Rosie O'Donnell--Less Cutie, More Patootie

Rosie O'Donnell has been intellectually overboard for quite some time now. In fact, I don't know that there was ever a time when she was not. Her recent comments regarding the supposed joint British/American naval prisoner conspiracy is only more evidence that this is the case. She claims that the truth behind the facade is that the U.S. wanted to bully Iran into escalation, so we pressed our old fallguys, the British, into doing the dirty work for us. Now, I don't admit that this is beyond the realm of possibility anymore than, say, Hugo Chavez being hired to drive Al Gore around in an all-electric Toyota Prius. It could happen if the planets align just right.

Unfortunately, Rosie has turned The View into her bully pulpit, or Big Rosie's Playpen. She is one of those people who just has to speak their mind without consideration of others. I watched a show not too long ago where the gals interviewed Dennis Miller. Now, I'm no huge fan of Miller's, but I think he is an intelligent and reasonable guy. He appeared especially so when paired with Rosie O'Donnell, who felt it necessary whenever possible to try to steal some of Miller's building gusto. Her futile effort caused her to come off as bitter and childish. Her closing remarks didn't help matters as she threw in some comment to the effect that while Miller is an okay guy, his political views are drastically different from hers. This raised an interesting question of what's worse--her views or that many people in America actually care about them.

That Rosie has so much cultural capital when one would be hard-pressed to think of any redeemable thing she has done to deserve it kinda bums me out. It reminds me of a similar situation involving another rather big, umm, creature of Hollywood's imagination--the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man. In Ghostbusters , Ray is told by the villain that the first thing that comes to his mind will be the thing that destroys the world. Ray imagines Stay Puft because he thinks there's nothing more harmless than a big marshmallow. Boy, was he wrong.

At the risk of exploding my analogy, our cult of celebrity magnifies Rosie's puffery to a status it doesn't deserve and, worse, seemingly justifies more of the same.