Rosie O’Donnell: ‘We Sort of Started to Humanize’ Elisabeth Hasselbeck

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Apparently in Rosie O'Donnell's world, people who don't subscribe to her beliefs are less than human, and she surrounds herself with people of like mind.

The former "View" moderator took the opportunity during the Feb. 8 broadcast of her Sirius XM radio show, "Rosie Radio" to outline how she tried to "humanize" her former colleague, Elisabeth Hasselbeck. O'Donnell's comments stemmed from a discussion about the conservative backlash to her recent HBO documentary about families, "A Family is a Family is a Family."

"I have that horrible, horrible, optimistic view that I could reach one of them. Remember, after Columbine, I used to write Wayne LaPierre letters, who was the head of the NRA at that time, saying, ‘Surely, sir, you can understand,' as if he's gonna [agree]," she explained. "It's sort of what I thought about Elisabeth Hasselbeck, too. I'm gonna love her, regardless of what she says, I'm gonna love her and the love, then, is going to win through in the end."

She continued, "I was positive of this, and we sort of got it a little bit. We started to sort of humanize her. Remember, after she came to my house, she actually said on television how she thought our family was so great? Can you imagine the amount of hate mail she got from her constituency?" [Audio available here.]

O'Donnell previously stated that "a sort of right-wing group" [One Million Moms] sent emails to HBO complaining about her documentary and complained that the group "co-opted" the Million Mom moniker.

"When you have access to a microphone, to a television audience, you know, you have a responsibility to try to put forth the most healing things that you can, right? Not incendiary, not necessarily argumentative, you know, it took a long time to come there for me, to get there," claimed O'Donnell. "There's a group online, the Million Moms ... That was the name of our group, the Million Mom March. But this sort of right-wing group has co-opted the name and they're sending emails to HBO saying how horrible the documentary was, that I was promoting my agenda."

A male staffer filled O'Donnell on why this group was sending emails. "Because Million Moms [sic] isn't a stand alone organization. It's an offshoot of the American Family Association which has all sorts of anti-gay ..."

These comments led Janette Barber, O'Donnell's executive producer, to exhibit her own tolerance and proposed they should refer to groups like AFA "those people." 

"I don't think we should mention them anymore. We should just call them ‘those people.' Why direct them to hate? Because you know what, the hate, because it's shocking, it becomes louder and that sticks in your mind," opined Barber.

Liberal tolerance at its best, folks.