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On
February 26, 2004, Rosie O’Donnell and her longtime
partner Kelli Carpenter O’Donnell joined the ranks of some
4,000 gay and lesbian couples who were married at San Francisco’s
City Hall that month. Speaking to a throng of reporters and fans
after the ceremony, O’Donnell said, “One thought ran
through my mind on the plane out here – with liberty and justice
for all.”
O’Donnell’s
marriage last month firmly cemented her new status as a lesbian
activist, initiated in 2002 when she began to speak out in support
of gay parents’ rights to adoption. Although the gay and lesbian
community certainly needs more high-profile celebrities to publicly
support gay rights, can Rosie O’Donnell be effective in this
role in light of her tumultuous and complicated public image?
In
the past two years—following the end of her highly
successful daytime talk show—O’Donnell has come out
publicly as a lesbian, gotten a (temporarily) butch haircut that
quickly became tabloid fodder,
and engaged in a bitter lawsuit with the publishers of her now-defunct
magazine, Rosie. She has also made some public comments about various
celebrities that can only be described as, well, bitchy.
In
contrast to the earlier media image of Rosie as the “Queen
of Nice,” these events assisted the press in portraying Rosie
as a caricature of an unbalanced, moody, and pissed-off dyke, which
has led some
in the gay and lesbian community to fear that Rosie’s visibility
may actually hurt our cause. After all, the stereotype of the "angry
mannish lesbian" has been a constant thorn in the side of lesbians
for decades, and some of Rosie’s behavior over the past couple
of years does come uncomfortably close to that stereotype.
But
the situation is complicated by the fact that her image
as the “Queen of Nice”—and its destruction over
the past two years—was largely built by the media, and is
not necessarily representative of O’Donnell herself.
Speaking
to The Advocate (who named her Person of the Year in 2002), O’Donnell
stated:
“I
never thought I was the ‘Queen of Nice.’ In fact,
when that came out I remember saying “You know what? Next
year it’s gonna be the ‘Queen of Lice’ and then
the ‘Queen of Fried Rice.’ But at the time that I
came on the air, the number 1 show was Jerry Springer.
People were beating each other up; guests were killing each other.
Compared to that, I was the ‘Queen of Nice.’ But in
actuality, watch my HBO special. My art form is not based in kindness;
it’s based in rage.”
Although
the rage that informed her stand-up routines may have been absent
from her daily talk show—which was simply not the right format
for expressing it—O’Donnell never distanced herself
from her comedy routines, even while she was the reigning Queen
of Nice.
If
the American public forgot that Rosie has a sharper tongue (or a
"dark side," as partner Kelli has called it) than was
immediately apparent on The Rosie O’Donnell Show,
it was not necessarily O’Donnell’s fault.
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