So you may have heard Roseanne Barr’s in the news again. While we’re on that topic, can someone please tell me what the hell happened to her?
I didn’t watch her rebooted show, not because of the political uproar that surrounded it but because I didn’t know how I would feel seeing characters I watched as a kid in the same or very similar places twenty years later. But what I kept hearing about Barr and seeing from her on Twitter failed to mesh with my memories of the original show from the 90’s. It didn’t even mesh with what I heard about the reboot.
The show I remember used comedy and satire to deal with a lot of heavy topics for the day. Homosexuality, spousal abuse, identity politics, abortion and yes, even racism were all handled fairly progressively within the context of a prime time comedy show that took place in a small Midwestern town.
I didn’t know it at the time, but ABC attached disclaimers to some of the episodes and even moved some of them to later time slots to ensure that the “mature subject matter” (like lesbians kissing onscreen) wouldn’t be accessible to kids who weren’t in bed before nine PM. You have to figure that the network probably wanted to can some of those episodes but Roseanne used her clout (and the fact that the show was ABC’s top gravy train at the time) to get such touchy subject matter on the air.
You have to admire that kind of guts and those kind of principles.
Even the reboot sounded like a bastion of social progress. Her oldest son DJ was in a racially mixed marriage with a black daughter while Darlene had a gender fluid child. And from what I hear, all family members were embraced and defended by the family matriarch.
So what happened?
Where along the line did she fall off the tracks so catastrophically?
Bill Maher aired a great piece on his show about her drastically shifting politics, but I’m more curious about her personal beliefs. It wasn’t just blatant racism she was peddling on Twitter, but anti-semitism as well. Not to mention crazy conspiracy theories that made Pizzagate look sane by comparison.
Video Real Time With Bill Maher
While everyone was justifiably disgusted by the racist Tweet about former Obama aid Valerie Jarrett, a lot of people glossed over her claims that billionaire George Soros was a Nazi that turned Jews into German authorities during the Holocaust so he could take their wealth. (The fact is, not only is Soros Jewish, he was only nine years old when Germany occupied his home of Hungary).
A few months ago she was claiming that Donald Trump was personally responsible for breaking up international child sex-slave rings. Even White House officials were left scratching their heads after that one.
These aren’t new trends either. She was getting into hot water on social media as far back as 2013. And anyone who saw it will never forget her rendition of the American national anthem during a Major League baseball game in 1990 (conservatives definitely weren’t a fan during that debacle). So what happened? How does a woman who once championed racial justice and marriage equality wind up Tweeting that a black woman looks like she was spawned by the Planet of the Apes? How do those kind of thoughts share the same space as ones ensuring representation for trans children on prime time TV?
Was she always this way and we’re just seeing it now via social media? Or did she did go hurtling over the edge somewhere in between? What could have possibly happened to trigger that kind of meltdown?
The decision by ABC was gutsy to say the least. Roseanne 2.0 was already a giant cash cow and they were selling its success to sponsors just days before. They were making it the crown jewel of their prime time lineup and its success had even lead to whispers of other popular 90’s sitcoms being revived.
And it isn’t like the Disney owned American Broadcasting Company didn’t know what they were signing up for when they resurrected the show (I do remember stories of her and network brass regularly banging heads).
Still, I’m pretty sure everyone thought this would be business as usual; the network would drop some bland, noncommittal response before looking the other way. Maybe we should have suspected this would be different after consulting producer Wanda Sykes wasted little time announcing she wouldn’t return as a result and co-star Sara Gilbert Tweeted a condemnation of Barr’s remarks. I mean, how uncomfortable would that day at work be.
But I think it’s safe to say we were all a little surprised at the ultimate outcome.
I’m a (very) amateur student of human behaviour (particularly what drives people to do horrible things). But I just can’t reconcile the contradictions here. I have no problem with ABC’s decision (both ABC and parent company Disney have spent decades and tens of millions of dollars cultivating a very specific, very family friendly and very inclusive brand) though I do feel bad for everyone else who lost jobs because of Barr’s reckless bigotry.
This has already become the most recent skirmish in America’s culture wars. The left celebrates the silencing of a racist voice while the Right screams about censorship (Roseanne reruns were pulled from a number of syndicated channels, including the very conservative Country Music Television). And Twitter has become its usual battleground of hyper-sensitive absurdity and name calling. In between all that though, I am genuinely curious how someone of such political and idealogical extremes evolved. What are the mechanics behind such a transformation?
The irony is I doubt Roseanne Connor would have tolerated any of her family members being treated the way Roseanne Barr has recently treated others in real life. And that may be the most interesting dynamic in this whole mess.
Image via time.com
