Rosie O'Donnell - Artist

I was never a big fan of The View. Four rich ladies sitting around telling unemployed women what to think about life is not my idea of good television, but what do I know?

Rosie. Ah, Rosie. The big, round, mound of sound finally decided to pack it in. She was due to resign from The View in a few weeks, but after her latest tiff with Elisabeth Hasselbeck, she punched the clock early. Or as Rosie wrote on her blog: "When painting there is a point u must step away from the canvas as the work is done."

True. Or as I like to put it, "When done taking dump, there is point u must flush."

Rosie O'Donnell comparing herself to an artist is a pretty good laugh. I'm glad she was talking about art of the paint variety, and not art a la William Faulkner. Here's another great piece of art from the woman that said Christianity is as much of threat to the world as militant Islam:

"On the view u have seen my last hasselbeck spat 2 day was it no more -- its done."

Rosie O'Donnell is a great American story. Only in America can you get rich and famous by ceaselessly bashing your own country, and doing it with a poor vocabulary and bad sentence structure to boot. Rosie's art is loudmouth stupidity, verbal or written, and she deserves some credit for that. Her conceit is evident in every wild charge she makes, and in the fact that she doesn't bother to use a spell check. Through her website, you can see how much thought she puts into her arguments and how much respect she has for her fans. She has paved the way for a whole new artform: graffiti journalism.

Here's a transcript from The View's March 26th broadcast, as recorded by World Net Daily, regarding the British sailors taken hostage in Iran:

BARBARA WALTERS: It could be a decision-making time. It's a very difficult situation. It's at the United Nations. It's being examined now. Should there be sanctions? Militarily, we certainly don't seem to be in the position to do something militarily. But it is a decision-making time.

O'DONNELL: Yes, but it's very interesting too that, you know, these guys, they went into the water by mistake right at a time when British and American, you know, they're two, they're pretty much our biggest ally and we're considering whether or not we should go into war with Iran.

BEHAR: But the U.N. was about to sanction them, also have an embargo against Iran. And the, and the timing [unintelligible] so they distracted the whole world with this.

ELISABETH HASSELBECK: Right and they may be about to expel the inspectors right now, too, which could be considered [unintelligible]

O'DONNELL: Right or it could be just the Gulf of Tonkin, which you should all Google.

O'Donnell's lousy theory about the British hostages being a ruse by the US government to start a war with Iran turned out - surprise - not to be true. But where did she get off saying this stuff in the first place? If The View is a popular show and reaches millions of homes, it owes its audience some integrity. O'Donnell had not one shred of evidence for comparing Vietnam's Gulf of Tonkin to the Iran hostages. But that doesn't stop someone like O'Donnell. She spews, she takes a commercial, and she spews again. There's no follow-up, no correction, only an audience of seals that applauds and waits for the next pile of verbal vomit to hit the floor.

Another interesting bit from O'Donnell: ""655,000 Iraqi civilians have died. Who are the terrorists?"

Let me guess, Rosie. The United States? This was the statement that apparently led to the confrontation where Rosie called Hasselbeck a coward, and Hasselbeck looked like she wanted to jump across the table. Hasselbeck was asking Rosie to clarify the statement, wanting to put her on the record as to whether or not Rosie was calling US armed forces "terrorists." Rosie ran away from the question by calling Hasselbeck a chicken.

Can you imagine being called a coward by Rosie O'Donnell? This is a person who champions gay rights and same-sex marriage, but does everything in her power to make the US look like the bad guys in the Middle East. News for Rosie: if you lived in Iran and told people you were gay and proud, they would kill you. That simple. They hang people all the time for the outrage of being a homosexual. So who's the coward? Hasselbeck for calling your bluff, or you, for toeing the politically correct line even when it means standing up for people that, by their own admission, want you and your girlfriend dead?

The numbers, by the way, don't point in O'Donnell's favor. In 2006 alone, over 16 000 Iraqi civilians were killed by terrorists, while a little over two hundred were killed in circumstances involving US forces.

O'Donnell shouldn't have a problem with terrorists, anyway. While berating Hasselbeck (who must have the patience of a saint) in a 2006 broadcast, O'Donnell told her, "Don't fear the terrorists. They're mothers and fathers."

I would love to comment on that with something smart, but all I can come up with is, "What an idiot."

And that's Rosie O'Donnell. An idiot. And yet a genius. She has done extraordinarily well for herself. She's gotten rich off her schtick, and there's no reason to think that she won't continue to be successful.

I doubt she'd be able to pull it off in primetime. That's when the educated, working people are watching. It's also when the professional news people are ready to hit her with a tough question or two, not liking a daytime upstart who thinks she can say whatever she wants on their show.

Unlike the graffiti artists of the subway, O'Donnell hides in broad daylight. With what's-your-favorite-color Babs Walters running The View, she had nothing to fear, until Hasselbeck decided to pick a real fight. That's when O'Donnell did what she does best. Spew and run.

Unfortunately, all the way to the bank.

Photo: Retna