The Roseanne Mess…

“The TV Junkie” by Penny Landau ****Hours after comedian Roseanne Barr apologized for posting racially charged tweets about businessman George Soros (“George Soros is a nazi who turned in his fellow Jews 2 be murdered in German concentration camps & stole their wealth”), Chelsea Clinton (calling her Chelsea Soros Clinton) and former Obama administration adviser Valerie Jarrett (“Muslim brotherhood and planet of the apes had a baby=vj,”), ABC announced the cancellation of “Roseanne.” ABC Entertainment president Channing Dungey called Barr’s late-night Twitter tirade about Soros & Jarrett “abhorrent, repugnant and inconsistent with our values.” ICM Partners also dropped Barr as a client. Wanda Sykes, who was a writer and consulting producer on the show, tweeted her resignation from the show before it was canceled, saying “I will not be returning to @RoseanneOnABC.” “Roseanne” producer and actress Sara Gilbert tweeted, “Roseanne’s recent comments about Valerie Jarrett and so much more, are abhorrent and do not reflect the beliefs of our cast and crew or anyone associated with our show.”

Barr apologized, but it was too little, too late and the damage was already done. ABC did what many people are calling “the right thing.”

People, including TPTB at ABC, seemed to have forgotten Roseanne’s photo of her dressed up as hitler, serving “burnt Jew cookies” back in 2009. What made them think that she had changed? I’m sure that Sara Gilbert, who was instrumental in putting the re-boot together and served as producer of the show, did her best to keep a lid on Roseanne and her mouth, but to no avail.

One of the things that confuses me about Barr and her racism and occasional anti-Semitism, is that she, like Michael Fishman and Sara Gilbert, is Jewish. So why the support for a Holocaust denier? Why the “burnt cookies?” Is she that much of a self-loathing Jew that she needed to make these statements?

All of the above set off a twitterstorm that consumed everyone from the time the axe fell, through late night talk shows. Of all the nights for Rachel Maddow and Stephen Colbert to not be live on the air, this would have been a field day for both of them.

But I digress (as usual). The saddest part of all of this is the people who work on the show. I don’t mean the actors, they’ll be fine, but it’s the crew. With families to feed and bills to pay, Roseanne and her twitter-finger have sent them all to the unemployment line. Also, let’s not forget all the residuals that the actors won’t be getting since all the networks that carry the original series have pulled the show from their line-ups.

But of all the cast members on the show, the one who Barr really needs to apologize to is Jayden Rey, who played her granddaughter, DJ’s daughter Mary. Here’s this big star who has every opportunity to make this kid’s first major role into something positive and one she’ll always remember and then manages to ruin it all. How do you tell a kid who is Black that her TV grandmother is a racist? She’ll remember this and G-d only knows how much hurt and damage Barr did to her.

Roseanne is gone and so is her show. If only it were that easy to fire the guy in the White House.

Until next time…

“The TV Junkie” was preceded in her family by a large mahogany cabinet that housed a small screen with a large speaker below. Thus began her love affair with the older sibling in the living room. Theirs was a tenuous relationship, prone to mishaps (forgetting to use the special “screen” for “Winky Dink”), joyous events (“Julie & Carol at Carnegie Hall”), sad moments (Clarabelle saying goodbye to the Peanut Gallery) and a wide range of emotions (the funeral of John F. Kennedy and the Inauguration of Barack Obama). From “Captain Video” to “Star Trek” to “Lost;” from “A Brighter Day” to “The Edge of Night” to “General Hoapital;” from “Peyton Place” to “ “Dynasty” to “Desperate Housewives;” there has never been a greater love, than that of “The TVJ” and the best friend a girl could ever have.