Fight Songs: Can Political Debate Make Good Music?

ABC executives now say that the next season of Roseanne will focus more on “family” and less on “politics,” though one of the big lessons of the show is that the first can hardly be separated from the second. It was politics that gave the rebooted sitcom its initial gust of publicity, and the show probably stands as the most discussed pop-culture riff on the Trump era.

While the attributes ’s ratings success to the sympathy the show holds towards his voters, there’s an argument to be made that what’s so quintessentially 2018 about it is that it takes sides. It’s that it captures national disagreement. On screen, there’s a divide between the conservative resentment of Roseanne and the liberal frenzy of her sister, Jackie. Off screen, there’s a divide between the and its -reading . The tension—off