it was a true statement. The majority of blacks in South Africa were Zulu, and Tutu most definitely did NOT speak for them.

And in this case, here is Rosanne’s original tweet:

muslim brotherhood & planet of the apes had a baby=vj

— Roseanne Barr (@therealroseanne) May 29, 2018

Where is the racism there. She is not talking about race. She’s talking about two sub-cultures. She is slamming an individual person (Valerie Jarrett), rather than any race.

And the first one to mention race is the racist.


51 posted on 05/30/2018 6:46:09 AM PDT by robroys woman (So you're not confused, I'm using my wife's account.)
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To: Kaslin

Always thought Roseanne was a leftist playing to Conservatives. Hated her so-called “humor”. Always liked John Goodman though...

“F*ck it, Dude. Let’s go bowling...”


52 posted on 05/30/2018 6:46:26 AM PDT by Hatteras
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To: mrsmel

All of these are valid concerns, but that doesn’t change the fact that FAR-LEFT Roseanne did something stupid. Calling black people apes is extremely bad taste and shouldn’t be something that is defended. Sometimes things just are like they are. Mean spirited jokes about blacks being apes are not okay. Jokes about Jews and gas are not okay. Then again jokes about the Irish and potato are acceptable, but mean jokes about Bobby Sands and cheesburgers are very bad taste. She was pretty f-ing dumb to do that.


53 posted on 05/30/2018 6:47:22 AM PDT by Krosan
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To: mrsmel

But what of the usual freepers who always want good taste and polite responses to vile, harsh rhetoric? I mean, they are defending Valerie Jarrett!!

They don’t live in the swamp.


54 posted on 05/30/2018 6:47:33 AM PDT by miss marmelstein
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To: Kaslin

Conservatives have different free speech rights than liberals. It’s wrong but true. Roseanne miscalculated. If she was trashing a conservative, she could say anything, including racial attacks.


55 posted on 05/30/2018 6:48:47 AM PDT by Spok ("What're you going to believe-me or your own eyes?" -Marx (Groucho))
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To: brownsfan

Or it was all professional wrestling and she took a dive playing a broad caricature of what a Trump supporter is like, especially behind closed doors.

She’s always been a loud mouthed lout.

She posed in a nazi outfit baking gingerbread man cookies once.

And people forget her spit take version of the National Anthem at a baseball game.

Some suggested after the reboot but long before this that she was the new “Archie Bunker”.


56 posted on 05/30/2018 6:48:48 AM PDT by a fool in paradise (Ads for Chappaquiddick warn of scenes of tobacco use. What about the hazards of drunk driving?)
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To: brownsfan

And it’s an image built on a fantasy. The woman is a self-avowed Socialist, which does not in the least bit describe the average Trump supporter.

Rosanne to Stern - We Need Socialism Cuz It Saved Us Before Or Something
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HGbdurMUDYI


57 posted on 05/30/2018 6:48:54 AM PDT by FreedomPoster (Islam delenda est)
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To: raiderboy

‘There is no law against free speech!!’

she was perfectly free to make this comment; and she was perfectly free to accept the consequences of it; if you’re invoking First Amendment protection, it has nothing to do with this situation...


58 posted on 05/30/2018 6:48:58 AM PDT by IrishBrigade
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To: DouglasKC

Roseanne is playing the game. She exposed VJar and Ambien.
Val is caught up in the Iranian probe. Ambien is a barbituate often used as a “truth serum.” MKUltra, anyone? She is calling out Big Pharma on harmful drugs. Should be coming up for exposure shortly.
God bless, Roseanne!


59 posted on 05/30/2018 6:49:40 AM PDT by stilloftyhenight ("Victorious warriors win first, thenSes go to war." Sun Tzu)
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To: Arm_Bears

Mark Davis is one of the most pro-Trump hosts on Salem Radio. You can count on him to thank God for Trump nearly every day on his show.


60 posted on 05/30/2018 6:49:41 AM PDT by Night Hides Not (Remember the Alamo! Remember Goliad! Remember Gonzales! Come and Take It!)
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