'Nice,' 'Real,' revolting

...It is she who, in the tradition of Oprah's book club, has released Kids Are Punny, formerly number one, now number four on the New York Times bestseller list...

...Rosie refuses to contribute to the Codyfica-tion of television culture (Cody being Kathie Lee and Frank's boy, whose every waking moment his mother shills...

...They both discussed how dreamy one of Lucci's co-stars was...

...As a child, she took notes during the Mary Tyler Moore Show, which she would then transfer to her MTM scrapbook...

...She is Entertainment Weekly's "Entertainer of the Year," Canadian TV Guide's "Mother of the Year," Glamour magazine's "Woman of the Year...

...Though she is a celebrity herself, O'Don-nell is the perfect conduit for celebrity sancti-fication, as there are none she does not enthuse over...

...Though her act, like her TV show, was extremely derivative (as a teenage stand-up, she performed Jerry Seinfeld bits from the Merv Griffin show—verbatim), she was not always this nice...

...And if she ever gets Barbra Streisand on the show, her last unrealized dream, well, it stands to reason that she'd have—yes...

...There, she is Ma Pie in a pantsuit, as she makes a great on-air fuss over pie, along with cheesecake, Dove bars, and goat-cheese pizza...

...She was an average stand-up, but she compensated with her gum-cracking, Long-Island-drive-thru-attendant spunkiness and clockwork delivery...

...Another magical showbiz moment...

...Comb the vast Rosie literature and she's all over the place with her idolatry...

...Lucci thought it sublime that Rosie was a presenter with Elmo...

...Rosie congratulated herself on the same...

...Occasionally, she has fleeting bouts of self-consciousness, such as when she told Neil Simon, "I'm in awe of you and I try not to be, because Lily Tomlin [another idol] told me if you have reverence for guests, it makes a boring interview...

...She finishes Cher's forgotten lyrics on "Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves...

...This is not so much an interview as a channeling ses-sion—the Stanislavsky method of homage—wherein she is able to become the celebrity...

...She is our Everywoman, gal-pal to the glitterati, the "human manifestation" of the "Celestine Prophecy" (actress Rita Wilson's words), "everybody's sister" (John Travolta's words...

...Then the show closed with all the other guests coming out and taking Polaroid snapshots of themselves...

...So intense are her affections, they have caused adverse health effects...

...But even a fanzine-like biography about her included a straight-faced discussion of potential indicators: her runaway chin hair, her affinity for power tools, her pantsuit collection...

...She has even bumped from memory Arsenio Hall as the Alpha Suckubus (no small feat, since he once conducted an entire interview with actress Patti D'Ar-banville while giving her a foot rub...

...She's got a million of 'em...

...The gimmick, it seems, is that kids send in bad jokes, which she reads on the air—which is more than you can say for the "mean" jokes provided by her ex-writers...

...Though she has also said, "Johnny Carson was my hero growing up," and, "As a host . . . Johnny Carson is an inspiration...

...As the culture has fragmented and cannibalized itself, the only fresh possibility is to revert—to K-Tel Records, Nick-at-Night, the Franklin Mint, and now Rosie O'Donnell...

...Though she confounds our silly little labels, it is nonetheless time for reflection...

...It is the perfect moment, as it comes near the end of an era of irony and incivility, formerly thought to be overmined or undesirable attributes...

...exchange with Rosie, actor Michael J. Fox snapped to: "We're so sappy," he confessed...

...I have monitored her Web sites, read the two biographies of her, and even begun to adopt her habits: singing showtunes, padding around the house without makeup in sweatpants, and eating Ring Dings...

...Lucci told Rosie she was one, too...

...Her heart is "as big as the sun," and "we're all warmed by it" (Oprah Winfrey's words...

...Instead, Rosie told Lucci that she loved her All My Children commemorative posterboard gift—twice...

...So it is with these credentials that I state—as faithfully and delicately as possible—that the Rosie show is the most nauseating spectacle ever inflicted on the American public...

...And naturally, the American public can't get enough of it...

...Even some of her fans have murmured over this obsession, as various tabloids have tried to "out" her as gay...

...Not to boast, but I have watched all of Rosie's boffo cinematic performances, including but not limited to The Flintstones, Car 54, Where Are You...

...I can take mediocre material and sell the s— out of it," she said in her early days...

...When she catalogues her influ-ences—as she is wont to do—she reveals that she has more idols than the ancient Babylonians, so many that she can't keep them straight...

...Rosie congratulated Lucci on her Emmy nomination...

...She has even accused Jay Leno of being too mean and told her writers that she would not do a joke that she'd be embarrassed to perform in front of its subject...

...She is not opening the entertainment yearbook to goof on dated haircuts...

...Or ooze over, more like it...

...Rosie can't do enough for the country that has clutched her to its bosom...

...She is not only an unvarnished fan, but a borderline personality—a stalker, even...

...Rosie has set a higher standard for herself, refusing to bring her own son Parker on the air, though he is posed with her on the cover of the June Good Housekeeping...

...Rosie, it is widely held, is the antidote to the endless parade of human debris trotted out on the old Geraldo-Ricki-Jenny-Sally Jessy model of talk show, where the not-so-nice host exploits the dysfunction of real people who are too stupid or profane not to act like . . . real people...

...But her show isn't solely about pimping children, a la Kathie Lee Gifford...

...She remembers obscure commercial jingles that Barry Manilow composed three decades ago...

...Thus, she is nice to everyone— celebrities, retarded children, inter-viewers—everyone, that is, except for her staffers, or former staffers, who are legion (she's torn through seven directors in a year, for those who are counting...

...As a young comic, she scheduled her bookings by whatever city Midler was in at the time...

...Here's Rosie saying, "Bette Midler and Bar-bra Streisand . . . were the two women I wanted to be...

...Before meeting Madonna, she had "diarrhea for two hours...

...Lucci congratulated Rosie right back on hers...

...In her youth, she stalked Billy Joel from club to club on Long Island...

...It is she who promoted the aforementioned "Tickle Me Elmo," a $28 furry vibrator that every tyke had to have last Christmas...

...Rosie's insight was to reprise the fuzzy, nearly archaic form of daytime talk-variety—a less edgy version of the night-talks, but still chock-full of celebrities...

...Rosie knows she's a fawner, but that's apparently what makes her real, what makes her nice, what makes her one of us...

...She is a savant, our Rosie, a pop-culture repository, recalling Bette Midler tunes during the divine one's bathhouse years, reciting lost snatches of dialogue from Laverne & Shirley, doing letter-perfect recitations of Pri-matine Mist commercials...

...There's Rosie slightly modifying, saying "I wanted to be Bar-bra Streisand or Joe Namath [though she's more of a lineman type...

...A source close to the show claims the departures were the result of "growing pains" and that the turnover has "stabilized" as Rosie even bought tickets for her entire staff to attend the Daytime Emmys...

...This remonstration is not leveled Staff writer Matt Labash last wrote for The Weekly Standard about the volun-teerism summit in Philadelphia...

...And she should be terminated with extreme prejudice...

...At the end of an extended aren't-our-children-adorable...

...Lucci congratulated Rosie on the year she was having and on her charitable work with children...

...She is Mary Sunshine in a pantsuit (my words...

...Before meeting Tom Cruise, she confessed to "mild heart palpitations and no appetite, which is odd for me...

...But with the civility gestapo now squelching the mirth out of entertainment, Rosie is all nice, all the time...

...She has mentioned his name on the show 2,017 times (Entertainment Weekly counted), in addition to sporting her "my Tommy" apron, hoisting her "my Tommy" coffee mug, and playing "Tommy Can You Hear Me" by The Who on her karaoke digicard display...

...Rosie agreed, in a rare moment of lucidity, before slipping back: "Well, that's all right...

...Her obsequiousness is unmatched— more impressive than Mike's or Merv's tuchus-kissing or Larry King's Marlon Brando-kissing...

...Worse, I have watched her show...

...If there's one thing she knew, it was that she "never wanted to be Johnny Carson...

...Still, she doesn't rely on his less dignified moments as comic fodder—none of that "he pulled on this, he did a poop," she says...

...Instead, she's set refreshing strictures on Parker-chatter by covering non-exploitative subjects such as his crawling through the dog-door with his diaper off, his circumcision, his wetting in Madonna's pool, and his "vomiting an entire jar of baby squash right in my mouth...

...She is also alleged to have thrown things, cursed a Sesame Street representative who booked the puppet Elmo on another show, and made staffers sign gag orders so they wouldn't tell me what they're now telling me, like one former director who says, "If she finds an ounce of weakness in you, she attacks, like a piranha with blood...

...she genuinely wants to preserve the cultural legacy of Donny Osmond, Susan Dey, and Florence Henderson...

...Upon meeting Mary Tyler Moore, she told Oprah she "had a little diarrhea...

...When she had Mike Douglas on her show, she informed us, "I set out to do a show exactly like his...

...The central conceit of her persona is that she is "nice" and "real"—or as real as you can get while grossing $11 million a year, buddying around with Madonna and the Spielbergs, and being a single mom ("America's Favorite Working Mom" in one poll) who totes her adopted son to work, where a nanny and a sound-proof nursery await him...

...Her success has inspired makeovers of Ricki Lake and Gordon Elliott, and even had a reconstituted Geraldo admitting, "I was going to hell...

...Not for nothing is Rosie one of People's "25 Most Intriguing People," one of Barbara Walters's "10 Most Fascinating People," and Ladies' Home Journal's "Most Fascinating Woman" (period...

...When she met a bit player from the defunct soap opera Ryan's Hope, Rosie exclaimed, "My heart is beating so fast . . . I think I might be having a heart attack...

...which threatened a Nipsey Russell renaissance), and her sassy-best-friend-with-the-heart-of-gold movies—A League of Their Own, Sleepless in Seattle, Now and Then, and Beautiful Girls...

...Rosie told Lucci she was a delight...

...In her role as nurturer, she even supplies the audience with milk and Drake Cakes (her favorite), a nice matronly stroke...

...Rosie remains mute on the subject...

...to slink back to unbridled adulation, to Merv Griffin, to Mike Douglas—to the primordial ooze...

...On Rosie, conversation rarely veers to a distillation of craft, engaging showbiz anecdotes, or semi-antagonistic ripostes (things that make compelling television...

...America loves sap...

...Additionally, she is Newsweek's "Queen of Nice" cover girl...

...Rosie thought it was great that Lucci was hosting the awards with Regis Philbin...

...But such moments are short-lived, as evidenced by her recent interview with Susan Lucci...

...Aren't we...

...She set the bar low, aspiring to pattern her show after those of Merv Griffin and Mike Douglas, two witless log-rollers most of us were glad to be rid of by the '80s...

...Children are okay, but the Celebrity Interview is where Rosie has really made her bones...

...lightly but after complete submersion in the culture of Rosie, which is fast becoming America's culture...

...To be sure, O'Donnell is a more adroit performer than these predecessors...

...This behavior, however, is not apparent on her show...

...When I want to hear from an a—hole, I'll fart," is how she used to dispatch hecklers...

...And now many of the stalkees come to her...

...She has broadcast entire "Suck-up Shows" (her designation), lobbying the likes of Elton John and Barbra Streisand to appear on the air...

...More than anything, her fetishes and obsessions serve as comic grist, which is why she has persisted in her grating Tom Cruise charade, in which she feigns a crush on him...

...It was always to be Carol Burnett...

...Booghetti and meatballs...

...Lucci told Rosie that she loved her hair— three times...

...She sings over Carol Channing on "Hello Dolly...

...She stalked Lucie Arnaz at a Broadway theater, Cher at a shopping mall, and Lauren Bacall in the lobby of her apartment building...

...Actual joke from actual Punny Kid: "What do ghosts eat for lunch...

...Because after just a year on the air, Rosie has won the Daytime Emmy for best talk show...

...Former staffers, however, are less generous, accusing her of everything from being a "micromanaging control freak" to "screaming at staffers" over technical gaffes and "using the F-word in front of children...