Roseanne Barr should spin-off her own new series

Just because ABC TV Network doesn’t want Roseanne Barr in the newly re-engineered Roseanne TV series called “The Conners,” doesn’t mean she can’t be the star of her own re-engineered Roseanne TV series with its own premise, starring Roseanne Barr.

By Ray Hanania

I really enjoyed the comeback season of Roseanne, starring Roseanne Barr and John Goodman. Above the political turmoil, it was fun for this baby boomer to reach back and reminisce in real life about a TV series I so enjoyed when it aired originally from 1988 to 1997. The 2018 revival was a great hit with me. I loved the Roseanne Season 10 come back, and the return of all of the characters. And I wasn’t alone. More than 27 million people watched the series’ 9 episodes, making it one of the most popular shows on television.

The truth is that the challenges facing working class families like the TV series family the Conners, haven’t really changed much from the early 1990s. The challenges we faced in 1990 are exactly the challenges we face today. Tough economy, Poverty. Families that continue to struggle. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer. And worse, the news media, which pretends to be among the poor actually live with the wealthiest few.

In other words, hypocrisy back then is hypocrisy today. Nothing has changed.

Roseanne Barr at the Hard Rock Cafe in Maui in 2010. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I was very disappointed when ABC tubed the Roseanne series after its star, Roseanne Barr, made critical comments on Twitter about Valerie Jarrett, the former aide to President Barack Obama. Responding to a thread on Twitter about Jarrett, Barr Tweeted, “muslim brotherhood & planet of the apes had a baby=vj”.

Back in the 1990s, that comment might have passed for hard-hitting sarcasm. But today isn’t 1990 and the level of tolerance has risen heights of intolerance driven by a political divide that is so vicious not just from one side but from both sides. Even saying that attracts personal attacks and criticism.

I really doubt Barr was making a racist comment about Jarrett, whose parents are of both European White and African American heritage. I know Jarrett, but I never actually thought of her as being African American, even though her husband was the son of longtime African American columnist Vernon Jarrett.

To me, Barr’s comment was just uncalled for below-the-belt namecalling. Something that we see int he mainstream news media every day.

The controversy was worsened because Barr is a strong supporter of President Donald Trump and his haters — and there are many — were ceaseless in their assertions that Barr was a “racist.”

ABC TV, a mainstream news media operation that includes entertainment, reacted to the public outcry from the anti-Trump activists are fired Barr canceling the show. The TV network has come back with a new version to be called “The Conners” that will air will all of the same characters except Roseanne.

I won’t watch “The Conners” because it’s no longer about entertainment but rather about hate and politics.

But I have a better idea. I think that a TV network should revive the Roseanne Show under a new title, called “Roseanne Barr” and starring Roseanne Barr. The first episode would begin with Roseanne returning to her home after visiting the Social Security office to clear up a government glitch she was summoned to address by the government. She went on her own. But when she returned, she found her home at 714 Delaware Street in the drab and fictional village of Lanford, Illinois, and the surrounding neighborhood swarmed by hundreds of heavily armed police and SWAT Team members.

As we learn in the opening episode, three religious-fanatic terrorists from Afghanistan who entered the country illegally, slipping past the border on January 19, 2017, the day before President Obama turns over the keys to the White House to his successor Donald J. Trump.

In the U.S., the terrorists planned and then executed a terrorist attack at one of the major Illinois marathons. One of the terrorists was caught and killed but the other two, heavily armed and having hijacked a Mercedes, drove from Chicago to the Chicago suburb of Lanford where police cornered then, right in front of the Conner’s home.

The terrorists broke into the home, where the family was preparing a surprise party for Roseanne, who had not yet returned. And during the siege of the home, the terrorists killed all of the family members except husband Dan Conners (John Goodman) who was seriously injured, the only survivor, in a coma at a nearby hospital. All of the other family members except one, have been massacred Jackie Harris (Laurie Metcalf), D.J. Conner (Michael Fishman) were killed. One of the terrorists slipped out holding Darlene Conner-Healy (Sara Gilbert) as a hostage as they flee through the city avoiding contacts with police.

In the end, Darlene is transported across the border with Mexico where her hostage-taker sells her to human traffickers who force her into sex slavery at a whore house near Juarez.

As the only survivor, Roseanne spends the next year caring for her comatose husband, who only is revived if actor John Goodman decides to return to the new series, or is replaced by one of the police officers who responded to the hostage scene at the Conner’s home.

The next 10 episodes of the first season of the new TV series “Roseanne Barr” focuses on Roseanne’s rebuilding her life, destroyed by undocumented terrorist immigrants from Afghanistan, and the police effort to find poor daughter Darlene whose life is terribly turned around by the terrorist captor.

All of the issues that the media hypocritically beats up on Trump about can become episodes and aspects of the new TV series. Sexual abuse. Sexual harassment. Media bias. The news media just can’t seem to get the facts right about the terrorists, running stories portraying the suspects as good people angered because they were denied entrance into the United States because of their criminal history when they were young.

That’s a series I would definitely watch.

UPDATED ALTERNATIVE OUTCOME: The surviving terrorist who escapes the claws of the police with Darlene, intending to sell her to human traffickers along the U.S. border with Mexico. She actually comes to like the terrorist and falls in love with him, and she converts to his religious fanaticism. When the police track down the lone remaining terrorist, Darlene escapes and launches a domestic terrorist cell …

Hey, I want to hear your plot and ending 🙂

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Ray Hanania

Ray Hanania is an award-winning columnist, author & former Chicago City Hall reporter (1977-1992). A veteran who served during the Vietnam War and the recipient of four SPJ Peter Lisagor Awards for column writing, Hanania writes weekly opinion columns on mainstream American & Chicagoland topics for the Southwest News-Herald, Des Plaines Valley News, the Regional News, The Reporter Newspapers, and Suburban Chicagoland.

Hanania also writes about Middle East issues for the Arab News, and The Arab Daily News criticizing government policies in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

A critic of mainstream news media bias, Hanania advocates for peace & justice for Israel & Palestine, & the empowerment of Arabs in America.

"I write about three topics, the Middle East, politics and life in general. I often take my life experiences and offer them in an entertaining way to readers, and I take on the toughest topics like the Israel-Palestine conflict and don't pull any punches about what I feel is fair. But, my priority is always about writing the good story."

Click Here to LISTEN to Hanania's live radio show on 2nd Friday every month 7 AM CST. Click here to listen to Ray's Podcasts.

His columns are archived here. Hanania was named "Best Ethnic American Columnist" by the New America Media in November 2007, and is the 2009 recipient of the SPJ National Sigma Delta Chi Award for column writing.

Email Ray Hanania at rghanania@gmail.com.