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By Lisa Schwarzbaum
Lisa Schwarzbaum
Lisa Schwarzbaum
Lisa Schwarzbaum is a film critic for EW

The 600-square-foot Denver house where Roseanne Barr once lived with husband Bill Pentland and their three children a couple of lifetimes ago would almost fit into the kitchen of the 6,800-square-foot, $3.4 million Brentwood house where Roseanne Arnold now lives with husband Tom Arnold and her three children. It's a dream kitchen, a showcase kitchen, a French-country-gone-California affair with important copper cookware hanging from a ceiling rack and pretty, hand-painted country-scene plates stacked in glass cabinets and a Silver Palate Cookbook propped open in a Lucite stand. There's a generous breakfast nook, cozy yet airy, with a picture-window view of the back garden and a Tiffany-style lamp overhead and an ample dining table. Oh, yes: There's also a large jar of Miracle Whip on the table. And a Sunday newspaper supplement, the kind with ads for figurines of little birdies. And a copy of Tattoo magazine. And a roll of paper towels that double as what people very unlike Roseanne would call serviettes. And there's a selection of chicly prepared healthy foods-salads, chicken, green beans, baby carrots-set out in the little plastic take-out containers in which they traveled from L.A.'s Nowhere Cafe to the kitchen table of America's headline-making, TV ratings-grabbing, controversy- provoking, tabloid-selling, tattoo-sporting, love-'em-and/or-hate-'em, in- your-face, blue-collar millionaires Roseanne and Tom Arnold. , Roseanne! Is there anyone breathing who has not heard of Roseanne Arnold? In the pages of People three weeks ago, she charged that she had been sexually abused as a child, had buried those memories for years, and had only recently recovered them. The story made headlines on the nightly news. On Sally Jessy Raphael two weeks ago, she alleged in even greater detail that her mother and father had abused her. The program was the second highest rated SJR show ever. (It goes on: Roseanne's parents, Helen and Jerry Barr, deny the allegations, and their lawyer, Melvin Belli, says he advised them to consider filing charges of defamation, libel, and slander against publications that print their daughter's accusations. Further, according to Kevin McLean of the Belli law firm, Roseanne's attack on her parents arises out of their support for her ex-husband in his desire to maintain joint custody of the kids. Her estrangement from her family, McLean says, stems from their refusal to sign a release ceding rights to their life stories as the basis of a cartoon show Roseanne wants to develop.) The details of sexual abuse were arresting, yes; they were meant to be, Roseanne says, to draw attention to a serious problem that is too often a secret. But audience fascination with Roseanne Arnold-or maybe it's what she likes to call a ''love-slash-wince'' relationship-goes a lot deeper than horrified human compassion for her alleged childhood traumas. In fact, we're fascinated with Roseanne because she is So Out There. When Roseanne appeared in her HBO special last January, ratings soared. In fact, fascination with Roseanne combines bemusement with appreciation, adoration with exasperation. As she herself knows. Roseanne: Yeah, they did this disgusting piece (on TV) about why celebrities (reveal painful secrets). One of the guys they asked was some creepy little guy in a hat that said, ''I'm sick of hearing about Roseanne Barr!'' I mean, they totally missed the point, with that blame-the-victim thing. Tom: And he purposely said Roseanne Barr. The point, oh, the point of Roseanne!


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