I was surprised to hear that Roseanne was going to be back on the air. Mostly because of John Goodman. (I mean . . . it's not like the guy has been lacking high profile gigs. And I have huge respect for him. He's done some superb work over the past 35 years.) And you know, I wasn't exactly a gigantic fan of it the first time around, but I did watch and enjoy it. So I thought what the hell and tuned in to the first show.
I thought it was good. Surprisingly good, actually. There was a little bit of thinking "maybe you ARE too old for this," but not much. What I primarily noticed was that the writing was clever and that it made me laugh a couple of times, which is more than I can say for most of the contemporary sit-coms I've tried to sit-through.
To be honest, "Roseanne's" comment about supporting Trump barely registered on my Rectum Scale. For one thing, because it seemed very much in character for the character. I didn't know (then) anything about Roseanne Barr the Person's politics, but it wouldn't have made any difference to me if I had. What the fuck do I care about that? I'm watching for yucks, not yacks. For another thing, I didn't see what she said as being particularly in favor of Trump. I don't remember the exact words that she used, but it was something along the lines of she voted for Trump because she thought he offered the possibility of providing jobs for people who were in desperate need of them--something that Obama had failed to do. It was most certainly not a ringing endorsement. It was more of a "Nothing else was working and I didn't know what else to do, so I voted for him." It's not a sentiment I agree with, but it is not an argument without merit. (See Counter-Revolution: Liberal Europe in Retreat by Jan Zielonka and Death of the Liberal Class by Chris Hedges for some eye-opening ideas about why so many people turned to Trump in 2016. I'm pretty sure that if Liberals had listened to some of that stuff we wouldn't be looking at The Orange Man every day.) For another thing, Roseanne's comments were immediately and forcefully countered by Jackie's comments against him.
Well, that's enough things.
But I was watching
the other night, and he was talking about the show. About how it was so Pro-Trump, about how Trump had called Roseanne Barr to congratulate her on it, about how Roseanne Barr was a big Trump supporter, allathat. And I suppose that's fine . . . though I don't suppose that it's news, and we'd be better served if the segment had appeared on Entertainment Tonight rather than CNN, but I guess that serves me right for tuning in to CNN again after I'd sworn off of them. And then it got worse. Smerconish announced that he was having a poll, which went something like this: Is Roseanne successful because of its politics or because of the quality of the show? Well . . . first off, polls of this kind are pretty fucking stupid. You can't expect to get any viable results by polling conducted in this way and in this venue. But aside from that, it's a stupid question. Why something is popular is a complex thing, and you can't reduce it to a binary process. But beyond that, the question itself has been framed atop a faulty assumption. The show was 21 minutes long. Maybe one minute . . . let's high ball it and say two . . . dealt with politics. And as previously mentioned, "both sides" of this particular political point were represented. So to frame the question in this way exaggerates the prominence of the political element, and fails to acknowledge that those politics were not presented as facilely as the poll assumes.
And I'm sorry to say that this is the same kind of bullshit I keep seeing from my fellow Liberals . . . especially those who appear on television. And you know what? You don't win arguments by telling the other side how stupid they are. And you don't win any arguments by ignoring the complexity of an issue and exaggerating the parts that you don't agree with. Arguing in that way also forces the other side to attack back, and then your argument is caricatured and then the venom starts to flow, and pretty soon you're not even talking about the issue because you're too busy talking about what an idiot your "opponent" is.
So fuck Smerconish, man. Even though I have been fond of him in the past. He's part of The Problem. And I don't think that Roseanne is. Besides . . . it's a lot funnier than CNN. Check this out:
Darlene's kid is complaining about how her life sucks, and Roseanne responds by saying,
"Hey, all our lives suck. That's why we put marshmallows on yams."
That's good stuff. I'm adding this show to my Library, man.
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