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Rosie O’Donnell Speaks!
By Kyle | June 3, 2007
A much-chastened Rosie O’Donnell made a brief appearance in the city today alongside some actual writers (Ian McEwan, Alice Sebold) to plug her upcoming fall book, “Celebrity Detox,” at BEA (Book Expo of America). After a moderator announced that no videotaping would be permitted, not even using cellphones (obviously a Rosie request; no other panel I attended this weekend had such restrictions), Rosie left little doubt that she had been fired from “The View” after her donnybrook with Elizabeth Hasselbeck, though the party line continues to be the old mutual-parting-of-the-ways blather. “It’s been an interesting year,” O’Donnell said, looking thoroughly rebuked, almost shy. “We’ve had to change the epilogue.”
She said that “Celebrity Detox,” which is about her own efforts to adjust to life outside the spotlight after she quit her daytime show in 2002, is “not a tell-all” yet “it certainly does tell all that happened though not in a vindictive or mean-spirited way.” She compared celebrity to a drug–a specific one, crystal meth–and said that when she returned to TV for her “View” gig she ran into many starlets who had just been starting out when she quit her first show. “Some had lost half their body weight,” she said, thus the crystal meth line.
O’Donnell told the audience of bookstore owners, “I am now quite free to go to bookstores and do signings,” which drew laughs. “I don’t know if you’ve heard but I’m not gonna be back on ‘The View’ next year. Instead I’m gonna be auditioning for ‘The Apprentice.’ Here’s hopin’!” She said this in a notably non-triumphant and self-deprecating tone.
Rosie’s problem is that she made her bones as Nice Rosie but she can’t quite control Angry Rosie (any more than Kevin Costner, as a serial killer in “Mr. Brooks” can control his psycho anti-conscience William Hurt). She regrets her bad temper and realizes it killed a very easy and profitable gig. Referring (jokingly) to her editor, Jamie Raab, O’Donnell said, “She offered to spin the whole thing to promote the book….calling up the other hosts and telling them to incite me.” Uh-oh. Angry Rosie creeping in. She was incited! Who can blame her? Then O’Donnell uncorked an extremely silly line blaming the media: (I’m paraphrasing) “We don’t cover the casualties in Iraq but Lindsay Lohan getting drunk–four stories on every network!” Major applause. Yep, I sure haven’t noticed any stories about Iraq in the last four years! The tactic is a familiar one with poor debaters: false opposition. If we’re covering Lohan, we can’t possibly also be covering Iraq! Except we are.
Topics: Books, Magazines, News, Politics, TV |