Rosie’s pass

I like Jonah Goldberg’s take on ABC’s deafening silence in the face of Rosie’s rantings:

Granted, The View isn’t 60 Minutes, so why should we care that much if the girl talk gets a little silly? After all, Walters has spent much of her career muddying the distinction between entertainment and hard news, what with her saccharine “What kind of tree would you be?” interviews.

Yet there is a difference between taking silly topics seriously and being silly about serious stuff. When you discuss hair-care products or lavish weddings, the subject telegraphs its own triviality. Walters may risk her journalistic reputation when she jibber-jabbers about such things, but that ship sailed long ago. It’s another thing entirely when ABC’s most venerated on-air journalist gives a megaphone to someone who frets that poor Khalid Shaikh Mohammed was railroaded, who insinuates that the U.S. government had a hand in any part of 9/11 and who insists Elvis Presley is alive and living on an island with Bruce Lee (O.K., I made that last one up).

But so far, O’Donnell has gotten a pass because she isn’t a mere wacko but a left-wing wacko. If O’Donnell sounded like Pat Robertson, the network would call in the butterfly net almost immediately. But because O’Donnell’s crazy accusations are directed rightward at that evil George W. Bush, it’s considered forgivable excess.

So come on ABC, for your own credibility, send her someplace where she won’t be a harm to herself or anybody else, someplace with rubber sporks.