I’m proud to say I never watched ABC’s reboot of the television show Roseanne. I put that show on the never-again list in its original version years ago. Why? Because Roseanne Barr was an offensive lout then and there was no reason to believe she would ever be anything but disgusting.
ABC is getting kudos for its May 29 decision to cancel the show and dump Barr because of her racist tweet but the network should never have reignited her lame career. Here is what happened, as reported by The New York Times:
“ABC abruptly canceled Roseanne hours after Ms. Barr, the show’s star and co-creator, posted a racist tweet about Valerie Jarrett, an African-American woman who was a senior adviser to Barack Obama throughout his presidency and considered one of his most influential aides. Ms. Barr wrote if the “muslim brotherhood & planet of the apes had a baby=vj.”
“Ms. Barr later apologized, but it was too late. In announcing the show’s cancellation, ABC’s entertainment president, Channing Dungey, said in a statement that “Roseanne’s Twitter statement is abhorrent, repugnant and inconsistent with our values.’”
Too late, ABC.
It had $45 million reasons, wrong ones, to give the show and Barr new life. It knew she was an abhorrent person before and should have known it was only a matter of time before she would disgrace herself and the network once it put her on center stage.
The new show reportedly brought in $45 million in ad revenue this season, which may have climbed to $60 million next year.
I am all for second chances and third chances and so on in order for people to rebuild lives and careers but in some cases we know the unfortunate and predictable outcome. This was one of them. Disaster.
Money and greed drive these sorts of things, especially in corporate America, which is why so many folks distrust big companies and the corporate world. Everything revolves around money.
If there are kudos in this sordid affair, one would go to Bob Iger, chief executive of the Walt Disney Co., which owns ABC. He reportedly phoned Jarrett directly to apologize. There are any number of high-level business executives who would have hidden behind attorneys and spokesmen.
But ABC executives’ seeming astonishment at Barr’s behavior hardly rang true, calling to mind in fact the police captain in the classic film Casablanca who declares himself shocked to discover gambling going on in Rick’s Cafe even as he’s handed a fistful of cash he won at the tables.
In an op-ed published May 30 in The New York Times, Purdue associate professor, author and Times contributor Roxane Gay wrote pointedly about what ABC knew about Barr:
“It is not new information that Roseanne Barr makes racist, Islamophobic and misogynistic statements and is happy to peddle all manner of dangerous conspiracy theories. ABC knew this when it greenlighted the Roseanne reboot. ABC knew this when it quickly renewed the reboot for a second season, buoyed, no doubt, by the show’s strong ratings.
“The cast, the writers and the producers knew what Ms. Barr stood for when they agreed to work on the show. Everyone involved made a decision to support the show despite its co-creator’s racism. They decided that their career ambitions, or desire to return to network television, or financial interests would best be served by looking the other way. It was only when Ms. Barr became an immediate liability that everyone involved finally looked at her racism and dealt with it directly.”
Racism, anti-Semitism, misogyny abound in this country, the most civilized and accomplished society on earth. We have a president who lacks the basic human values Americans have traditionally cherished – a president, by the way, who Roseanne Barr unabashedly supports and apparently admires.
Say what you will about Twitter and other forms of social media and their pervasiveness in today’s society but their intrinsic value may be that we can quickly and clearly identify those whose views are repugnant. The messages they send demonstrate that there is much work to be done to improve relations among races and attitudes about race, religion and different cultures.
I wish I knew an answer to the broader problems these situations expose.
Perhaps we commit to individual acts of conscience knowing that over time all of those actions will find favor with larger groups and become a movement. Boycott ABC and maybe even Disney. Boycott those companies that advertised on Roseanne when they should have known better.
No individual act is too small. Cumulatively, they will take effect and cause businesses and individual decision-makers to act responsibly.
Richard Connor is president and publisher of the Fort Worth Business Press. Contact him at rconnor@bizpress.net