Shaddap!!

I read the headline on-line. 

"Rosie O'Donnell puts her foot in her mouth again." 

Okay, I've seen that same line a dozen times over the past several months. So, this should not be new news, right? After all, it's a pretty big mouth. And, if it is in proportion to the rest of her body, it's probably a pretty big foot.

Rosie has been yammering ever since she joined that hen party masquerading as a morning TV talk show "The View." Certainly, nobody has ever mistaken that magpie convention for "Meet the Press." It's really nothing more than a back stoop in the Bronx. The only thing missing is a bag of clothes pins. 

In reality, they should be discussing nothing more than the price of mangos or what Brangelina should name their next reproduction. It's not supposed to be hard hitting investigative journalism or political in nature. Let's face it, the show's executive producer and supposed journalistic bulwark Barbara Walters lost all credibility years ago when she asked Katharine Hepburn what kind of tree she wanted to be.

And, so far, Rosie has been spewing her venom at fairly innocuous targets like Kelly Ripa, Paula Abdul, and Donald Trump. But, now, she has deviated off course by insinuating that the United States government is perhaps covering up some aspects of the 9/11 attacks. At issue is the collapse of WTC Building 7, which came down later that day. Most experts attribute it to a heat-weakened structure. 

But, not our Ro-ro. 

Nope, she's speculating that the US Goverment actually had a hand in the building's demise. On last Thursday's "View," when queried if our government was responsible for the WTC 7 collapse, Rosie coyly replied that she didn't know. But, then, Mensa President O'Donnell continued that "it's impossible for a building to fall the way it fell without explosives being involved" and that, for the "first time in history, steel was melted by fire." Huh? Who knew the incredible depth of scientific knowledge she possessed? It's most remarkable, especially since she spent the better part of her high school years, indeed mourning her mom, but also cutting classes to watch Mike Douglas while she inhaled Ring Dings on the couch.

Rosie is at least fair. She is not restricting this theory exclusively to ABC. She's also extolling its virtues on the blog (a word that fits her to a tee) on her website (www.rosie.com). If you link up to that, you'll see more of her wacky and implausible political opinions spill out like Jelly Bellys on Ronald Reagan's desk. But, she puts them all into this bizarre lower case form of free verse---as if poet e.e. Cummings had a frontal lobotomy. When you read them, it's sort of like the lady you see at the super market talking out loud to the tangerines. 

You're hoping some relatives will come to claim crazy Cousin Sophie soon.  But, nobody's coming to claim crazy Cousin Rosie any time soon. Oh, no, because she's a celebrity on TV. Insanity is much more accepted when you have a one-year contract with an option. She becomes all the rage, especially in the Midwest, and now Barbara Walters has something to talk about over apple-tinis at Elaine's.

America's love affair with Ro-ro is actually a bigger mystery for me than some of the conspiracy theories she is touting. When she started out as a stand-up comic in the 80s, she was funny for an aggregate total of 17 minutes. She was nothing more than a supporting player in two successful movies. And, wait, the success juggernaut continues. Let's not forget she can laugh just like Betty Rubble.

Of course, this steeplechase really went off the track when she got her own daytime talk show---her homage to those days in her life when she singlehandedly helped Hostess Cakes and Pies achieve their annual business plan. She captured the country's fancy with her loving yet totally inappropriate "pursuit" of that "cutie-petootie" Tom Cruise, who ironically could captain the boy's team in her Bellevue Hospital volleyball league. And, lest we forget her "coming out" party, which turned what should be a serious life moment into a marketing stunt.

She's supposedly an advocate for gay families. Yet, to film her HBO documentary about gay family cruises, she unceremoniously bumped a few of them right off the ship's manifest. 

She's allegedly kid-friendly. But, I know for a fact from a teacher friend that she was absolutely rude to a fifth grade class that visited the set of her gabfest. 

She verbally assaulted Magnum PI for his opinions on gun control. Yet, her own bodyguards are armed. 

I know from people who did Grease with her on Broadway that the only community time she shared with any of her cast members was on the line for the buffet table. 

When you perk up your ears in the right direction, you can hear one horror story after another from anyone who has remotely come in contact with the reputed Queen of Nice.

And I have my own.

A few years ago, I was going to meet up with friends at the Palisades Mall in New York's Rockland County. I was a trifle early and decided to use the downtime by browsing through Barnes and Noble. As I sifted through the CD/DVD section, I heard a loud commotion at the cashwrap. 

I glanced over to see Miss Rosie, resident of Nyack, ripping the poor clerk a new one. And the expansive vocabulary was vintage Edward Albee. F bomb after f bomb. She went on and on, making little sense. The poor Suffern High junior behind the counter took his flogging in silence. 

While this torture was going on, I noticed that Rosie's little adopted PR ploy, Parker or Porterhouse or whatever the hell his name is, was busy off to the side. He systematically was pulling each DVD out of the rack and onto the floor. The pile was up to his waist before Rosie, obviously emotionally exhausted from the poor customer service she had experienced at the hands of a minimum wage Barnes and Noble clerk, came over and leashed the kid off to their next local stop on the Terror Express. 

I felt compelled to say something and anything to the poor teenager cowering behind the cash register. The only solace I could work up was a line I have used several other times in my life. 

"Hey, don't sweat it. She's an asshole." 

The kid replied that I didn't know the half of it. America's Customer apparently visited at least once a week and put on the same performance every time, always regurgitating vile over the store's calculated and evil inability to keep something in stock. Whenever they saw her entering the store, the entire sales staff would run to the stock room as if Dorothy and Toto saw the cyclone coming.  They would do a coin flip to see who would go out to their certain doom.

Yep, if Rosie were someone in my family or yours, we would reluctantly but knowingly and lovingly get her the help she needed---knowing full well that complete institutionalization was probably the only answer. But, because she's on television, she is viewed as wildly funny, unpredictable, and a little madcap.

She's sane. The rest of the world must be crazy.

Dinner last night: bratwurst and a salad.