Channing Dungey showed how to navigate the dilemma, with a statement strong enough to leave little doubt about where her company stands on the issues of racism, bigotry, and ignorance, and short enough for a president to read on Twitter.
I was shocked when I got word that the TV show I wrote for on ABC was unexpectedly cancelled. Sure, it had political undertones, but our writers’ room tried to relate to both sides of America’s fractured identity. I should clarify: I wrote for “Designated Survivor,” and we were cancelled for non-racist reasons.
But I was shocked on Tuesday morning, too. Shocked first (but not necessarily surprised) at what Roseanne Barr tweeted about Valerie Jarrett, who was a remarkable public servant and one of my former bosses in President Barack Obama’s White House. I was shocked again a few hours later when ABC Entertainment President Channing Dungey, another former boss, disposed of corporate double-speak or delay and laid out clearly, in 19 words, that they were getting out of the Roseanne business: “Roseanne’s Twitter statement is abhorrent, repugnant and inconsistent with our values, and we have decided to cancel her show.”
As clear-and warranted-as Dungey’s statement was, a backlash has begun. Some cry foul at the “silencing of a conservative voice.” But that’s not what happened. This was an employee being held accountable, and a corporation deciding that it’s not going to pay an actress millions of dollars when she is ignorant enough to be racist and dumb enough to tweet about it.
Even so, let’s be honest: It would not have been impossible, or even improbable, for ABC to look the other way-to condemn with words and wait for our collective outrage over some heinous tweets to move on to something else. Channing Dungey chose not to. She decided to get out of the business of marketing bigotry.
ABC never set out to prop up a racist (though that’s certainly what the network did for a season of television). Instead, ABC sought a comedy that connected with a group of Americans who feel left behind by pop culture. Now, I’m as tired as the next guy of the middle-America travelogues undertaken by countless journalists struggling to understand the “white working class” in the wake of President Donald Trump’s election. But I’m also somebody who’s spent his entire career in Washington and Hollywood, so my perspective may be skewed, too. I appreciated ABC’s initial goal.
Next time, though, we should dispose of the “white” part of the “white working class” mantra. White people don’t need more representation in prime time. We’re doing just fine. But Hollywood can and should strive to tell stories about Americans-white, brown, black, whatever-who are struggling, with work, with identity, with self-worth. It’s just that executives and writers’ rooms can do it without pandering to the worst strains of that same audience.
We can reach red states without elevating a caricature-of-herself bigot who knows only conspiracy theories. Here’s an idea: Even as Hollywood rightly works to diversify and to improve the abysmal ratio of people of color in writers’ rooms, let’s try and get some conservative voices in there, too. I’m talking about conservatives whose views are based in reason, not racism. It would make the room more interesting and it would produce a better product on the screen.
In lauding Roseanne’s massive initial ratings, President Trump said “it was about us.”
He was right. And her cancellation had something to do with President Trump, too. We’ve all seen how unchecked bigotry can take off, how repugnant, abhorrent beliefs can infest places once thought immune-like the Oval Office.
Trump is putting some of our largest institutions, corporations that are synonymous with America-from the National Football League to Disney and ABC-in a tricky spot: Stand up for what’s right and you risk the wrath of an infantile president who panders to a minority of Americans who like to wear red hats and wrap their racism in pretend patriotism.
Channing Dungey showed how to navigate the dilemma, with a statement strong enough to leave little doubt about where her company stands on the issues of racism, bigotry, and ignorance, and short enough for a president to read on Twitter. Cancelling “Roseanne” might not have been best for the bottom line today, but it will help the next institution do what’s right tomorrow.
Plus, now maybe ABC has a primetime opening for “Designated Survivor”?
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