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JUST POSTED ON TAP ONLINE: ROSIE THE RIVETER. With Rosie O'Donnell's imminent departure from The View, right-wing cable news guys are losing their favorite punching bag. Jennifer L. Pozner explains why they were so upset by Rosie in the first place:
Despite their dominance over the journalistic landscape, the overwhelmingly male punditocracy were so threatened by intellectual competition that they began gunning for O'Donnell's job shortly after her View debut. Back in September -- her second week on the air -- two Scarborough Country episodes encouraged ABC to censor or even fire her for saying that radical Christianity is as dangerous as radical Islam. Guests like GOP strategist Jack Burkman called O'Donnell's comment "one of the most mindless and terrible things ever said on American television! I think this is so serious, I'm shocked that she's still on the air." MSNBC's faux-liberal media analyst, Steve Adubato, insisted that O'Donnell "cannot be allowed to get away with saying that... she has to be held accountable," while Scarborough echoed: "if she does not back off of her statement, she needs to be forced from The View. That is not free speech. That is lunacy. And it is dangerous and it spreads hatred."Their overwrought reaction lays bare the hollow yet persistent myth that the media are liberal. Put one actual feminist on TV -- even on a women's chat show -- and all the blustering boob tube boys line up to run off the radical interloper. If O'Donnell had a modicum of political company anywhere in mainstream corporate news programming, the reception to her would never have been so extreme.Read the whole thing here.--The Editors
