Jonah Goldberg: Rosie Is 'Queen of Nuts,' Not Nice

National Review's Jonah Goldberg knocked Rosie O'Donnell Wednesday in an article titled "Queen of Nice? Try Nuts."

The former “queen of nice” seems to think that the show [The View] is the perfect venue to audition as grand marshal for the next tinfoil hat parade. And if you visit O’Donnell’s website, you’ll find her application’s supporting materials: all sorts of unadulterated moonbattery presented in the Esperanto of global derangement — a form of instant-message-style free verse.

Goldberg is stunned that ABC offers O'Donnell a platform to silly about "serious stuff" and not by celebrity fluff (like whether Kelly Ripa dissed Clay Aiken):

Anyway, in last week’s rant, O’Donnell focused on World Trade Center Building 7, which has become the grassy knoll for 9/11 conspiracy theorists. Asked if the government was responsible for its collapse, she coyly replied that she didn’t know. All she knows is that it’s “impossible for a building to fall the way it fell without explosives being involved” and that, for the “first time in history, steel was melted by fire.” Wink, wink. For the record, fire can melt steel, and buildings also collapse when heat weakens steel. But that misses the point. The point is we shouldn’t have to argue with crazy people.

Regardless, it appears that not even the heat of ridicule can weaken O’Donnell’s steely resolve to make an idiot of herself.

You know what? That’s fine. Normally we expect such outbursts from the poor souls who rage against unseen threats at bus stations and public libraries. But even the rich and famous have a right to mutter inanities, shout non sequiturs or shriek possum recipes.

But ABC isn’t obliged to give O’Donnell a nationally televised platform. Barbara Walters, the matriarch of The View and its executive producer, is supposed to be a titan of American journalism. She has all the awards any broadcast journalist could ever want. But today she knowingly gives a soapbox to a wacko.

He thinks the wacko remains because she is a leftist:

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.