ABC cancels Roseanne

Roseanne Barr, living human woman and embattled television star, has asserted her own existence and howled at the rift between fiction and reality via a caps-lock message and four exclamation points.

On Tuesday night, Barr tweeted, “I AIN’T DEAD, BITCHES!!!!”

Roseanne Barr had quite a day on Tuesday, with her top-rated sitcom being promptly canceled by ABC following an exceptionally nasty and racist tweet about former Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett.

And because, it appears, he simply cannot help himself, the president of the United States has weighed in on Twitter. Rather than criticize or defend Barr’s statements, or even comment on the statements at all, Trump elected, unsurprisingly, to make it all about him.

Roseanne Barr has worked hard to do damage control in the aftermath of ABC canceling the revival of Roseanne — but she says her Ambien may have been working even harder.

On Tuesday morning, after garnering public outrage over a bizarre series of tweets, including one racist comparison of former White House staffer Valerie Jarrett to an ape, Barr initially apologized and “left” the platform.

Things are quickly falling apart for Roseanne Barr.

In a series of tweets on Tuesday morning, Barr lashed out at a number of targets, recited several conspiracy theories, and, among other things, falsely claimed that Chelsea Clinton was married to a member of the Soros family, adding that George Soros was a Nazi.

For many Americans, Roseanne Barr is “Roseanne,” star of the eponymous sitcom that ran from 1988 to 1997, and again in 2018. But Roseanne Barr is not her character — a quick-witted everymom. In real life and, more noticeably, on Twitter, she’s a conspiracy theory-loving, racist every-troll.

On Tuesday, her trolling came to a head when ABC canceled her show after she likened Barack Obama’s top adviser Valerie Jarrett (who is black) to an ape — a slur so extreme even Fox News called it racist.

Roseanne was the No. 1 show on TV for the 2017-’18 TV season, as ABC’s various representatives never tired of reminding attendees of its recent upfront presentation to advertisers. It was a dominant cultural monolith.

And now it’s canceled — the highest-rated show ever to not return for a new season when it by all rights should have. (Most high-rated shows that don’t return reach the end of long runs and choose to close up shop on their own terms, as happened with Seinfeld, Cheers, and many, many others.) Star Roseanne Barr’s blatantly racist tweet about former Obama aide Valerie Jarrett was the nail in the show’s coffin, but the star’s conspiracy-obsessed, constantly-flirting-with-overt-racism Twitter feed was always a ticking time bomb. This was always going to happen. It just wasn’t expected to happen so quickly.

The premiere of the Roseanne revival — 21 years after its initial finale and starring a Roseanne Barr, who now spreads right-wing conspiracy theories on Twitter — sparked several outrage cycles, massive ratings, congratulations from President Trump, and, eventually, a shocking cancellation following a racist tweet from Barr.

ABC’s announcement of the successful revival’s second season, which called Barr’s statement “abhorrent, repugnant, and inconsistent with our values,” represents a huge shift from how the network has thus far characterized the show and its success. In fact, per ABC executives, the presidential election and Roseanne’s subsequent success has inspired the TV industry to consider a “heartland strategy” when approaching their programming.

The new Roseanne might have killed it in the ratings, but that doesn’t mean it’s immortal. ABC has confirmed that Roseanne is canceled following a racist Twitter tirade from star Roseanne Barr, which ABC president Channing Dungey described in a statement as “repugnant and inconsistent with our values.”

Roseanne’s revival has long been overshadowed by its star’s vocal political opinions. Barr is a Trump supporter who has embraced and amplified conspiracy theories on Twitter, and who has a history of comparing black women to apes. So when she went on Twitter on Tuesday morning to amplify a few conspiracy theories and to say that Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett looked like “the muslim brotherhood & planet of the apes had a baby,” it was not exactly out of character for her.