Rosie O'Donnell Gets a Different View?

If you can believe the tabloid TV show Extra -- and, my gosh, who doesn't? -- self-destructive ex-talk show host Rosie O'Donnell will be announced tomorrow as a replacement for Meredith Viera on the daytime talk show The View.

And while O'Donnell's past success in daytime TV makes the hiring somewhat logical -- she reportedly beat out a field which included Connie Chung and Patricia Heaton from Everybody Loves Raymond (?!) -- you've got to wonder whether anyone at The View has any long-term memory left. Because it hasn't been three weeks since O'Donnell delivered a particulaly pointed diss to one of the show's biggest divas, Star Jones.

Continuing her habit of inflicting her opinion on people who don't ask for it, O'Donnell was quoted by StarPulse.com (I know, only the coolest news sources appear on this blog!) complaining over Jones' willingness to discuss her breast augmentation surgery while she resists divulging whether gastric bypass surgery helped with her near-horrific recent weight loss.

"I don't understand with Star Jones why she's alright talking about a breast augmentation but not gastric bypass," O'Donnell said, in a quote originally recorded by Access Hollywood. "If you have to have a gastric bypass because you feel it's a medical emergency and you have no alternative, then you have that, and there are repercussions to having that. But to pretend that you lost it doing Pilates, it's kind of delusional."

If you thought The View was bitchy with just two divas -- Jones and Barbra Walters, of course -- wait until O'Donnell brings the same erratic, overbearing personality that killed her self-titled magazine and daytime talk show. Add in the pressure she'll feel developing a sketch comedy show for the gay-focused cable network Logo, and you have the makings of a truly classic clash of the daytime divas!

Tabloid writers everywhere are sharpening their pencils...

Comments

[Khan of the Wastelands]

When Star was out due to her surgery, she actually called into the show and wound up calling Joy Behar a bitch live on the air.And no I don't watch the View, but I DO watch The Soup and they played a clip of the show when it happened.

[lockBull]

Eric,Hate to get off topic, but have you been following the Delmon Young (Devil Rays prospect in AAA Durham) fiasco? He threw a bat at an ump, and the initial reports (see here http://msnbc.msn.com/id/12505567/) made it sound to me like it was a love tap semi-justified by bad umpiring. Then the video came out ( see http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=2423307 ). Pretty much made the initial Spin look bad.I'm interested in what you think if you have the time. I've also posted comments on "the Heater" Devil Rays blog.

[formerly mr anonymous]

clearly both these women eat too much and are poster children calling unfortunate attention to the national obesity disgrace, which appears to have one of its epicenters in the bay area.

[Eric Deggans]

MSNBC was smart enough to change out whatever early story they had with the AP story also available at your second link -- so i'm not sure how early reporting handled the issue.But I did see the clip on the Today show this morning and I'm afraid my first thought was: roid rage.How else to explain something stupid as throwing a bat an an umpire?And to hear officials at the ballclub try to justify his reaction as the result of bad umpiring seemed a perfect example of the real problem -- stars having their crappy behavior coddled instead of eradicated.But the video got out, despite whatever restrictinos there might be about filming baseball games and the truth emerged. even Delmon Young will be the better for it, I think.

[lockBull]

Thanks, Eric. One can only hope that the new D-Rays brass will recognize coddling for what it is and take the appropriate action.To Everyone Else - Thanks for letting me butt in with a different topic.

[Anonymous]

The Rays aren't blaming bad umping. The whining umps union is doing that. So when the regular umps come back, they should remember that they basically excused assaulting an umpire because of a bad call. The kid should be booted from baseball for 2 years.

[Anonymous]

The view will continue to be a group of middle aged hyenas appealing to middle aged house fraus. Rosie will just add an extra hundred pounds and a really frightening mug.

[Eric Deggans]

My bad. I saw this quote and attributed it to the devil rays organization:Devil Rays utilityman Greg Norton, who was at the game, talked about what happened after he was brought up Thursday and arrived at Yankee Stadium.“It wasn’t violent, and I don’t feel it was meant to hit him,” he said.We'll see how bad they punish him...

[Chase Squires]

Thanks for the kind words guy, and thanks for the help and encouragement ... And as for Rosie, she's a shill, plain and simple.Her HBO piece "Rosie's Family Cruise" was nothing but an informercial for her growing cruise brokering business. An embarrassment for HBO.The View, well, is there a way to make it worse? sure ....

[Anonymous]

Eric, I can't believe you said this:**you thought The View was bitchy with just two divas -- Jones and Barbra Walters, of course -- wait until O'Donnell brings the same erratic, overbearing personality that killed her self-titled magazine and daytime talk show.**First of all, her erratic personality didn't kill her TV show. She walked away. It was still hugely popular. It was because she didn't have a TV show to shill her magazine (like Oprah does) that the mag didn't fly. I don't really expect men to get it, but Rosie's was a refreshing daytime talk show, and so it the View. It's very similar to girl talk all us women do and it's the kind of girl talk men just can't abide. But spare us the snide bitch remarks. That's uncalled for.

[Eric Deggans]

Apologies if you found the language rough. But Rosie went thorugh a well-publicized meltdown during that period which included her alienating many on staff at her magazine, the decline of the TV show and her odd, Flock of Seagulls-inspired haircut.The magazine went away because she had a huge public fight with the corporation which published the magazine, Gruner + Jahr. She quit the project and the company sued her for breach of contract.She left her TV show around the same time she came out publicly as a lesbian, saying she wanted to focus on standup comedy and the magazine. But rumors about her erratic behavior behind the scenes was well known, and she seemed to flounder quite a bit with the lawsuit and a widely-panned broadway show she produced with Boy George.So, perhaps i was a bit tough with Rosie. But she and Star Jones have a long public history of being mean and opinionated...which made me wonder how they are going to stand sharing the same job.