Score one for the Donald, I guess.
After less than a year as moderator for The View, Rosie O’Donnell is leaving the show when her contract expires in June. Maureen Ryan of the Chicago Tribune reported that the former Queen of Nice said on the Wednesday edition of the show that, “They’re not kicking me out…They wanted three years, I wanted one year…and it just didn’t work and that’s show biz. And it’s not sad, because I’ve loved it here and I love you guys and I love you guys and I’m not going away.”
While O’Donnell will return to guest host specials on things like autisim, depression, and how exactly one rides the bus with ones sister, Barbara Walters also said on the show, “This is not my doing and not my choice…We have had, to say the least, an interesting year…You will be missed.”
Yeah, bullshit.
In her eight months on The View, best known as that women’s show that follows Good Morning America (note to readers: I have never watched The View), Rosie has brought what can charitably be described as a shitstorm of controversy onto herself and onto the long-running show, which celebrates its tenth year in August. She’s feuded publicly with Donald Trump and co-host
So in the post-Imus era (actually, the post-Imus month), I can see why Rosie is exiting, stage left. I’d bet dollars to donuts that this is spin, and that the ridiculous human being that is Trump may actually be right. It’s Rupert fucking Murdoch, Rosie. I’m all about speaking truth to power, but you can’t really expect to go after Satan, Ruler of All That Is Evil, and get away with it. Didn’t you see The Devil’s Advocate?
I’ve liked Rosie O’Donnell in the past – I remember watching the first season of her old, good talk show when I should have been out smoking pot, exercising, and getting laid during my adolesence. But recently, it seems like she’s been one step away from a Richards-sized meltdown. I don’t know what’s gotten into her head, but she has, over the last couple of years, come to believe she is the national spokesperson for the folllowing issues: gay marriage, parenting in general, gay parenting, gun control, homophobia in entertainment, bad poetry, the war in Iraq (at one point claiming that the recent incident between Britain and Iran was a hoax to provoke a Gulf of Tonkin-style incident), 9/11 conspiracy theories, Asian sterotypes, racism, and fatties.
As much as I like Rosie O’Donnell, as much as I wish Ann Coulter was being shitcanned instead of Don Imus and Rosie, I still believe that this was not what BabaWaba and the producers of The View signed up for. The View hasn’t stayed on the air for more than a decade than lobbing hand grenades over the wall — it kept itself safe, positive, and good for advertisers. Rosie brought an image to the show that threatened to knock all that down with the kind of wrecking ball swung by Ed Exley. She thought she could behave like she had in the past and not suffer any repercussions. Sadly, she was wrong.
I can’t help but think Rosie has blown what may be her last opportunity at staying relevant before fading into an annoying obscurity reserved only for future VH1 superstars and housemates on The Surreal Life. She has blown her last chance at having her opinon matter (as if it even mattered all that much in the first palce), and given her ridiculously surreal behavior as of late, I can’t feel too sorry about that.