It’s a persistent complaint on the right that there are no major conservative celebrities in Hollywood, although for a group that claims to hate celebrities and what they stand for, they keep electing them to office every chance they get. It’s true that if you survey the ranks of Hollywood stars, few conservative voices stand out. That being said, there are a few notable ones that stand out and loudly proclaim their ideological affinity.
One of the most prominent conservative voices in Hollywood is comedian and actress Roseanne Barr, producer and star of the sitcom “Roseanne.” The original show was a blue-collar sitcom that explored the humor and heartache of middle- America in that delightfully innocent time, the 90’s. In the intervening twenty years, Roseanne and much of that America have both changed from being mildly progressive to becoming paranoid reactionaries fully endorsing Trump.
The reboot by ABC was supposed to accomplish two things. First, capitalize on nostalgia from the 90’s and bring back a popular cultural artifact from the last decade and second, to appeal to the Trump voting demographic and get them to watch T.V. with the promise of a character just like them.
On the first point, the appeal of 90’s nostalgia to the average TV viewer is probably negligible. On the second point, ABC was very successful in gaining almost unheard of viewers for network television in this day and age. But that success came at the price of inescapable controversy.
Taking a beloved sitcom character and making her a devout Trump supporter was bound to ruffle a few feathers. The fact that the real-life Trump supporter she was based on possesses all the usual qualities of a Trump supporter, a bellicose social media presence, a breathtaking level of casual racism, and a fascination for conspiracy theories almost guarantees that it was not fated to last.
Fate, as it’s wont to do, came to pass. After a particularly offensive tweet directed at a former Obama staffer, “Roseanne” got the ax from ABC. Considering the toxicity of Trump and the revulsion toward controversy that ABC’s parent company Disney exudes, it’s not really a surprise that tolerance toward the offensive would be short.
The fate of “Roseanne” is not a unique occurrence; there is an old concept in free speech movement that if you give an idiot enough rhetorical rope they will eventually hang themselves with it. To put it more simply if you allow someone with a horrible idea to keep talking they will eventually say something to undermine themselves and alienate them from other people.
Roseanne’s tweets fill this paradigm nicely, a certain level of offensive or crazy you can dismiss as eccentric or part of the character gimmick, but there reaches a point where you can’t deny the truth anymore and have to face the music. Roseanne’s defenders on the right can search for a conspiracy and complain about liberal bias all they want, but the truth of the matter was Roseanne couldn’t keep her mouth shut and alienated herself from the public and the corporate brass.
The phenomenon of idiots hanging themselves with their own ropes is one of the defining aspects of the Trump era. From Milo revealing his support of pedophilia to Michael Cohen revealing his payoffs to porn stars, it’s almost as if Trump supporters can’t help but reveal the depths of their stupidity. Even Trump is in on the act considering he has basically all but admitted to colluding with any foreign government that so much as gave him a flirtatious glance, and now is trying to hide it.
That being said, idiots can do a lot of damage before they finally destroy themselves. However, as long we realize that idiocy is a bright, but brief flame, we can overcome it.