Race to the Bottom

Looks like Roseanne finally stepped in it good and hard, or maybe ABC and Disney finally decided they'd had enough of her toxic schtick. She's been doing this sort of thing for some time, you know, skirting the edge of acceptability, as it were.

I gave up on the rebooted show after the doubleheader premiere, and have not bothered following it since then, but I do occasionally check out her Twitter feed. While her (obviously since erased) swipe at Valerie Jarrett was over the line, Roseanne has not been shy about approaching said line with more conspiracy-oriented stuff (which, of course is what the "Muslim Brotherhood" part of the Jarrett tweet was about, because Jarrett was born in Iran, you see).

There's always a good, principled debate to be had on the perennial subject of how far is too far, but the problem is that one side typically argues from the most intellectually dishonest standpoint imaginable. The conservative approach to pop culture or even the basic rules of comedy or music seem to revolve around the classic why can they call each other that and we can't call them that? sort of plaintive nonsense.

The idea that they are now held accountable for using that word in a public forum rankles them. They feel that they are entitled to dare the effete, officious gatekeepers of permitted public discourse, and when they are inevitably rebuffed, they'll waddle back under their rocks, asses on fire, squawking some rehearsed boilerplate about Harvey Weinstein.

But let's play devil's advocate for a moment. The Simpsons, for example, has made a cornerstone comedic staple of lampooning racial stereotypes, not just Apu but the Italian pizza guy and the pugilistic leprechaun and others. But those comedic tropes have always come buttressed with context and subtext, a sense of taking the piss out of those stereotypes in the end. Apu and Luigi interact perhaps as hyphenated Americans, but Americans who are trying to assimilate nonetheless.

But the Jarrett tweet cannot be contextualized or subtextualized. The "Planet of the Apes" crack is obvious as it is, so there's no need to parse that one. That's not a "taking the piss" reference. Making a joke, say, about Jarrett talking loudly in a movie theater, telling the character in the movie to get out the house!, that's something where black people might see that and take it as a harmless joke. But "monkey" jokes are as off-limits as the n-word itself, and someone who claims to have been a professional comedy person for decades shouldn't need to be told that.

It's the "Muslim Brotherhood" part that's more interesting. It encourages one to recall that that was in fact a rumor about Jarrett while she worked in the White House, and that it was part of a much larger and stupider conspiracy, one that Roseanne's own oompa-loompa hero began his storied political career with. Funny how this bullshit keeps coming up, and when they're called on it, they try to say that they're joking, or that they shouldn't be taken literally or seriously, or whatever Humpty Dumpty couch-fort bullshit they lamely try to hide behind.

This is not about free speech, not at all. This is about the world of commerce, and how employees interact within that realm. This is about a multi-national conglomerate with tentacles in everything, and that boycotting Disney would be almost too easy, especially when their brand new Star Wars movie already under-performed in its opening box office. It's also about taking a look at the things that these people say and do, and trying to imagine for a second what it must take to get your mind to work like that routinely.

Seriously. Few people even know who Valerie Jarrett is. But this is an important insight into how the minds of these people work -- Roseanne decided that this was something worth making a not-even-borderline crack about. And when you're done imagining the mindset of the person who operates that way, now imagine the mindset of the person who reads that and says to themselves, Now that's funny!. Their insatiable need to dehumanize their political opponents literally has no limit; even after they're gone from the political arena they are considered fair game for what are at best bizarre taunts.

So now Roseanne will become another self-styled First Amendment martyr, sacrificed on the altar of political correctness, to which reasonable people will respond, Tell it to Colin Kaepernick. Don't be at all surprised if Fox picks up the show to put it behind Crybaby Tim Allen's Last Man Standing. And of course Emperor (Putting the Me in Memorial Day) Snowflake will bring it up tonight in his totally legal and appropriate campaign rally. But in the end, it really is just a goddamned teevee show, and a mediocre one at that.