• by Adam Buckman , Featured Columnist, July 5, 2018

Many people who know me well might be weary by now of my occasional references to the late Joe Franklin.

But the fact remains: Joe taught me a handful of fundamental truths about show business, both in his statements and his actions over the nearly 25 years that I knew him.

One of the lessons was on the subject of multiple offers flying this way and that. For Joe, the offers were from numerous unspecified parties, who he insisted longed to lure him away from the radio station where he worked (WOR in New York).

“I can be on radio seven days a week, four hours a day,” he claimed merrily one day. “I have at any time six radio stations pursuing me ...”

This claim might well have been true entirely or in part, but the fact remained that whether these offers were real or imagined, Joe never left WOR to take up residence at any other New York radio station.

It did provide a lesson: Don't necessarily believe everything someone in show business tells you, since many people in that business will tell you about multiple offers that may or may not be true in order to give the impression that their careers are still viable.

Possibly in this vein, Roseanne Barr -- who is no show business novice herself -- claimed this week to be fielding multiple offers, although like Joe Franklin's claim long ago, she provided no details.

Barr made the claim in an interview with Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, who has been her only interviewer since she and ABC parted company following her now-infamous tweet storm in late May.

“Inside every bad thing is a good thing waiting to happen and I feel very excited because I have already been offered so many things and I almost already accepted one really good offer to go back on TV and I might do it. But we will see,” Roseanne said on Rabbi Shmuley's podcast.

It was the second time Roseanne had been interviewed by the rabbi since her fall from public grace following her late-night tweets. She and the rabbi are apparently long-time friends. Rabbi Shmuley is probably the only bona fide celebrity rabbi in America. Indeed, he bills himself as “America’s rabbi.”

In their first interview, she tearfully apologized for the tweets that resulted in the loss of her prime-time show. In the second interview (as they did in the first), the two talked primarily about the Torah.

Roseanne, who is Jewish, said she has been a dedicated Torah reader since she was a little girl. In this most recent interview, she made her claim about multiple job offers at the very beginning of their conversation, which then went on to a host of other subjects -- primarily religious -- for more than an hour.

So are the job offer claims true? That can only be determined by what happens next, if anything.

And what could the offers be? A new sitcom? Talk show? Reality show? She has done them all. She had a syndicated afternoon talk show for two years after the first “Roseanne” sitcom ran its course.

She even mentioned the talk show in her interview with Rabbi Shmuley. She recalled that she annoyed her producers and syndicator by talking frequently about the Torah on that show.

She later did a reality show titled “Roseanne's Nuts.” It was about her life living on a macadamia farm that she bought in Hawaii.

Nothing she has ever done since the first “Roseanne” sitcom has ever been as successful as that show. The new “Roseanne” this past spring -- which had such a spectacular rise and fall -- was on track to repeat the success of the first one.

Therefore, the real question might be: Will someone come forward to take a chance on her with a sitcom again? The answer to that question could be: Anything is possible.