Why embrace of 'Roseanne' doesn't always extend to politics

For Thorin Engeseth, the hit comedy series “Roseanne” always comes with a rush of memories.

The show takes him back to the family home in Grand Rapids, Mich., where his mother – “an outspoken and opinionated woman” – had kept a happy household despite working two jobs to clothe and feed him and his two sisters. “Money was tight at home, but … we had presents under the tree every Christmas,” Mr. Engeseth writes in an email from Germany, where he now lives with his wife. “When I watched ‘Roseanne,’ I saw that.”

On March 27, ABC revived the series, which catches up 21 years later with the blue-collar Conner family in fictional Lanford, Ill. Engeseth asked a friend in the US to set up a computer facing the television so he could see