Roseanne won’t change; ABC changed life for her
I’ve interviewed Roseanne Barr a few times since her sitcom Roseanne went off the air in 1997, and I guess I held out some hope that she might change. In the art-vs.-artist debate, I tend to think people who say and do bad things can also make great art, but there’s always a line.
I spoke to Barr before the revival’s premiere in March, when its success was no sure thing, and she seemed chastened by some recent blowback to her tweets about President Obama and Hillary Clinton. She even left Twitter, but only temporarily.
“I had to get off there because everybody was mad at me. I’m not doing any more politics. I don’t want to get anyone mad at me,” she told me. She added that she didn’t want to hurt her iconic show’s return. “I want people to watch it and love it.”
Well, she just killed her show.
ABC made the right decision Tuesday in canceling Roseanne after Barr’s racist tweet. It was also the only acceptable one.
Barr unconscionably drew on a shameful centuries-old slur against blacks to criticize Valerie Jarrett, a top aide to Obama, exposing both racial and religious prejudice in the process.
She’s been walking a tightrope since her return to her 1990s hit sitcom, celebrated for putting the focus on a working-class family, long neglected on network TV.
Some condemned her return in advance, pointing to past experiences (and previous tweets) in which the comedian, an avowed supporter of President Trump, gave credence to horrible conspiracy theories.
I was in another camp. I found many of Barr’s earlier comments repugnant, but I liked the idea of a show that reflected a family divided over politics and struggling financially.
Many viewers agreed, as the revival was an instant hit, making Roseanne TV’s No. 1 show, with an average of 23 million viewers. The characters and issues connected with viewers at a time when connections often seem impossible to find.
It’s a sign of how devastating Barr’s tweet was that ABC canceled the show, even though this could have been the once-in-a-decade hit that can change a network’s fortunes.
But Barr’s tweet probably would have scared away advertisers, if it hadn’t already, and ABC, owned by Disney, would have suffered long-term reputational damage by sticking with the series. But make no mistake: The network canceled Roseanne for the right reason. What she did was wrong.
Nevertheless, it’s remarkable how corporations must be concerned with their behavior and the public’s response to it at a time when politicians sometimes aren’t.
It seems that her success went to her head (again) and unfortunately, many of us can’t or won’t change. Once the show was a hit, she gave up the more modest tone.
She lost more people willing to give her the benefit of the doubt when she tweeted that one of the Parkland, Fla., shooting survivors was giving the “Nazi salute,” passing along another despicable conspiracy theory.
Maybe I should have seen this coming after my first interview with Barr in 2003, when she was making a comeback with a reality sitcom about her life. She was trying to be a kinder, gentler person, saying the right things and even focusing on feng shui to get the mood right.
After the interview, as I waited to leave, I could hear her in another room yelling either at or about an assistant. Sometimes, you just can’t change.
In its first finale, the series killed off Roseanne’s husband, Dan, but resurrected him without a fuss for the March revival. This time, Barr killed the whole show, and nothing can resuscitate it this time.