Rosie O’Donnell didn’t hate Elisabeth Hasselbeck. She had a crush on her
Rosie O’Donnell and Elisabeth Hasselbeck wound up looking like mortal enemies on “The View,” but O’Donnell says in a new book that appearances were deceiving. Even when they were duking it out over the war in Iraq.
In fact, the comic said of Hasselbeck, “I loved her.”
“There was a little bit of a crush,” O’Donnell said in “Ladies Who Punch: The Explosive Inside Story of ‘The View,’” a forthcoming book about the daytime talk show, according to Variety. “But not that I wanted to kiss her. I wanted to support, raise, elevate her, like she was the freshman star shortstop and I was the captain of the team. … But it was in no way sexualized.”
O’Donnell did go a few confusing steps further, though, saying “there were underlying lesbian undertones on both parts” and citing Hasselbeck’s history as the most valuable player of her Boston College softball team that won the Big East Conference championship two years running.
“There are not many, in my life, girls with such athletic talent on sports teams that are traditionally male that aren’t at least a little bit gay,” said O’Donnell, who is an out lesbian.
Hasselbeck, whose own book, “Point of View: A Fresh Look at Work, Faith, and Freedom,” was released on Tuesday, wasn’t thrilled by the stereotyping — or the crush.
“If you took her words and you replaced ‘Rosie’ for ‘Ronald,’ there would be an objectification of women in the workplace. And so that is disturbing and it’s wrong,” Hasselbeck said Tuesday on “Fox & Friends,” which she formerly co-hosted.
“It was disturbing to read those things and it was offensive to me,” Hasselbeck added. Still, she said she “totally forgives” O’Donnell. “I really hope that we can be at peace.”
O’Donnell said previously that she gave only a half-hour interview to “Ladies Who Punch” author Ramin Setoodeh, who works at Variety. She has questioned another item that was pulled out to promote the book, which is scheduled for release next week.
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