Should Donald Trump supporters support the
new “Roseanne”? Ben Shapiro isn’t so
sure.
In a Facebook video posted Friday, the controversial
conservative commentator issued a warning
to Trump fans who helped give “Roseanne”
a smashing audience for its debut April 3
and kept its ratings strong for its second
week.
Hollywood, Shapiro said, is offering much
less than meets the eye.
“‘Roseanne’ is not a conservative show.
It’s not even close to a conservative show,”
he said. “In fact, I think it’s pretty
clever and nefarious in how non-conservative
it is.”
The problem, Shapiro said, is that while “Roseanne”
features a main character who supports the
president, her motives don’t reflect what
pushed millions of voters to choose the New
York billionaire over Democrat candidate Hillary
Clinton.
The show portrays it heroine as supporting
Trump because “he talked about jobs.”
But the 2016 election was about much more
than the economy, Shapiro said.
“The show is one big lie about Trump. The
show is one big lie about conservatives,”
Shapiro said.
“The lie that the show tells is that the
reason people voted for Trump was because
they were dissatisfied with the economy and
they were looking to give Donald Trump a chance
to fix it, and it wasn’t about cultural
issues.
“That’s not what happened. What happened
is that cultural war was at the front of everyone’s
mind. 2016 was a cultural war, everyone knew
it.
“It was a cultural war over race, and over
feminism — and the left knows this too.
And what they’re trying to suggest is that
the only conciliation that can take place
in the country can take place on economic
issues.”
As usual, the Daily Wire editor is making
a valid point.
When liberals lose an election, they have
a habit of changing the argument so that the
principles they really value aren’t supposed
to be what was at stake.
When Democrat Jon Ossoff lost a special election
for Congress in Georgia in June 2017, capping
a four-election string of losses Democrats
endured after Trump’s victory in November
2016, Democrats stopped arguing that every
election in the Trump administration was a
referendum on the president. Local races don’t
reflect the national mood, they argued.
And when they do win, they try to shape the
narrative to show the Democrat embodied liberal,
progressive values when the actual truth could
be exactly the opposite. When Democrat Conor
Lamb won a special election in Pennsylvania
in March of this year, the insufferably liberal
“comic” Samantha Bee hailed it as victory
for the party.
The reality was Lamb ran as a conservative
candidate explicitly against the kind of gun
regulation favored by the Democrat Party.
And as even CNN reported prior to that vote,
Lamb was clear about rejecting any idea he
supported Nancy Pelosi’s progressive vision
for the Democrat Party.
Shapiro said the producers of the new “Roseanne”
are trying to do the same thing, by portraying
Trump’s victory as simply a matter of economics.
That way, liberals can throw a sop to half
the country, but still claim victory in the
culture wars.
“So the way Hollywood works this is, ‘Sure
we can be conciliatory. Sure we can reach
across the aisle. Sure, we can have American
unity again,’” Shapiro said. “’But
only if you accept our social agenda.’”
But here’s the thing. From the time Trump
announced his candidacy for the presidency
in 2015, the media has been escalating a negative
campaign against him. Disapproving, mocking
coverage grew increasingly pointed, becoming
outright attacks voters after he won the GOP
nomination. Since his upset victory over Clinton,
the coverage has been ferocious, from “news”
outlets to prime time programming to late-night
comedy.
Trump supporters have been inundated with
it, and can be under no illusions about what
the powers that control the entertainment
industry really think of them.
One reason “Roseanne” has struck such
a chord is that the more than half the country’s
voters who elected Trump can actually see
some part of their reality represented in
an entertainment situation that’s actually
funny to boot.
No one with any sense thinks it means Trump
will finally get a fair shake. But darn few
Trump voters look to Hollywood for validation
of their political views anyway (that’s
for liberal bobbleheads).
“Roseanne” scored a second week of success
on Tuesday, according to Entertainment Weekly.
And that is no doubt due to many Trump supporters
feeling like they can watch television for
at least one program without being insulted.
Ben Shapiro might be sure the show isn’t
conservative, but for Trump backers at least,
it’s something they’re getting precious
little of anywhere else.
For now, at least, that’s apparently enough.
