ROSIE O’Donnell’s career as a self-styled political commentator appears to be over.
She has been keeping a low profile since late last summer, when she signed to star in “Rosie Live,” an old-fashioned variety show, on NBC.
The show, originating from a Broadway theater on the evening before Thanksgiving, could become a weekly series if it does well next week.
Is that why she has laid off from the kind of political commentary that long characterized her hot-button blog on her personal Web site, rosie.com?
“I kind of found it surprising that people were saying, ‘Well, you’re not vocal enough’ ” on California’s controversial Proposition 8, which defined “marriage” as a union of a man and a woman, excluding same-sex marriages in the state, O’Donnell said yesterday. “I’m not vocal enough? I got married before anyone else did!”
However, she was plenty outspoken on topics such as “The View” and “American Idol” in a telephone news conference convened to promote her upcoming variety special.
Listening to her talk about “The View,” you get the feeling the show is as phony as a three-dollar bill.
“No matter what, Barbara [Walters] wants everyone [on “The View”] to believe and think and act as if everybody gets along and is really good friends and happy and hangs out together,” said O’Donnell.
“I’m not saying that they loathe each other, but the fact is there wasn’t a lot of camaraderie off-camera there.”
The experience left her so shattered that she gave up watching “The View.”
“After I left the show, I couldn’t watch it because I had so many mixed emotions and it would just be kind of almost like post-traumatic stress disorder every time I turned it on,” O’Donnell said.
And yet, in the months following “The View,” she found herself on the brink of hosting a topical, potentially contentious nightly talk show for MSNBC.
“We had a deal and it was about to be announced and NBC changed their mind,” O’Donnell said. “It turned out to be a blessing, I think, because I don’t know that arguing about politics is really the best use of my talent. And I also think that Rachel Maddow is unbelievably wonderful.”
With next week’s NBC special, O’Donnell hopes to jumpstart a comeback for the kind of TV variety shows she enjoyed as a child. She criticized today’s judge-based entertainment/competition shows as poor substitutes for “The Carol Burnett Show” and “Donny & Marie.”
“There’s nothing fun about the audition segments of ‘American Idol’ to see people brought to tears and humiliated,” she said.