Who says the culture wars are dead?

The indentured servants at the Stately Manor were given the hour off their menial labors Tuesday night to watch the reboot of Roseanne, once the technicians got the vertical hold fixed on the 12-inch b&w Philco.

It’s not every comedy program that elicits laughter from these hardened reprobates but they guffawed when Trump supporter Roseanne Barr, in character, forgave her Pussy-hatted sister, played by the wonderful Laurie Metcalfe, for voting Jill Stein.

“I know that must have been hard for you,” Aunt Jackie sputtered, thoroughly confused.

Tuesday’s premier episode, 21 years after the last episode in its first nine-year run, set ratings records for any network show in six years. Quite an accomplishment in today’s fractured media scene. (Is any media “mass” these days?) ABC got the message; today the network ordered a full season of shows.

The decidedly non-PC sitcom is a welcome goosing of Hollywood liberal group-think, typified by the holier-than-thou Academy Awards show. 

Hollywood is now faced with indisputable evidence that there’s a huge potential audience out there for programs that don’t actively insult 63 million Trump voters. — Jon Podhoretz in the New York Post.

Charleton Heston was once liberal, too

Speaking of Jimmy Kimmel, we were unaware that Ms. Barr had given him the figurative finger on his late-night show a week earlier until alerted by the New York Post.

The host complained that she had once been so liberal. Barr, who remains among the most confrontational people on earth, was having none of it.

“I’m still the same,” she shouted. “You all moved!”

Roseanne and the wonderful John Goodman (looking slimmer than we remember him) say grace before dinner and conclude by thanking the almighty for “making America great again.”

Which puts us in mind of another program where grace was said before meals and church-going figured in several plot lines. Thanks to re-runs, the unschooled field hands at the Experimental Work Farm have been catching up on Tim Allen’s Last Man Standing.

Playing the likable father of three willful daughters, with a strong, working wife, his character never apologizes for being a man or for liking the things a man likes. (Cars, guns, and hints of an active sex life, among them.) When things go awry, the last man standing blames Hillary.

Trump supporters cried foul when ABC canceled the show a year ago despite achieving the second best ratings in its comedy lineup.

Not equal time, just a little time

For all that, the Squire does not need to agree with an entertainer’s politics, he just does not want to be insulted. (We find Stephen Colbert insufferable. How about one — ONE— conservative late-night, network talk show host? Dennis Miller would be great. He is ranked the best of the SNL Weekend Update hosts.)

We still find Alec Baldwin humorous. We’ll watch Robert DeNiro opening his mail. Conservatives we know can laugh at themselves, most of us. We do not attempt to expunge academia or mass media of contrary opinions; we just want a little proportionality. Thank you, best movie actor Gary Oldfield, for thanking America on the Academy Awards show. You were an oasis amid identity politics run amok.

An example of narrow-minded orthodoxy is one Roxanne Gay in the N.Y. Times (of course):

I wasn’t going to watch the reboot because I find Ms. Barr noxious, transphobic, racist, and small-minded. … She is a supporter of Donald Trump, vocalizing her thoughts about making America great, claiming that with her vote, she was trying to shake things up. She tweets conspiracy theories, rails against feminism and shares Islamophobic opinions.

Where once she was edgy and provocative, she is now absurd and offensive. Her views are muddled and incoherent. She is more invested in banal and shallow provocation than engaging with socio-political issues in a thoughtful manner. No amount of mental gymnastics can make what Roseanne Barr has said and done in recent years palatable.

In other words, Ms. Gay disagrees with Ms. Barr’s politics. Not that Ms. Gay attempts to refute Ms. Barr’s political positions; the writer finds it sufficient to recite a string of psycho-babbled pejoratives. Vilification, not edification.

Blaska’s Bottom Line: I can hear Roseanne’s classic cackle now. What you wanna bet Trump makes a guest appearance on her show?