“ABC’S ROSEANNE SPINOFF OFFICIALLY A GO — WITHOUT ROSEANNE BARR,” Hollywood Reporter reports:

“The Conners’ stories demonstrate that families can always find common ground through conversation, laughter and love. The spinoff will continue to portray contemporary issues that are as relevant today as they were 30 years ago,” ABC said in a statement….

As Ann Althouse writes in response:

But it’s fiction! In real life, they demonstrated that they don’t always look for common ground through conversation, laughter and love. They made Roseanne Barr an instant pariah and shut her out of her own TV home, and she can never ever come back. The public had to be assured she was gone forever — that monstrous women, the greatest female in the history of television — so it can bear to watch another show that instructs them in the fictitious banality that families can always find common ground through conversation, laughter and love.

Can Barr ever escape the Hollywood gulag? Plus in the comments: “Tonight on ABC: Roseanne Without Roseanne followed by ABC Movie of the Week Starring Peter Fonda.” 

Heh, indeed.™