A mere nine hours after Roseanne Barr posted an astonishingly racist tweet about Obama intimate Valerie Jarrett, the American Broadcasting Company did something that has never happened before in the history of broadcasting: It canceled TV’s #1 show.
The show was heralded as the first program to try and make sense of the Trump era, and it generated an enormous audience that dissipated some over the course of three months but was still in powerhouse territory. Networks like ABC build entire weekly schedules around giant hits like Roseanne, so its departure from the airwaves isn’t just a matter of replacing it with another half-hour. This was a decision that had to sting and sting hard.
Barr is likely to be airbrushed out of Hollywood entirely for some time. “Following the cancellation of her hit ABC comedy series, Barr has been dropped by her agency, ICM Partners,” Deadline reports.
Big Hollywood’s John Nolte is likely right when he tweets that unlike Fox rebooting Tim Allen’s conservative-friendly sitcom Last Man Standing, there’s no way that Barr’s series “ends up at another network. She is toxic now and the cast will not follow her. Barr is going to have to do a Mel Gibson. Disappear for a few years.”
FLASHBACK: Occupy Wall Street-era Roseanne Barr in 2011: ‘Guilty’ Wall Street Bankers Should Be Sent to Reeducation Camps or Beheaded.