The Mollycoddling of Rosie O'Donnell

As someone who appreciates provocateurs, I have less of an issue with the spectacle she creates than the following might imply. It's more her enablers to whom this is targeted; the molly coddlers who want Rosie to be Rosie. Which is much in the manner of desiring a crack head to be a crack head. It's an unhealthy attraction to a fatal flaw.

Though her sycophants see Rosie as a soldier on the "front lines of truth," in reality -- that is, the world separate from the "reality" of her television show -- Rosie is as most who excel in media: mistress of spin.

One of her enablers blogged that the "media's manipulations drove her from the very show she reinvented." An interesting revelation, as Rosie herself has always contended her departure was a result of being unable to reach a contractual agreement with ABC. So, then, which is truth and which is lie? And if Ro is honesty personified, for whose sake is she deceiving? Her audience? The network? Those left behind on the show? Or is Ro's veracity merely conditional?

It would not be the first time that she made truth subordinate to an opportunity for incitement.

She excoriated Tom Selleck over the issue of gun control without disclosing she retains armed bodyguards. No doubt she and her family require the protection, but for the paragon of honesty where's the transparency?

She espouses a love of children but openly forgives Alec Baldwin for calling his daughter a "pig." Had Hasselbeck done the same would Ro have been so gracious, or berated her for spewing that "Republican crap?"

She lambastes the Don as being a poor moral icon, yet Rosie has no issue with openly swilling liquor on her video blog.

And her 9/11 diatribes? Ro's got money. Instead of resorting to McCarthy tactics of merely naming names, why not pull a Jim Garrison; face the perpetrators in open court and attack them with the evidence of their transgressions?

Rosie does have evidence, hasn't she?

Useless to ask. To question Ro's positions is, according to her enablers, to attack her merely for being -- IN ROSIE'S OWN WORDS -- a "big fat lesbian."

And that is Rosie's attraction. Despite her success and her fame and her millions, she is the victim that so many see themselves as being.

I've written before about victimization in SOME SEGMENTS of the black community and some -- I stress SOME -- have been outraged because they wrongly believe I dare to stigmatize the poor.

That is the failings of their own perception. I do not and I have not attacked by class, only by mind-set.

Ro does the job of acting as exemplar prime that victimization is not bound by race, gender, sexual orientation and certainly not by socioeconomics. The most advantaged people in the world can still look in the mirror and see someone maligned, unloved and perpetually at the mercy of others.

For Rosie, with whom I share a close, personal connection, I know there is more good inside her than even she herself can apparently see.

It is unfortunate that her sycophants, who are attracted to the worst she has to offer, obfuscate it.