A week after its season finale, "Roseanne" went out with a bang. And oddly enough, Republicans ought to be thankful.
ABC canceled the show Tuesday after star Roseanne Barr tweeted that a former top adviser to President Barack Obama was the love child of talking apes and the Muslim Brotherhood. That was beyond the pale, even for a show whose debut attracted 18 million viewers.
The revival of a hit show from the 1990s, "Roseanne" had been seen in some quarters as a triumph for President Donald Trump and his followers. A personal friend of Trump's, Barr played the matriarch of a blue-collar Midwestern family who not just supported Trump, but channeled some of his rougher edges. In fact, after the show's blockbuster premier, Trump himself tweeted, "(I)t was about us!"
It's just a matter of time before fans of the show blast ABC making a "politically correct" decision to cancel the show _ as if Barr's tweet about Valerie Jarrett were just edgy and not racist and Islamophobic.
But in a way, it was just a matter of time before Barr uttered something this bad. She's long used Twitter to recirculate bizarre conspiracy theories from right-wing nut-jobs. Who knows if she believed the crap she was tweeting? She's made a career out of provoking people, and Twitter was just another vehicle.
That's not a star Republicans want to hitch themselves to. Barr's views of politics and government are toxic at a time when Trump and Republicans are the ones in charge. That sort of negativity might work for extremists (on both sides), but most people want someone and something credible to believe in, not just someone and something to hate.
Granted, "Roseanne" didn't treat Trump supporters like caricatures, as Hollywood is wont to do. But as Barr showed on Twitter on Tuesday -- and on multiple previous occasions -- she is not Roseanne Conner. The show elevated her views out of the obscurity where they belong. The last thing Republicans should want is for Barr to be seen by millions of American voters as the face of their party.