I watch far too much television, so Roseanne Barr’s essay on her experience developing her self-titled program for ABC was always going to be fascinating for me, but even for people with actual lives, her thoughts on the nature of fame might be the most interesting non-Tucson Weekly-related thing you read this week:

Nothing real or truthful makes its way to TV unless you are smart and know how to sneak it in, and I would tell you how I did it, but then I would have to kill you. Based on Two and a Half Men’s success, it seems viewers now prefer their comedy dumb and sexist. Charlie Sheen was the world’s most famous john, and a sitcom was written around him. That just says it all. Doing tons of drugs, smacking prostitutes around, holding a knife up to the head of your wife—sure, that sounds like a dream come true for so many guys out there, but that doesn’t make it right! People do what they can get away with (or figure they can), and Sheen is, in fact, a product of what we call politely the “culture.” Where I can relate to the Charlie stuff is his undisguised contempt for certain people in his work environment and his unwillingness to play a role that’s expected of him on his own time.

This article appears in May 12-18, 2011.

The editor of the Tucson Weekly. I have no idea how I got here.

12 replies on “Roseanne Barr Doesn’t Think Much of Television Producers”

  4. A mighty thanks for your struggles to keep it real for all of us Roseanne!

    xx, from the people’s republic of brooklyn

  5. Roseanne is 100% right.s TV nowadays sucks! I used to be a TV junkie. Now, I couldn’t care less! As for Charlie: Losers always die young and stupidly.

  8. Roseanne is a talented comedienne and a brilliant commentator on American pop culture. She tells it like it is.

  9. Well, Her old show was a male bashing show, where all the men were stupid and the women were smart, what is the real difference between 2.5 and Roseanne?, except for role reversal.

  10. exactly, her show was straight out of what I will politely call the “feminist culture.” makes me sick

  11. “Roseanne” was NOT a male-bashing show. I believe there were plenty of times when Roseanne got caught up in something, lost her temper or treated someone unfairly, only to be brought down to Earth by her caring husband, Dan, and yes sometimes the other way around. The two characters were very balanced in their fits of comic stupidity, and I think Dan Connor was one of the kindest, most likeable, and sympathetically-portrayed husband characters in sitcom history. Compared to him the ex-husband on “Reba” is a complete moron, and truly the same can be said of the boys on 2.5 “Men.” Calling “Roseanne” a male-bashing show is pathetic and desperate.

  12. Never understood the “success” of Two and a Half Men. Really sad show about sex addiction. Makes no sense at all that an audience would validate this as “normal” or even desirable behavior. And don’t understand the whole prostitute thing; in other words, why it’s considered, er, “manly” or “funny” or whatever, to sleep with women who have often been victims of childhood sexual abuse themselves.

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