Roseanne Barr’s downfall is a victory over Trump culture

It’s always the ones you most expect. Roseanne Barr, an icon of Trump culture, has had her TV sitcom cancelled by ABC after she tweeted that former Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett was the product of a union between the Muslim Brotherhood and the Planet of the Apes. Jarrett is black and was born in Iran. 

In the 1980s, Barr was a trailblazer for working-class female stand-ups. In the 1990s, she was ABC’s ratings queen, with a self-titled half-hour that spent seven seasons in the top ten despite her off-camera reputation as a tantrum-throwing termagant. Along came the twenty-something bubblegum sitcoms, Friends and its imitators, with their thin scripts and thinner leads and suddenly Barr’s sardonic slice of down-at-heel life was too heavy. Dotcom America was upon us, era of nerdy-cute billionaires and a credit bubble that would definitely never burst. 

It’s a point of debate what Barr went out of first, the spotlight or her mind, but soon enough she was running for President, nominally as the candidate of the socialist Peace and Freedom Party but on a platform largely indistinguishable from the mutterings of a bus station bag lady.