Oh, you mean she's a Trump supporter? Well, then of course she's a racist. That's only partly a joke, but it gets at a real point, or rather, several. I'll try to tackle a few, in some slightly different ways from what I have said before about the overlap between politics and entertainment.
On the first point, supporting Trump requires either being drawn to his racism, or tolerating it. Roseanne is in the former camp, as are many in the country. The entertainment industry is, for the most part, a left-leaning industry. Why? A subject for another day, but while there are segments of the entertainment industry (like conventional country music) that make a "safe space" for conservatives, although they'd hate the term, most of the entertainment industry is left-leaning. Republicans decrying "Hollywood" are generally just looking for villains and trying to find a way to proclaim victimhood, which is hard to do given whom they represent, but most people in entertainment lean left.
The Roseanne revival was partly an attempt to portray a political perspective not generally shown because of the leanings of the entertainment industry. There is some truth to this. The problem is that when you give voice to Trump supporters, they tend to say what they believe, which is, um... racist stuff.
Remember Cliven Bundy? Remember when Fox News and the rest of the Republican establishment tried to turn him into a crusader hero for freedom against federal tyranny? And then someone left the camera on him too long, and this happened...
Have we learned our lesson here? Have I made my point? Good. Moving on now.
My broader point is a return to the question of how we think of entertainment made by reprehensible people. It wasn't just Roseanne recently. You probably noticed Morgan Freeman. Shit, so we can't watch Shawshank Redemption anymore either? Fuck!
Or...
And this returns me to the problem on which I commented months ago. That post addressed a range of people, from Charles Mingus to Lewis Carroll. Horrible people all, and yet Mingus's recorded output is still jazz canon, and few authors' works are as prominent in popular culture as Carroll's. Every time you read or watch anything related to Alice in Wonderland, do you think about what you are doing in relationship to the author? For jazz snobs like me, can we listen to Mingus, or Miles Davis, or other horrible people without guilt?
That doesn't even scratch the surface, and you have no clue about the beliefs of most of the people whose entertainment you consume.
From a liberal perspective, when you find out, it's mostly cool with you because they mostly agree with you. Conservatives sort of have to get used to consuming entertainment from people whose beliefs piss them off. Otherwise, they're stuck with nobody but Ted Nugent, and the phrase, "fate worse than death" comes to mind. (As we've learned from Roy Moore, they're mostly cool with the child molestation thing, so neither that nor Teddy's racism bugs conservatives...)
So what makes it OK to read Alice in Wonderland, or listen to Black Saint and the Sinner Lady? Do you have to wait for Roseanne to die before you can go back and watch the original episodes, which were generally considered to be milestones in tv comedy? Will you ever be able to watch Cosby without feeling sick, even after that rapist motherfucker drops dead?
No? And yet, you'll live in a world surrounded by Alice in Wonderland?
As I wrote back in November, I'm still going to listen to Mingus, and Miles Davis, and even Hazmat Modine, even though that vile misogynist, Wade Schuman is still around, and will still prey on women. Why? Because... I don't know where else to draw a line. I don't want to give any more money to that motherfucker, but I've already bought a bunch of his albums, and Mingus is dead, so what's the difference? Music is music.
Now, though, let's ask another question. Let's say that Roseanne weren't a comedian. Let's say she were the most amazingly talented surgeon in the world. You need a difficult operation. Your life depends on it. She goes on one of her racist rants right before you need to go under the knife. Do you have Racist-Roseanne the Surgeon do it, or a lesser, non-racist do the surgery?
Yeah, that's what I thought.
It's a tv show, and tv sucks anyway. (Hi! I'm a hipster!) There isn't much on the line. For Trump supporters, there is something on the line-- seeing one of their own on tv, represented. Note my phraseology. Of course, one of their own is a paranoid, idiot racist, but still. Apparently, there are enough of them to put Donny in the White House.
The flip side is the question of whether or not there is value to the marginalization of Roseanne. Trump emboldens people like Roseanne to express their racism. Did she become more racist over time, or just feel like she now has permission to express it because of Trump? I have to go with the latter, and I don't think she's alone. I don't think that there is significantly more racism in American society today than in the recent past. People are just more comfortable expressing it. Are we better off with it in the open so that it can be confronted? Were we better off with the racists in hiding so that there was a phony veneer of civility?
I'll leave this post here, with that question.
And a reminder. Plenty of the entertainers whom you like have abhorrent beliefs and behavior patterns in their lives. You have a few choices. You can either choose to separate products from their creators, interrogate the politics and lives of artists, or stick your fingers in your ears and say LA-LA-LA-LA-LA!!!!
I didn't say you had any good choices.