Absent from "The View" on May 6, Barbara Walters opted for "Oprah" to promote her new book "Audition." Inevitably the conversation included the tumultuous Rosie O’Donnell 2006-07 season. Barbara very carefully critiqued Rosie seeking to balance her criticisms with a compliments.

In describing Rosie’s sometimes obvious dominance, Barbara claimed Rosie "from day one took over the show" comparing Rosie to Diana Ross and the other co-hosts to the Supremes. Barbara also added Rosie "made some wonderful changes, but it was also very, very difficult."

Of course the famous on air fight between Rosie and Elisabeth Hasselbeck surfaced. The fight stemmed from those accusing Rosie of calling troops terrorists and Elisabeth refusing to defend Rosie. Barbara and Oprah agreed "she never said that." Although Rosie did not explicitly say "the troops are terrorists," her question "who are the terrorists?" certainly suggested it.

The conversation did not involve Rosie raising the possibility that 9-11 was in inside job and "fire can’t melt steel."

The transcript minus some discussion of Rosie O’Donnell’s feud with Donald Trump is below (video available here courtesy our friend Ms Underestimated):

Los Angeles Times reporter and blogger Andrew Malcolm drew an interview on MSNBC Tuesday for his report at Top of the Ticket that Oprah Winfrey is suffering in popularity due to her endorsement and campaigning for Barack Obama. (MSNBC also blamed a popular YouTube video called The Church of Oprah Exposed). Malcolm and Don Frederick reported that while Oprah certainly boosted Obama’s star power, it came with a price:

But little attention has been paid to the effect of Obama on Oprah. Now along comes Costas Panagopoulos, an assistant professor of political science at New York's Fordham University, to ask and answer just that question.

Writing at Politico.com, he suggested Winfrey has paid a price for getting into the dirty business of politics. By August 2007, a CBS poll found her favorable rating had dropped, from 74% to 61%. Recently, her rating dipped a bit more, to 55%.

Men don't have babies. Period. Yet in covering the ‘pregnant man' story this morning both the "Early Show" and "Good Morning America" neither outlet dealt with this fact. Rather, both were completely focused on the fact that Thomas Beatie was speaking publicly for the first time and would be shown on today's "Oprah" show. Both outlets also reported that Beatie's story would appear in this week's issue of People, due on news stands tomorrow.

So really, the media were reporting on the media reporting on the pregnant man. Which really amounts to a public relations boon for Oprah, People and of course the Beaties.

Look for NOW to be setting up picket lines outside Rush's Southern Command, protesting the way Limbaugh has demeaned mature women, writing them off as the "hot-flash cohort."

Outrageous! When will these right-wing men realize we will no longer tolerate their misogynist --

What? It wasn't Rush? It was that avatar of elite liberal thought Tina Brown, writing in Newsweek?

Never mind.

Here's how Brown put it in Hillary and the Invisible Women [emphasis added]:

Just weeks after MSNBC's David Shuster was suspended for suggesting the Clinton campaign had "pimped out" former first daughter Chelsea, a comedienne on NBC's "Saturday Night Live" called nuns "b****es."

Tina Fey, the star of NBC's "30 Rock," came back to her television launching pad last evening to make a strong appeal to women around the country to vote for Hillary Clinton in upcoming primaries.

As part of her stump speech, Fey said the following (readers are warned about mild vulgarity as well as sacrilege):

Someone should tell Chris Matthews to go pick on someone his own size . . .

Matthews enjoyed himself at the expense of a local legislator during last night's MSNBC coverage of the primaries. Kirk Watson [shown in a clip from today's Morning Joe] is a state senator from Texas and an Obama supporter. Matthews cornered Watson at length over his inability to name specific accomplishments by Barack. Credit Kirk for keeping a smile on his face, but there's no denying he was put badly on the spot [HuffPo speaks of Matthews having humiliated the guy].

View the exchange here, via HuffPo.

Celebrity endorsements, helpful or harmful? The LA Times explores that question with Oprah Winfrey and her endorsement of Democrat Barack Obama as a test case:

Although it's true that rallies featuring Winfrey in Iowa and South Carolina have drawn some of the biggest crowds of the campaign so far, Obama's people won't know whether they also triggered a backlash until election day.

Winfrey's website has been buzzing for weeks with angry postings about her involvement in the Illinois senator's campaign, something Hollywood, which always keeps its eye on the public mood, is bound to notice -- this is a town, after all, that measures success by weekly grosses and daily TV ratings.

One posting on her site, Oprah.com, accused the talk diva of being a traitor. (By Thursday, that message string had attracted more than 12,000 views.) Another poster told Winfrey to "stop pushing Obama down our throats." (There were 3,000 hits logged on that one.) Another said: "Do you really know Barack Hussein Obama? Scary & something we have to take into consideration!" (There were more than 4,000 views for that.)

CNN’s Carol Costello, in a segment on Thursday’s "The Situation Room," highlighted the reaction of some fans of Oprah Winfrey who expressed anger at the TV host’s endorsement of Democrat Barak Obama. At the beginning of the segment, Costello voiced her surprise to this development, and all but deified the daytime TV star. "Who knew that Oprah Winfrey, super celeb, might suffer the same fate as mere mortal celebrities -- backlash."

The segment, which aired 43 minutes into the 5 pm Eastern hour of "The Situation Room," focused on the racial component to the issue. Costello opined that the Oprah viewers’ comments were "telling about how many Americans feel about African Americans, even those popular among all races." She later went on to say that some comments left on Oprah’s website were "especially interesting," because some said Oprah was "pitting white against black, because of how she stumped for Obama."

Video Clips (1:18): Windows (2.40 MB), plus MP3 audio (608 kB).

There's no question Strom Thurmond had a racist past, some of which he later disavowed but when Chris Matthews claimed the late South Carolina governor and senator "hanged a few people," on the 7pm edition of Monday's, "Hardball" just what was the MSNBC host implying? Matthews seemed to be claiming that the former Democrat turned Republican senator was personally involved in lynchings.

Video (25 seconds): Windows Media (817 kB) or MP3 audio (199 kB).

The following exchange occurred during a discussion on the December 10, "Hardball" with Newsweek’s Howard Fineman about Oprah Winfrey stumping for Barack Obama in South Carolina:

ABC host Diane Sawyer used an exclusive interview with Oprah Winfrey and actor Denzel Washington to gossip about liberal politics, to ask whether the talk show host would support Hillary Clinton as a backup to Senator Barack Obama and also to prompt Washington on the subject of which Democrat he's supporting.

In the interview, which aired during Wednesday's edition of "Good Morning America," Sawyer demanded to know, "Have you heard from the Clintons? Have you talked to the Clintons?" "What would you say to Hillary," she asked. After Winfrey simply reiterated her support for Obama, Sawyer pressed on and asked if the talk show host had decided "if Senator Clinton is nominated whether you'll show up for her or not?"

In the battle of Democratic "superstar campaigners," the reporters of "Good Morning America" couldn't decide whether they prefer Hillary Clinton's exciting surrogates or Barack Obama's. On Monday's edition of the ABC program, correspondent David Wright parroted talking points about Oprah Winfrey supporting Obama and the inspiring nature of the talk show host. He glowingly asserted, "She's urging her fans to vote the dream, not just to settle for the inevitable." Wright didn't bother to explain what, exactly, that means.

Video (1:54): Real (3.11 MB) and Windows (3.53 MB), plus MP3 audio (887 kB).

The GMA reporter also gushed that "...When it comes to connecting a crowd over shared hardships and shared hopes, nobody beats Oprah." According to Wright, she's "kind of like everybody's big sister." Kate Snow, filing a piece on the Clinton campaign, explained that operatives at "Hillaryland" sent Bill and Chelsea Clinton to Iowa in order to manipulate media coverage away from Obama. Snow shamelessly confessed, "And it worked. We're not just talking about Oprah this morning, are we?"

I spent a small smidgen of time on Monday at Fox News discussing the Oprah Winfrey struggle with sex abuse allegations at her South African school for girls. Why is this story so big? In part, it's because Oprah made it so big, inviting massive coverage of her philanthropy, as I said to Martha McCallum on her show Live Desk:

Part of the problem is the way she built it up in the first place. As you have just described, she put an enormous amount of money in here, built this thing, hand-picked the students, and when you have that much involvement in it, when something goes wrong, people are going to look right at you. They're not going to look at, "well, she was just the billionaire philanthropist who paid money and did not have anything to do with it." Now the media can turn around and say everything that goes wrong to these -- with the students that she selected becomes her problem, and she is obviously getting very aggressive in trying to meet it head on.

So what can she do to remedy the abuse allegations? She's obviously aggressive in her PR, but I suggested she was overpromising:

Retired steelworker Steve Skvara tugged at the heartstrings of liberals everywhere when he asked Democratic presidential candidates at an August debate sponsored by the AFL-CIO, "What's wrong with America? And what will you do to change it?" The underlying premise of his question, that something's wrong with this nation because taxpayers aren't picking up the tab for his spouse's health insurance, made him an instant celebrity in certain circles.

Chris Matthews invited Mr. Skvara to his MSNBC Hardball program and told him, "You're a great American to speak so well to the needs of this country." Matthews later fawned, ""Well, can I pay tribute — can I pay tribute to you, sir?" The CBS Evening News described Skvara's query as a time when "a moment of truth breaks through a political campaign event." Since his debut, Mr. Skvara's popped up in the media numerous times, including Oprah Winfrey's show.

Democrat presidential candidate Barack Obama might have talk show host Oprah Winfrey in his corner, but a new study from the Pew Research Center found that such celebrity endorsements have little impact on voting habits.

In fact, state governors carry more weight with potential voters than celebrities.

How delicious.

Here were some of the study's key findings:

He's baack! Steve Skvara, the man who won the hearts and minds of many in the mainstream media by essentially calling for other people to pay for his wife's health insurance will soon be on Oprah Winfrey's talk show.

As reported in the (Northwest Indiana) Post-Tribune today:

On Sept. 6, Oprah flew him from Washington, D.C., where he was meeting with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, to Chicago for a taping of her show, Skvara said.

She asked him for an update on his health situation, and then she played a tape of his speech to the Democrats. Following the show, Oprah personally introduced herself to Skvara.

The show is expected to air on Sept. 28.

Two days before Oprah Winfrey is to host a celebrity-packed fundraiser for Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, NBC's Andrea Mitchell championed her potential ability to “turn her magic into votes for Barack Obama” and ABC's David Wright marveled: “Imagine the power of Oprah in an Obama campaign ad.” In a soundbite, Democratic strategist Donna Brazile gushed that “O plus O equals opportunity for Barack Obama to win in 2008.”

On Thursday's NBC Nightly News, anchor Brian Williams justified his show's story by asserting that Winfrey's “support for him [Obama] is getting new attention” -- attention NBC decided to give the topic. Mitchell admired how Winfrey “can turn a first-time author into an instant best-seller, single-handedly reviving an industry,” leading her to wonder: “Can the billionaire entertainer, and richest woman in America, turn her magic into votes for Barack Obama?”

You're a former First Lady, a two-term Senator from the great state of New York, and the front-runner to win the Democrat nomination for president of the United States in 2008, and yet, a national business magazine still believes a media mogul who got her start doing a ladies' talk show in Chicago is more powerful than you.

That can't be good for the ego, can it?

Yet, there it was in the just-released special report by Forbes entitled "The World's 100 Most Powerful Women":

By now you should know the drill concerning potables, combustibles, and sharp objects…

American heartthrob Tom Cruise has been prevented from filming scenes to a new movie about the assassination attempt on Adolf Hitler at German military sites due to the actor’s connection with Scientology.

I kid you not.

As reported by Reuters Monday (emphasis added throughout):

The Chicago media were all agush on May 4th over the opening of Oprah Winfrey's musical treatment of The Color Purple. Breathless were the reports of who was in attendance and star struck was the celeb watching as the limos pulled up in front of the Cadillac Palace Theatre in downtown Chicago.

But one "celebrity" that was invited by Oprah to attend the opening performance should raise eyebrows and should have spawned condemnation of Oprah Winfrey for his invitation; yet, the media was strangely silent about the impropriety of the invite.

Before I go on with who the off color Color Purple guest is, a recap of just what the theme of this musical is all about is called for to speak to exactly why this particular guest should never have been invited to this premier, much less given star treatment.

On his blog Changing Channels, Miami Herald TV critic Glenn Garvin warned that Oprah Winfrey will appear on the Ellen DeGeneres daytime chatfest on Thursday, and it's not exactly an intellectual Clash Of The Titans. He cited this exchange on the presidential race:

Ellen: Hillary and Barack ... That’s very interesting, right?
Oprah: Very interesting.
Ellen: Very interesting.  Anyone that you’re feeling right now?
Oprah: (nodding yes) Um hum.
Ellen: Yeah, you want to say or no?
Oprah: I’m feeling Barack.
Ellen: You’re feeling Barack
Oprah: I’m feeling Barack.
Oprah: I know it’s tough -- the thing about it is, it doesn’t make the other candidate any less.  I’m just feeling Barack.
Ellen: ....I’m really torn because I love him. I really love him.
Oprah: I don’t just love him.  I respect him.