[Peace-discuss] Dr. Know on Roseanne and Russiagate

Wed May 30 03:10:42 UTC 2018

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I wouldn't ordinarily bring news of this kind to your attention, but I think there's a chance this is another instance of censorship via TV show cancellation.

Roseanne Barr, stand-up comic & former presidential contender (she lost the Green Party's nomination to Dr. Jill Stein), had a popular TV show in the 1980s on ABC called "Roseanne", about a working-class family in fictional Lanford, Illinois.

The show went off the air and recently had a revival -- all of the original cast came back to their roles and their first season aired to great commercial success[1]. The revival show featured Barr playing a character (Roseanne Conner) who supported Donald Trump for president, thus causing some friction within the Conner family.

Recently Barr falsely alleged that former Obama White House adviser Valerie Jarrett, who was born in Iran to American parents, has connections to the Muslim Brotherhood, and compared her to an ape. Barr wrote: "Muslim brotherhood & planet of the apes had a baby=vj" referencing Jarrett's initials[2].

ABC president Channing Dungey announced "Roseanne’s Twitter statement is abhorrent, repugnant and inconsistent with our values, and we have decided to cancel her show.". "Roseanne" stars and people associated with the show quickly joined the chorus distancing themselves from Barr's comment. Barr's agency (ICM Partners) dropped her saying her tweet was "antithetical to our core values". Streaming networks (such as Hulu) and rerun TV networks canceled re-runs of the "Roseanne" show as well.

There was more back and forth between Barr and others[2], Barr apologized, then announced she was quitting Twitter.

I can't help but notice the convenience of the distancing here for the Russiagate-pushing corporate media: The revival program was noted for being a commercial success which didn't get into Trump Derangement Syndrome -- making fun of Pres. Trump for things that were unlikely to challenge power in any substantive way including looks and weight-based jokes while not addressing the continuity of policy across American administrations such as the growing number of wars the US conducts or the extrajudicial means of assassinating people around the world such as the drone war.

Roseanne's revival show didn't echo the Russiagate narrative; whatever passed for political debate on the revival show (which was low-quality and not really worth much viewing frankly) did a better job of showing Trump supporters as human beings capable of holding different opinions. Trump supporters weren't the "basket of deplorables" they were said and shown as elsewhere on mainstream corporate TV.

There's no end to the number of Trump-hating shows out there; that is clearly what modern-day American TV networks are fine with putting on. If you're a stand-up comic with a passable hour-long set and you're willing to add some anti-Trump jokes, Netflix has a lot of money to spend on recording your set for a show. The revival "Roseanne" thus held the highest chance of critiquing the Clinton campaign and Clinton's record on prime-time American mainstream TV.

Could these be reasons why the show was so swiftly (perhaps opportunistically) canceled and so many took the chance to distance themselves from Barr?

Could it be that making money on a show that didn't cater to pushing Trump Derangement Syndrome means less than pushing the TDS agenda? After all, the revival show isn't being replaced with some show that runs stuff akin to what RT or teleSUR show. I'm reminded of why Phil Donahue and Jesse Ventura lost their respective MSNBC shows during the run-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq[3] -- they put on people who challenged that invasion.

Or could this be something far less interesting to people such as Roseanne Barr's attempt at renegotiating contract terms with another network? Or is Barr giving simply inchoate comments rooted in far too little fact and this amounts to nothing but coincidentally beneficial to Russiagate-supporting networks?
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[1] Articles describing the success:

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/…/tv-ratings-roseanne-fin… <https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/tv-ratings-roseanne-finale-dips-but-dominates-abc-1114311>
https://www.forbes.com/…/roseanne-ratings-hold-steady-as-t…/ <https://www.forbes.com/sites/tonifitzgerald/2018/05/09/roseanne-ratings-hold-steady-as-the-season-finale-nears/>
https://deadline.com/…/nielsen-roseanne-total-content-rati…/ <https://deadline.com/2018/04/nielsen-roseanne-total-content-ratings-1202376722/>
https://screenrant.com/roseanne-revival-ratings-low/ <https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fscreenrant.com%2Froseanne-revival-ratings-low%2F&h=ATNNviueMhqEErNrpV4hcW0RsIczj-e_PVVHcn9Su2hGzCmMVqo8GHOXmqJ1eBq-QwUyAFJ5jPf1jC453_EztQOdKa_scdTLgw9RECWuzSN0ATv21XjPFpI0WXra3AMTMAzy70FYJAo> -- points out
that the show's ratings dropped to 10.42 million viewers by the end of the 1st season but the article calls 10.42 million viewers "a respectable number".

[2] https://www.theguardian.com/…/roseanne-barr-tweet-valerie-j… <https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fculture%2F2018%2Fmay%2F29%2Froseanne-barr-tweet-valerie-jarrett-ape&h=ATNvwPofeAToZswxNCM0oKoTXvRxBzsIG7jZzF_EhI4WH4KBKv-gi1y86Uc6huvXGYH1zhz8_NN_cWIwKx_Wf8mcixV-i_y9T_59WP7XqPFyF8oWzakVomR6g9qNnL-HuZQ7prgFxYo>
[3] https://www.nytimes.com/…/msnbc-cancels-the-phil-donahue-ta… <https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2003%2F02%2F26%2Fbusiness%2Fmsnbc-cancels-the-phil-donahue-talk-show.html&h=ATNyzauL9RtEyY5_avVwM_hT3t5TLdyOIa-5qF3u0-G4N8kc2TWX8w7brW3Ygt6bBtqm4UPNhCq68T-J9VQQrtkRTmbttkmPlLHAXpFNU_j9TZ2LcZ_xF7CTdvasUaX60QF9hnbsEoo> tries to downplay Donahue's MSNBC ratings and then says "Donahue's show had been growing slightly over the past few months, and he was actually attracting more viewers than any other show on MSNBC, even the channel's signature prime-time program ''Hardball With Chris Matthews.'' Mr. Matthews's show has averaged 413,000 viewers over the last month" and https://www.huffingtonpost.com/…/phil-donahue-chris-matthew… <https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/21/phil-donahue-chris-matthews-msnbc-firing_n_2926643.html> quotes NBC execs saying Donahue was a "difficult public face for NBC in a time of war". Ventura's MSNBC show is discussed in https://www.newsbusters.org/…/jesse-ventura-msnbc-canceled-… <https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.newsbusters.org%2Fblogs%2Fnb%2Fnoel-sheppard%2F2009%2F11%2F29%2Fjesse-ventura-msnbc-canceled-my-show-opposing-iraq-war&h=ATPbg8iGiFr-FTb9TVBaVlRKQPBE9eEM6NDK1WwyA5ZmVEwJgqg9-SUu5NwS2EQ8Ns1sUypN1GyK6fkXIxWohAElucHZ4MeFqLrN4WZMr-DblbY5NWNyj2yFg3qTFM2OqjtHZPI5O1Q> and said to be not so well-viewed. But this gives me the impression that ratings don't really matter when faced with a conflict between what a shows says and what the network wants to say -- high or low ratings, shows that don't get in line are canceled.

--J. B. Nicholson
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