Just hours after Roseanne Barr posted a racist “joke” about former Obama administration adviser Valerie Jarrett, ABC has canceled the well-received Roseanne revival. The announcement came in a very brief and very clear comment from ABC Entertainment President Channing Dungey: “Roseanne’s Twitter statement is abhorrent, repugnant, and inconsistent with our values, and we have decided to cancel her show.”
This comes after consulting producer Wanda Sykes announced that she would be leaving the show, with her decision most likely coming as a result of Barr’s tweet. (She didn’t specifically say, but the timing is significant.) This also comes after ABC made a very conscious effort to remind people that Roseanne Barr’s views do not necessarily reflect the views of the Roseanne show, with co-showrunner Bruce Helford specifically asking people not to confuse the real Roseanne with the TV Roseanne. Also, despite the fact that Barr was a PR nightmare waiting to happen for ABC, the network had renewed the revival for a second season and promised that future episodes would be more about family than politics.
In the end, just as everybody probably should’ve predicted, the politics became a little too hard to ignore.