Why ABC Finally Had to Cancel Roseanne

“You can’t control Roseanne Barr,” Ben Sherwood, the president of ABC, said in an interview with The New York Times in March. “Many who have tried have failed. She’s the one and only.” It was an easy deflection, one that made the star of his biggest sitcom sound like a brilliant, maverick artiste. But Sherwood was instead responding to a question about Barr’s Twitter account, which often features conspiratorial, offensive material and has dominated much of the discourse about the show. Two months later, the network finally asserted control, canceling Roseanne on Tuesday just hours after Barr sent a nakedly racist tweet about the former White House adviser Valerie Jarrett.