Ed from Gin and Tacos gives
the last word on Roseanne-gate:
"The more complicated answer involves the media’s drive to 'humanize' and explain those who see Trump as their long-awaited salvation. Like the endless journalistic forays into the Rust Belt to profile Trumpers with shuttered steel mills as a photo backdrop, the Roseanne reboot intended to show what the media kept calling the 'white working class' sympathetically. The latest iteration of Roseanne Conner would demonstrate that the real-life people her character represents are not racist caricatures. This is, after all, what we would like to think about our fellow Americans—that we have differences, but we can still come together as one nation. Halfway through the first episode of the new season, Roseanne Conner and her Jill Stein–voting sister Jackie Harris, played by Laurie Metcalf, have already reconciled after an argument about Trump, hugging out their political differences.
But so often the actual Trump supporters ruin that narrative. Journalists and researchers are now finding that the veneer of 'economic anxiety' among Trump supporters is built on a foundation of hate. Fans of Trump say little about the president’s Gilded Age economic policies, but boy do they fume over kneeling NFL players. And because this racism, xenophobia, and paranoia is not what we want to find, we go looking again and again until we find an answer that is more comforting."
Which is to say, there's something peculiar about an American press corps that is unwilling to judge a president, a political party, and the supporters of both by what they actually say, think, and do.
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