Yesterday on "The View," Rosie O'Donnell announced that she and ABC were unable to reach a contractual agreement, so she will be leaving the show this June. During the show, creator Barbara Walters remarked that they "have had, to say the least, an interesting year."
That barely even begins to sum up the number of controversies that Rosie started during her brief tenure.
Most notably was the long-standing feud between her and The Donald. When Trump said he was allowing the lush-ious Tara Conner to retain her crown as Miss USA, Rosie started a tirade on "The View" that declared him unfit to be the moral compass of today's youth. Not one to just roll over and take a heaping spoonful of slander, The Donald responded by calling her ugly - among other things. Over the last four months the two continued to hurl insults at each other, culminating this Monday when, while hosting the Matrix Awards (given to the most accomplished women in media), Rosie concluded a rant about Trump by grabbing her crotch and shouting, "Eat me!"
Truly classy.
She also got into heaps of trouble for what is now referred to as the "Ching-Chong" controversy. On Dec. 5, Rosie made a comment in reference to the large amounts of publicity that "The View" received for Danny DeVito's hung-over appearance after a night of taking shots with George Clooney. She joked that the event was being talked about as far away as China and said, "You know, you can in China it's like, 'Ching-chong, ching-chong. Danny DeVito. Ching-chong, ching-chong-chong. Drunk. The View. Ching Chong.'" The remarks set off a media firestorm and Rosie subsequently apologized for her tasteless humor.
At least she apologized that time.
My favorite celebrity moments tend to be when stars feign knowing about things that they clearly don't understand. Tom Cruise popularized this antic when he informed Matt Lauer how much he really "knows" about the history of psychiatry and psychiatric treatments. Rosie embarked on a similar crusade during the March 28 episode of "The View" when she promoted her conspiracy theories regarding 9/11. During her rant she claimed to have a complete understanding of physics and explained that it was "impossible for [World Trade Center 7] to fall the way it fell without explosives being involved." She concluded, "Miraculously, [for] the first time in history, steel was melted by fire." The magazine "Popular Mechanics" published a point-by-point response debunking each of Rosie's claims.
On her blog, Rosie wrote that she "read the whole thing i still believe explosives were used to bring down wtc7."
If you still aren't convinced as to her complete lack of intelligence and taste, then that blog should finish the job. Rosie's daily ramblings can be read at www.rosie.com. She rarely uses complete sentences (and completely disregards all possible understanding of the English language) - it pretty much is whatever loosely constructed thought happened to be in her mind at the time of typing. In a recent entry, she talks about an encounter with the paparazzi: "they lept at the car like i was brittney or lindsay pushing flashing yelling breaking news in america."
It's the little things in life that we should be thankful for each day. I'm thankful that Rosie has, at least for the time being, been taken off the airwaves.
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The views expressed in this column are those of the author and not necessarily those of The Observer.
Contact Erin McGinn at emcginn@nd.edu
