The Internet Monk
"Read.Think.React.Write.Live."
A Webjournal edited by Michael Spencer
The Thing That Wouldn't Go Away
The Eternal Rosie O
by Michael Spencer
I
am sure that in the impenetrable darkness of hell, somewhere, there is
the face and voice of Rosie O'Donnell, blaring away, with the screams of
the damned in the background. Death, taxes, and now, Rosie. She has
become the thing that wouldn't go away.
There was a time, oh so long ago and far away, when Rosie was tolerably humorous, in a minor celebrity, commercials and K-Mart kind of way. We have always smiled at a witty, wise cracking broad (no offense, ladies. It's a Sinatra thing) who could hold her own. Back in the day when Rosie had a decent career in stand up, I actually wouldn't change the channel when she appeared. Today, I keep a rocket propelled grenade launcher nearby in anticipation of the moment her mug appears on my television. I feel like I am trapped in that farmhouse in "Night of the Living Dead," and Rosie is coming in every window.
I can forgive her for wanting a talk show. Heck, everyone in the nineties wanted a talk show. And the broad (again, please, no complaints) is a talker with the best of 'em. She has that NYC cab driver, Larry King thing going, and it's understandable someone would give her a shot at Oprah. Of course, you have to realize that Oprah isn't a talk show. She is a religion. I mean, Oprah is going to be bigger (audience wise) than most denominations. I think her last show is going to be instructions for the Oprah sacraments and then she'll stage her own resurrection. So Rosie didn't have a chance up against someone who is somewhere between Buddha and Mohammed in popularity.
And the talk show did have one worthwhile contribution- she featured a lot of Broadway music and performers, and God bless her for that. It was a good deed. It doesn't outweigh the awful realities, but it counts. The deadly flaw was obvious from the start: Rosie is a fan of anything that moves in Hollywood. She buys the whole thing. The stupid small talk, the political opinions, the charity show-off routine, the moral superiority, the one-big-happy-family routine. She's a drooling fan who wants to be close to famous people, and I suppose that was supposed to make her one of us. Wrong. Rosie is one of us like Streisand is one of us. The problem is simple: only a few people in mental hospitals and publishing houses actually think these people are wonderful. Listening to Rosie go on and on and on about Streisand or Tom Cruise is a dehumanizing experience.
(Compare Rosie with other talk hosts like Johnny Carson, who was only in awe of a very few awesome talents; Jay Leno, who takes no one very seriously; David Letterman, who really doesn't care who he is talking to; or Howard Stern, who goes by the rule, "The more self important the celebrity, the more likely he/she will be asked about a bodily function." Do not compare with Oprah, who as God treats all guests as lesser mortals.)
So, despite packing the audience with those who seemed to care, it was only a matter of time before the ship sank. The banter with the band leader made Letterman and Paul look like Socrates and Plato. The little noise machine at the desk reminded me of something to amuse a nursery child. The endless gifts for the audience said it so well: We must bribe you. But the worst was still ahead. Right before our eyes, she became the "queen of mean". She became one of those Hollywood zombies who believe their opinions are magically much more important than anyone else's. Unfortunately, Rosie contracted a particularly virulent variety of this problem. (Perhaps it came from the frequent appearance of Alec Baldwin on the program.)
Gun control was Rosie's blunt instrument of choice, and if you viewed Rosie's hit and run interview with Tom Selleck, then you know of what I speak. The decent Selleck, forced onto Rosie's program for who knows what absurd reason, was brutally attacked for being a member of the NRA, as if the NRA was running Columbine killer training camps. Selleck should have laughed at her and excused himself. (Rosie later showed her utter hypocrisy by admitting she employed armed security. The "Al Sharpton Award" was within her grasp with that one.) Then we saw Rosie at the "Million Mom March" ranting and raving about guns. And we saw Rosie and her slobbering support for Clinton and Gore, as if supporting these rascals and scoundrels was somehow the business of God and man. But all of this paled before Rosie's history making case of Kathy Lee Gifford Syndrome. Rosie began to talk incessantly about her cute kids.
I suppose we should tell the uninitiated in the audience that everyone in Hollywood was raised in the same home, by dysfunctional, non-affectionate, alcoholic, abusive Catholic parents. Despite this vast group upbringing, the Hollywood elite have managed to raise themselves to the level they are today and now are repaying the universe by not only raising perfect children themselves, but by telling the rest of us about their backyard adventures and never-fail recipes for great kids. They talk incessantly. In hellish detail. To the very end of the world. Amen.
As a mother, I am sure Rosie is wonderful. I am quite serious. I am sure she is better than many mothers in history, and probably one of the most loving, caring human beings to ever parent a child. Her adoption of three children is commendable. Her utter lack of humility about these things is, however, quite painful to endure. As Rosie's parenting yak came to more and more dominate her program, we could see Rosie's second career looming. Rosie was grooming herself for the role of world class celebrity advocate of children, a job that can immediately gain a person access into the inner circles of Hollywood and Washington, as liberals do all things "for the children." And children, not speaking for themselves, need Rosie to speak for them.
In the midst of this, Rosie did something that is becoming quite common in Hollywood. She bought a magazine, named it after herself and put herself on the cover every month. The venerable McCall's met this awful fate, and has now become a vessel for conveying Rosie's various diseases and opinions to the public. While not having the scriptural approach of Oprah's magazine, it is still a regular exercise in ego hitherto only attempted by Rush Limbaugh, who at least spared us the details of his family life, ailments and dinner conversations.
As the Rosie show wound down, Rosie's interest in adoption and parenting increased, and at the announcement of her show's imminent cancellation, we could all hope that Rosie would make her home in the endless fund raisers and charity events and award programs that fill the life of former celebrities. This was a premature hope, for Rosie had saved the best for last. She had planned her own post talk-show career as a persecuted lesbian.
Rosie owns a home in Florida, and Florida is one of only three states that specifically forbids homosexuals from foster parenting or adoption. Rosie gave up a foster child, and decided it was time to announce that she was a homosexual, in order to challenge what she saw as an unjust law. The anticipation and build-up was obviously well orchestrated and designed to lure out the major interview programs. Finally, in what must have been the non-event of the year, Rosie told Diane Sawyer that she was a homosexual, and a great mom. She is now making the world tour with the same twenty questions.
I want to say that I tend to agree with Rosie on the issue of the Florida law. In my own state of Kentucky, a single person cannot adopt, and that is patently ridiculous. I recognize that there may be several justifications for such a law, but I do not believe asking sexual preference is the government's business in any job, and just like I would like homosexuals to shut up telling us about their sexuality, I wish the government would quit dragging the issue into arenas like foster parenting. (I know you may think that is an insane position given the recent scandals involving homosexual priests abusing children, but let's calm down and remember than the vast majority of sexual abuse in this country occurs in heterosexual, married families.)
Now Rosie's homosexuality was hardly a secret. What was confusing was Rosie's years of drooling over Tom Cruise and her complete avoidance of the topic....until her career appeared to be vanishing from the public eye. Then suddenly, Rosie is everywhere, talking about the persecution of homosexuals and her own sexuality. One gets the impression that Rosie wants us to think she was resting comfortably in her home when the Republican sex police grabbed her, arrested her and threw her in front of the cameras for a forced confession under torture, after which her children were bused away to Texas. A more reasonable scenario is that a woman who does not like the thought of her name fading from the public eye decided to play the sexual preference card and cast herself into the role of hero of persecuted gay parents everywhere.
Rosie's continuing insistence that single gay parents are persecuted is absurd. Yes, there are laws that should be changed, but homosexuals are hardly the only adoptive or foster parents having to deal with bad laws. A spokesperson for the cause said on Fox that half a million children are affected by these laws. Uhhhh..riggghhht. Might we be talking- generously- about hundreds at the most? This is a case of homosexual rights advocates hiding behind children in order to appear as victims. It's ridiculous, and in Rosie's case, mercenary to a fault. I doubt if many, outside of the coastal elites, are impressed. Grasping celebrities may dress their declining careers in the robes of persecution, but it doesn't work. Ask Ellen Degeneres. Or Bill Clinton.
I will be glad when Rosie has her fifteen minutes and goes away. She should have a square on Hollywood Squares, and can visit other talk shows from time to time. But if she really is the person she says she is, I have another project for her. One that is worthy of her best efforts and that will really make a difference in the world.
Go home and raise her kids.