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7 Reasons Why Rosie Had to Leave “The View”

Rosie O’Donnell’s stint on The View was amusing, frustrating and, above all, surprising. When the 2006—07 season first began, no one could have predicted that Rosie would find herself in a shoving match with Donald Trump or a finger-pointing contest with co-host Elisabeth Hasselbeck. No one could have foreseen that The View‘s ratings would soar, that its audience members would go ballistic for free trips on gay-friendly cruises, or that its formerly tame hot topics would actually catch fire.

And no one could have guessed that Barbara Walters’ hand-picked new hire would jump ship so early and so dramatically, leaving the others to reach for bailing buckets marked “I’m just as interesting as she is.”

What makes Rosie so fascinating and unpredictable? Even her harshest critics have to admit that she’s rarely boring: Something about her fuels headlines and sparks dialogue. In an attempt to make sense of her mojo, here are seven reasons Rosie was never going to last on The View. They’re also seven reasons I’m grateful she survived as long as she did.

(And let me give credit where credit is due: This list owes a lot to the wealth of thought-provoking comments on the AfterEllen.com blog. The discussion has been dazzling – you all seriously rock.)

7. She’s a crackpot.

Rosie herself admits that she gravitates toward the cultish and is quick to embrace conspiracy theories. Off-the-cuff is one thing, but Rosie was often just ’round the bend.

I won’t soon forget her hanging-upside-down cure for depression, her weirdly elated demonstration of a sleep apnea mask, or the parade of cockamamie crafts she passed around the table. The whacked-out 9/11 cover-up stuff isn’t funny, and neither is any kind of mental illness. But by veering into the ridiculous even when the subject was deadly serious, Rosie made everyone do a double-take and think twice. That’s the best kind of humor: the kind that makes you reconsider.

6. She’s an instigator.

Who knew Joy Behar was a cranky comedic genius? And who thought Elisabeth Hasselbeck had a spine hidden under all that pretty pink skin? Even Barbara Walters found herself revealing things she usually keeps under wraps, such as her rich-and-famous lifestyle or her left-leaning politics.

Sometimes Rosie asked pointed questions or challenged her co-hosts directly, but more often, she provoked them just by being unselfconscious. That’s the great thing about being down-to-earth: It’s contagious. The effect on the group was sometimes subtle but often palpable. Will Joy’s irascibility and irritation surface as often without Rosie there to call her the curmudgeonly aunt? And will Elisabeth ever grow a pair again?

5. She’s too sensitive.

Rosie is easily wounded. What’s more, she often takes on the world’s wounds as her own. Her soft underbelly was arguably the reason The Rosie O’Donnell Show went south. On The View, she gave up the fight for gun control and tried to censor herself when the discussion turned to the Bush administration, but she never quite managed to stop reacting.

And the corollary of sensitivity is righteousness: When Rosie felt she had a solution, she shared it in a preachy, condescending way that squelched debate and disheartened her co-hosts.

Is her conflation of the personal and the political a kind of immaturity, or just an honest, intense reaction to perceived injustice? It’s probably both. Some critics called it a very female approach – women take everything personally, you know – while the Fox crowd blamed her “bullying” on her sexual orientation.

Whatever you call it, it’s not what we’ve come to expect from coiffed, circumspect celebrities. Rosie is an embodiment (sometimes a cringe-inducing one) of those bumper stickers that say “well-behaved women rarely make history.” As Nora Ephron recently noted on the Huffington Post, we’re not used to seeing women talk politics. And just when we started to appreciate it, it ended. Maybe the next time someone tries it, it won’t seem like such a minefield.

4. She’s a dyke.

You could say that this reason encompasses many of the others – Bill O’Reilly and Donald Trump would certainly say so. Rosie was really, really out on The View, and at times it felt almost surreal. She proudly claimed the beer-drinking, sweatpants-wearing stereotype, and she talked about her sex life. Some call that damaging to the gay community. I just call it being out.

And the gaiety seemed to multiply: When Judy Gold guest-hosted, the panel was suddenly 50 percent gay. As the season progressed, the other co-hosts became increasingly aware of gay issues and were sometimes even comfortable talking about them, too.

But what about all those closeted years on The Rosie O’Donnell Show? Rosie has been called hypocritical and cowardly by some, but she’s more than making up for all those years of ambiguity. Judging by Rosie’s blog, she might be even gayer in the post-View era. When a commenter named Jane recently called her a “dike” (sic), Rosie’s response was forceful and radical:

jane s— stain dyke has a y
Sometimes in-your-face is the clearest way to say something. And even when Rosie was off-color, middle America continued to tune in. Whether you love her or hate her, we owe Rosie something for making the word “gay” more commonplace and therefore less threatening. Quantity is quality in this case, and it will be that much easier for the next person who wants to be out on TV.

3. She’s too loud.

Though this was one of the more common complaints about Rosie, I think it’s just funny. Was Rosie actually louder – I’m talking decibels here – than her co-hosts? If so, shouldn’t we blame the sound guy?

Of course, the naysayers really mean “loud-mouthed,” because everyone on The View has yelled at one time or another. The real problem is that Rosie refused to let things go, back down or make nice. But the truth is that when she was at her most loud-mouthed and boorish, she was mocking Donald Trump.

2. She’s a lousy spokesperson and an easy target.

As the recent spate of comments on the AfterEllen.com blog proves, Rosie’s “sisters” are no less polarized than the Nielsen crowd. Many of us have valued her for her visibility not as the gay voice but as a gay voice. But others say she gives “us” a bad name.

I think there’s a larger point here: There is no “us.” Even if Rosie were to try to speak for a group, she’d be a mouthpiece without a movement.

During the Don Imus scandal, Rosie wondered why there was no reaction from the women’s movement. Al Sharpton spoke up, she noted, but where was the modern-day Gloria Steinem? Unfortunately, there really is no modern-day women’s movement or gay movement to speak of or for – so the spokesperson point is moot. And if it’s good that we’re diverse and complicated and have too many perspectives to form a unified movement, then the answer is that more voices are necessary, not a single, perfect representative.

The homophobes and Fox pundits are really to blame for this one. They’ve forced Rosie to stand for the gay community. That’s because they don’t really have many options: Who else is so visibly out? And the conservative cabal will keep using Rosie to prove their points until she shuts up altogether. Then they’ll just find somebody else.

1. She’s too real.

It all comes down to this. Rosie is too real to fit the standard celebrity molds. She’s both a mess and a saint, and that confounds the hype machine. She’s overweight; she loves Broadway; she’s against the war; she’s worried about autism; she’s prone to malapropism; she’s too tall for those standard-issue chairs. Shortening the chair legs made her fit in visually, but she was still a misfit on all other counts. Some have called her insecure and uncomfortable in her own skin, and Joy pointed out that Rosie both loves and hates attention. That’s because, to quote Harold and Maude, consistency is not really a human trait, and Rosie is human above all else.

Her reaction to the split-screen snafu seemed petulant and unreasonable to many, but to her, it was clear: She’d had enough. Once the Queen of Nice, Rosie has become the Queen of Instinct, and that guarantees a difficult career in an industry that favors image over impulse.

Rosie figured it out as she went along, and she eventually figured out The View wasn’t the right place for her. I’m not sure where she belongs, but I’m glad she lets us see even the clunkiest misstep as she follows her convoluted path. Her wanderings are vastly more engaging than the tentative, sedate discussions of paparazzi and porn, which is what the first post-Rosie View gave us. (You could almost hear the collective lunging for the remote.)

I’ll tune in for whatever Rosie does next, because I’d rather be wincing at Rosie’s latest gaffe than yawning at someone else’s tepid chatter. For nine short, scintillating months, The View had vision. Now it just has a void.

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