'Roseanne' reboot becomes the media's crisis
by Eddie Scarry | March 31, 2018 12:00 AM
washingtonexaminer.com
If Michael Wolff’s book was made into a crisis for the White House because it fulfilled the media’s greatest dreams about President Trump (a subject expertly covered in my forthcoming book “Fraud and Fiction” out April 3), the “Roseanne” reboot is inversely a crisis for the media because it confirms their worst nightmares about America.
Namely, that there are normal, charming people who voted for Trump.
And just as most real people don’t make politics the central focus of their lives, that the Roseanne character voted for Trump isn’t even the point of the show.
Here’s the secret key to the massive success that the ABC program saw this week, bringing 18.2 million viewers: It’s a family show with good writing.
That’s no different than the formula followed by “The Simpsons” for 30 years.
But because “Roseanne” doesn’t serve as therapy for Hollywood producers and political journalists still struggling to accept the 2016 election (as the debut of the “Will and Grace” reboot did — and it sucked) coverage and commentary about the show was predictably bitter.
The New York Times has run just one op-ed weighing in on the “Roseanne” reboot, wherein Roxane Gay, the author, said she liked the show but that she wouldn’t watch further episodes because, “This fictional family, and the show’s very real creator, are further normalizing Trump and his warped, harmful political ideologies.”
(By the way, “normalizing” is how the media refers to anything they don’t approve of being shown on TV in a way that isn’t properly framed in hatred or, at the very least, portrayed as an exotic animal. Like a Trump voter.)
Gay complained in her piece that it “feels as though the show is working through a checklist of ‘real issues’ it wants to address” and then bemoaned the inclusion of Roseanne’s black granddaughter because “the show makes no mention of it as if to suggest how at ease the Conners are with difference.”
For Gay, the show feels like it’s “working through a checklist” but somehow even messes that up by not checking the racial tension box.
In a separate news article on how Trump called show creator Roseanne Barr to congratulate her on its high ratings, the Times added that Trump “has never supported same-sex marriage” and that he “has never endorsed its legalization.”
Trump actually said after he was elected that he was “fine” with same-sex marriage, which may not be an endorsement but the Times didn’t bother to mention it at all.
Ira Madison, an entertainment writer for the Daily Beast, said Wednesday on Twitter that Roseanne is the “masturbatory [New York Times] profile cliche of someone who's just struggling working class.”
In the show, Roseanne has a 9-year-old grandson who dresses in girls clothes. The show’s writers addressed the issue by having Roseanne ask him “what’s up with the girls clothes” and telling him that he will be picked on at school. “You’ve got to pick your fights in life,” she tells him, but when he says he is committed to dressing the way he likes, she hugs him and says, “We’ll back you up.”
Here’s how Madison digested that emotionally complex scene: “Ah, a Trump voter who has the compassion to protect their gender fluid grandson at school but also doesn't care about Trump's LGBTQ rhetoric is a shitty person and also a fantasy.”
It’s unclear what Madison meant by Trump’s “LGBTQ rhetoric” when Trump has said he’s “fine” with same-sex marriage and has kept in place Obama-era regulations that protect federal contractors from discrimination on the basis of sexual identity.
As for the rest of Madison’s painfully ignorant tweet, why is it difficult to imagine that there are Trump-supporting people who have gay or perhaps even transgender kids that they love?
They exist! Ask my dad!
Washington Post politics writer Eugene Scott said Friday that the reboot helped in giving viewers “the false impression that most of the president’s supporters were white, working-class Americans in small, Midwestern towns like Roseanne’s.”
One sitcom portrays a working-class Trump supporter who isn’t also a member of the Klan and the media react as if there’s a glitch in the Matrix.
It’s not even as if the show promoted Trump’s agenda. Roseanne wasn’t wearing a “MAGA” hat but her sister, the Hillary Clinton-supporting character Jackie, did wear a pussy beanie.
Roseanne didn’t talk about immigration. She didn’t chant, “Lock her up!” She didn’t say, “Build the wall!”
The most Roseanne said about her support for Trump was that he “talked about jobs.”
Media: Hang her!
We spent the first two months of this year entertaining the media’s wild fantasies about Trump being mentally retarded (another point I address in my book). It’s not too much to ask that more than 18 million people be allowed to enjoy the Trump-supporting Roseanne without being told they should feel guilty.
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