A quick question about the whole Roseanne Barr situation: What took her so long?

The cancelation of her TV show due to her recent tweet was not surprising and thankfully affects me in no way, shape or form. I never watched her original show and certainly didn’t watch this latest incarnation.

She will re-appear somehow and become a news item again. Celebrity is like that.

To me, the key word is this whole mess is the same word that always seems to appear in any Sensational Story of the Day — “tweet.”

I think I have a Twitter account (set up many moons ago and I literally don’t know what my handle is) and I know Designated Writers has one as well. I can actually send out a tweet, but it requires effort.

All of that is to say that one of the reasons I am glad I am not in newspaper reporting anymore is because of all the tweet-chasing that has to go on. One person sends out a tweet, or responds to something, and the world immediately stops on its axis. I literally don’t know how reporters keep up.

So if the backup shortstop for the Brewers tweets out something that might be considered controversial to someone in New Mexico, you gotta be on it? What about the reaction? What about the reaction to the reaction? It only stops when the next stupid person hits the blue Tweet button.

When I was a reporter, my least favorite task — by far — was the Man On The Street story. (Thankfully, I didn’t have to do many.) It never made any sense to me to chase down some Schmo just to find out what he thought about a marginally interesting issue. And I never thought asking 3 or 4 people about a topic was any way to judge true popular opinion. But newspaper editors loved them because it made them seem “in touch” with the community.

But with this tweeting business, it’s all one gigantic Man On The Street story. Great … someone has an opinion. At least back then, the reporter could keep them from sounding stupid.

With Twitter, everyone is free to be an idiot all by themselves. And too many of them are.

Golden State beats Houston last night! Cleveland beats Boston Sunday night! That means that at long last the interminable NBA season is drawing to a close. Game 1 of the Finals is Cleveland at Golden State Thursday at 8. Hope you can stay up to watch it. I won’t, but Designated Writers has its NBA team of experts working on a preview column as we speak. I hope…

But who was really the BIG winner this Memorial Day Weekend?

I’ll tell you, because I did something I don’t often do during non-football season or March Madness: turned on the television. And what do you know? John Wayne and his brothers, The Sons of Katie Elder, beat an evil cattle baron. And The Magnificent Seven beat an evil band of desperados. And Gary Cooper beat four bad guys at high noon. I didn’t watch the whole movies but I did watch the ends just to make sure the good guys won again.

It’s the same thing our friend and journalistic icon, the late Wiley Hilburn, did when he kept reading those World War II books: he always wanted to make sure sure sure America won. (I do the same thing and started this weekend on “The Longest Winter” by Alex Kershaw, about the Battle of the Bulge. My son Casey gave it to me because he knows I am a sick man — and that I just got through reading “Snow and Steel” by the nice people at the Oxford Library and it’s about…the Battle of the Bulge. Casey knows how I feel about WWII: you can’t be too careful.

Speaking of The Big One, the HDNET movie channel will air War Stories: Battles of WWII Movie Marathon, June 4-7, beginning each night at 7 our time. Two movies a night. You can watch those, read, or watch the NBA Finals, which will be the only reality TV; we know who wins WWII. But because of who did, I never get tired or reading about it or of “watching about” it.

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