Roseanne is not stupid. Somewhere in her history, she was exposed to and then fully embraced a separatist, racially intolerant view of the world. This week, enabled by the Tweeter-in-Chief, she knowingly, albeit “jokingly”, went too far for the sensitivity of the current Disney stewardship, (having boldly come a long way from a not-so-dissimilar racism of its iconic founder), resulting in the immediate and very public cancellation of her highly-rated show. If this was a career-crushing incident, like many of the #MeToo outings, (deserved or Franken-esque), her punishment and the Aesopian take away could have been used to shine some light on the creeping darkness growing like a cancer in the not-so-civilized 21stcentury. But…this isn’t that. Roseanne is now the right-wing’s Joan of Arc without the stake or the bonfire. She has cleverly continued tweeting, “Please don’t defend me! The Ambien® made me do it! My joke was indefensible. Don’t feel sorry for me!”, admitting her lack of control, yet remorseless for the demeaning, bullying of her intent. If her show is not resurrected by some other opportunistic network, (there’s obviously a demographic and any number of supportive advertisers to build on the show’s success), her BFF may have an ambassadorship or similar high and vocal office in mind, (I think Minister of Propaganda is available, and her uncanny resemblance to Joey Goebbels should not be taken lightly).
As expected, Cheeto Head’s response has been to internalize the issue…”What about all of the horrible things people are saying about me? Where’s my apology? How come Keith Olbermann has a job?“ Of course, he’s once again missed the point, that most of the slurs directed at him are fact based, while even many of his staunchest Republican supporters have commented that calling black people apes, (out loud and among book learnin’ folks anyway), is perhaps a baby step too far.
I fully support Roseanne’s right to say whatever she wants and I support and applaud ABC’s right to tell her to shut the fuck up and get the hell off of the network. Make no mistake about it, we are fully engaged in playground diplomacy on a global scale. The still-most-powerful man on Planet Earth, (measured by stores of effective weapons of massive lethal intent at his command), and his lunch-money-stealing posse, are shouting the loudest and rallying the most visible support. They are not in the majority, but their singular intent, chaos, is achieving its goal of paralyzing and cowering opposition. There may be only one more voting day left to stem this evil, rising tide. Every decent American must show up to beat down this scourge on our Democracy in the most profound manner available to us, by exercising our Constitutional right. Or…we can remain apathetic and be destined to having the shit kicked out of us, every single day, on the way home from school.