Let’s do that
We need to deal with everyday racism, Don Lemon says.
CNN’s @donlemon: I give ABC credit for cancelling “Roseanne” – but this wasn’t the first time, so why was she given this opportunity in the first place? https://t.co/XuT2RWthhp pic.twitter.com/rvLNVSOD1X
— The Situation Room (@CNNSitRoom) May 29, 2018
Racism – the personal, psychological, in-each-person’s-head variety – runs along a spectrum of acceptance, by that person.
You’ve got some few out-and-proud racists.
You’ve got many more who have pretty much the same beliefs and may own up to them publicly but deny that they’re genuine racists.
There are still more whose racist beliefs are hidden, not least from themselves, under rationales and categories that end up lining up with racism much more than coincidentally but could – theoretically, generously, in some possible world – not be racist.
And plenty of us who soldier along with the best of intentions with racist assumptions that we simply don’t understand are racist ones, or perhaps get kept only because white privilege means they never intersect with our lived experience, who would – if the occasion DID happen along – stomp the beliefs out like a cockroach spotted on the kitchen floor when the light comes up.
Less-than-enlightened sitcoms can get along quite well appealing to the nastier end of the spectrum, and with a star whose politics are much worse than the content, depending on just how much light and publicity gets shined on the racism. Enough of it will make them shed the less-awfully, less-shamelessly racist ends, until its left with only the card-carrying racists – and leaves the network associated with them specifically.
We can still credit 2018’s United States with that much class. It’s… not nothing, even if it’s not remotely enough. Some days, some days I just want to cling to what victories we can, even if it feels like we’re fighting for ground that we took 40 years ago, for principles we’d have to open a history book to find someone rejecting.
Well, the sitcom had her name, but it wasn’t “her.”
The original “Roseanne” was liberal, pro-union, working class, and feminist.
The real Roseanne Barr is an unstable and irrational person.
It took a while for Barr’s problems to destroy the first “Roseanne.” I guess they thought they could make it work this time despite her??
(If legally possible they really ought to fire her ass and reboot the show without her.)
The Show Formerly Known as Roseanne?