Four Takeaways From The ‘Roseanne’ Cancellation

On Tuesday afternoon, one of the strangest chapters in recent TV history came to a swift and ignominious end. In the wake of a racist Twitter post by Roseanne Barr, Roseanne, the sitcom revival turned latest front in an ongoing culture war, was canceled. The show finally proved inextricable from its namesake and star, ABC’s one-time saving grace and its ultimate liability. The line between those two identities, it turns out, is a single tweet. Until Tuesday, Roseanne’s network had proved to be tolerant of Roseanne Barr’s extremist right-wing views, aired freely and without mediation to the viewing public via Barr’s frequent posts on social media.