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Roseanne Barr and Ken Levine Fight About Roseanne Barr, Ken Levine

Photo: Andrew H. Walker/2011 Getty Images
Photo: Andrew H. Walker/2011 Getty Images

Roseanne Barr’s recent article right here in New York, “And I Should Know,” continues to draw attention, this time from sitcom writer and blogger Ken Levine (Cheers, M.A.S.H., Frasier). They never worked together, but he writes that she “treated people like shit” and was “endlessly combative”; he says he finds her characterization of male writers “insulting.” Barr, perhaps predictably, fired back. She says he doesn’t respect her or her work simply because she’s female and that Levine and the commenters on his blog “loathe women.” She calls on female writers who’ve worked with Levine to corroborate her assumptions, but instead, two of Levine’s female former co-workers say that he’s not sexist at all, and that he was a terrific boss. And Laurie Gelman, the first female writer-producer to work on Roseanne, weighs in, saying that it’s Roseanne herself who’s sexist. “This is a woman who is definitely threatened by smart, funny women and has to alpha dog all competitors,” Gelman writes on Levine’s blog. Roseanne’s response? That Gelman wasn’t funny. No one wins a fight on the Internet, kids, especially not one about sexism! [Ken Levine, Barr, Ken Levine]

Roseanne Barr and Ken Levine Fight About Roseanne Barr, Ken Levine