Trump’s America: The “Roseanne” index

Only in Trump’s America could iconic 1980s standup comedian and 1990s sitcom actress Roseanne Barr, or Arnold or whatever, make a comeback.

True, she’s done it before: Her eponymous TV show became a hit after she butchered the National Anthem before a San Diego Padres game in 1990, spit on the ground and then grabbed her crotch, a display then-President Bush called “disgraceful.”

She fell off the radar after the original show ended in 1997. But now she, and the show, are back. And this time around Roseanne — both the real-life one and her character on the show — is a Trump supporter.

There’s a lot to unpack here: the ways in which our reality-show president has turned the national discourse into a television show, the genuine political rifts in families that the new “Roseanne” show purports to explore as well as the insistence of our TV-loving president to see himself and his supporters reflected on his flat-screen, and whether most Americans know the difference between Roseanne Barr and Rosie O’Donnell, a semi-retired talk-show host with whom the president of the United States often feuds on Twitter.

The local angle may be our best piece here: According to Nielsen, the agency that measures television engagement and, by proxy, our president’s heartbeat, the “Roseanne” reboot scored its lowest US ratings in Greensboro, which pulled ahead of San Francisco and Jacksonville, Fla.

Incidentally, the show’s highest rated markets were, in order, Tulsa, Okla.; Cincinnati, Ohio and Kansas City, Mo.

This time around, at least, Greensboro isn’t buying what Roseanne is selling.