Roseanne shines light on today's two Americas

When the American sitcom Roseanne was originally launched on the ABC television network in October 1988, Republican President Ronald Reagan was about to begin his last year in office.

At that time, pundits and politicos were discussing the emergence of the so-called "Reagan Democrats" - the mostly white middle-class and blue-collar voters who deserted their party, which they perceived as turning too much to the left and under the influence of the much maligned "secular elites", to vote for the first time in their political lives for a Republican politician who represented in their eyes a more traditional and patriotic America.

The television series, which went on to become the most-watched TV show in the United States from 1989 to 1990, centred on the Conners, an American working-class family, residing in a fictional exurb of a town in Illinois, representing the kind of demographics that had voted for the Republican Reagan in the 1980 and 1984 presidential elections.