• Monday, June 4th 2007, 4:00 AM - The on-air spat that prompted Rosie O'Donnell to quit The View - aww, it was only a stunt, she joked yesterday. O'Donnell left the program May 25, three weeks before her slated departure, after a fight with co-host Elisabeth Hasselbeck over the Iraq war. But at a publishing industry event where she plugged her memoir, Celebrity Detox, O'Donnell quipped that her publisher "orchestrated that whole publicity thing just to get more attention for the book ... brazenly calling up the other hosts, telling them to incite me." The book, expected out in September, chronicles Rosie's return to the public eye on The View a year after leaving her own Emmy-winning talk show.
Source: Christina Kinon and Jordan Lite - New York Daily News

• May 25, 2007 — Rosie O'Donnell has fought her last fight at The View. ABC said Friday she asked for, and received, an early exit from her contract at the daytime chatfest following her angry confrontation with co-host Elisabeth Hasselbeck on Wednesday. She was due to leave in mid-June. It ended a colorful eight-month tenure for O'Donnell that lifted the show's ratings but no doubt caused heartburn for show creator Barbara Walters. O'Donnell feuded with Donald Trump and frequently had snippy exchanges with the more conservative Hasselbeck. O'Donnell said last month she would be leaving because she could not agree to a new contract with ABC executives.
  
  "Rosie contributed to one of our most exciting and successful years at The View," Walters said. "I am most appreciative. Our close and affectionate relationship will not change."
  
  In a statement, O'Donnell said that "it's been an amazing year and I love all three women."
  
  On her Web site, O'Donnell posted a scrapbooklike video on Friday with pictures and news clippings of her tenure at The View. Cyndi Lauper's "Sisters of Avalon" played in the background. A day earlier, she posted messages on her Web site indicating she might not be back.
  
  "When painting there is a point u must step away from the canvas as the work is done," she wrote. "Any more would take away."
Source: DAVID BAUDER, AP Television Writer

• 

  Rosie O'Donnell will leave "The View" TV show when her contract expires in June, ABC announced today.

  April 25, 2007 — ABC has been unable to come to a contractual agreement with Rosie O'Donnell. As a result, her hosting duties on The View will come to an end mid-June.
  
  "They wanted me three years, I wanted one year, and it just didn't work," said O'Donnell on today's show. Despite controversy — or maybe because of it — O'Donnell was good business for ABC, owned by the Walt Disney Co. Ratings for The View during February sweeps were up 15% in key women demographics over the same time in 2006. Those fans don't have to worry — she will still be on the show in smaller doses.
  
  "I'm not going away. I'm just not going to be here every day," added O'Donnell.
  
  According to Barbara Walters, creator and co-executive producer of The View. the co-host will be missed.
  
  "We have had, to say the least, an interesting year … an exciting, fun-filled, provocative year. We have all gotten together and you will be missed," Walters said, adding, "I do not participate in the negotiations for Rosie. It was between your representatives and agents. This is not my doing." Brian Frons, the president of daytime programming for the Disney-ABC Television Group, told ABCNEWS.com, "Going in we knew we would have an amazing year with her, and that anything beyond that would be gravy…So here we are a year later, and while we've tried to come to terms on a deal that would extend her co-hosting duties on The View, we find ourselves unable to agree on some key elements."
  
  ABC executives weren't the only ones unable to agree on "key elements" with O'Donnell. The co-host and comedian has been the subject of recent headlines for her ongoing feud with real estate mogul Donald Trump, and a dispute with Bill O'Reilly over the war in Iraq. Trump and O'Donnell butted heads when O'Donnell called him a "snake oil salesman," after he announced he would not fire scandal-plagued Miss USA Tara Conner. Trump threatened to sue O'Donnell, but later backed down. Conner's crown was in jeopardy after a bout of underage drinking and substance abuse, but Trump gave her a second chance.
  
  Trump pushed Walters to fire O'Donnell for her wayward comments, even saying, "And here's my prediction. She will have a huge fight ultimately with Barbara Walters, and she will be fired."
  
  On today's show, in response to O'Donnell's announcement, comedian and co-host Joy Behar had something to say about Trump. Behar said, "Donald Trump, he's on a ledge right now, thinking how am I going to resuscitate The Apprentice now?"
  
  In a statement released to ABCNEWS.com today, Walters said: "I induced Rosie to come back to television on The View even for just one year. She has given the program new vigor, new excitement and wonderful hours of television." Part of that excitement involved some of O'Donnell's heated debates with The View co-host Elisabeth Hasselbeck. Hasselbeck and O'Donnell denied media speculation that their differences on set translated into animosity off the set. After O'Donnell's announcement today, Hasselbeck said to O'Donnell, "I think I'm kind of in denial. You are such a catalyst, you know how to just get in there, and because of that we've just taken off the shackles and had some real honest conversation here."
  
  O'Donnell said: "This has been an amazing experience, and one I wouldn't have traded for the world. Working with Barbara, Joy and Elisabeth has been one of the highlights of my career, but my needs for the future just didn't dovetail with what ABC was able to offer me. To all the viewers out there, I just want to say 'thank you' for opening up your hearts and your homes to me this past year. But you can always find me at rosie.com. Here's hoping there's more confetti for all of us going forward."
  
  Frons concurred: "That's the business, and something we knew was a real possibility the entire time. So we part as friends, and hope that we can entice Rosie back next year to take part in a series of one-hour specials for us like our recent show on autism. And maybe, if we're lucky, we'll be able to convince her to guest co-host once in a while as well." A source close to O'Donnell told ABC News that co-hosting the show, and all the attending controversies, has been "stressful" for her, and added that O'Donnell is pursuing other TV show opportunities. Walters added on today's show that they are prepared to be inundated with letters, and said, "We have not thought about a replacement."
  Source: ABC News

• April 24, 2007 — ROSIE O'Donnell's blue humor made faces red when she emceed the Matrix Awards in front of 2,000 feting New York's most accomplished women in media at the Waldorf-Astoria Grand Ballroom yesterday. The loose-lipped lesbian dropped the F-bomb as Barbara Walters lowered her head on the dais and covered her face with her hand. O'Donnell concluded a rant about Donald Trump by grabbing her crotch and shouting, "Eat me!" O'Donnell also said she was sad when Trump called her "disgusting" and "fat" because, "it was always my dream to give an old, bald billionaire a boner."
  
  The annual luncheon of N.Y. Women in Communications - which honored Cindy Adams, Meredith Vieira, Joan Didion, Susan Lyne, Arianna Huffington and Lisa Caputo, among others - featured as presenters News Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch, Joy Behar, Nora Ephron, Martha Stewart and Sen. Hillary Clinton. Also on hand were 17 sweet-faced high school girls who won scholarships to pursue their dreams of careers in media.
  
  Among those in the crowd were Judith Giuliani, her predecessor Donna Hanover, Judge Judy Sheindlin, Helen Gurley Brown, Sue Simmons, Geri Laybourne of Oxygen Media, Jane Friedman of HarperCollins, and Hearst president Cathie Black.
  
  O'Donnell's publicist, Cindi Berger, told us: "When you ask for Rosie, you know what you're getting. She's not a shrinking violet. She's a stand-up comedienne. She says things that are provocative."
  
  N.Y. Women in Communications was evidently happy with O'Donnell. The group's managing director, Beth Ellen Keyes, sent an e-mail to her handlers saying, "Rosie was fabulous. Please let Rosie know how much we appreciated her being there. She was just great."
Source: New York Post

• March 11, 2007 — BARBARA Walters isn't getting rid of her fr-enemy, Rosie O'Donnell, this year. ABC insiders say, "Rosie is going to get her own show - but it's too late to do a show for September 2007, so she will re-up for one more year at The View and then do her own show that debuts in September 2008." ABC is very keen on keeping O'Donnell at the network. "She revived a 10-year-old show that was on its last legs," said one insider. O'Donnell has added 75,000 viewers a week since she joined the coffee klatch last September, keeping audiences enthralled after getting into feuds with Donald Trump, Walters and others. There is one catch to O'Donnell staying at ABC, however. "She wants [The View executive producer] Bill Geddie out. They hate each other. She'll stay if he leaves," said our source. A rep for O'Donnell said, "Nothing has been decided regarding her plans." Abbie Schiller, a rep for The View and ABC, said, "There is not one detail of this that is accurate."
Source: New York Post

• December 13, 2006 — Rosie O'Donnell and Georgette Mosbacher are new best friends. Rosie, a liberal on most issues, was a dinner guest the other night at the Fifth Avenue aerie of the flame-haired Republican fund-raiser. When Georgette complained that so many of her rich friends had failed to give anything to the Intrepid Fallen Heroes Fund, which is building a state-of-the-art rehabilitation facility in San Antonio for wounded combat veterans, Rosie instantly offered to donate $300,000, to the surprise of her wife, Kelli, and her "View" co-host Barbara Walters. A grateful Mosbacher laughed, "There's hope for bipartisanship."
  Source: New York Post

• April 28, 2006 - Rosie O'Donnell is the latest aftershock in the Katie Couric earthquake. With Couric leaving NBC's Today to anchor CBS' Evening News and Meredith Vieira leaving ABC's The View to replace Couric on Today, O'Donnell will leave her house to replace Vieira on The View.
  
  Word of the O'Donnell hire leaked late Thursday, and was first reported by Extra. Friday's New York Daily News suggested O'Donnell might be taking the job on a temporary, not permanent basis. O'Donnell presumably will start her new job in September, the same month Couric and Vieira are to start their new jobs. Barring a cast overhaul, O'Donnell's View counterpoints will be longtime couch-dwellers Joy Behar, Star Jones Reynolds, Elizabeth Hasselbeck and overlord Barbara Walters.
  
  As for O'Donnell, she is a "fat 43-year-old menopausal ex-talk show host," according to her somewhat-inaccurate blog bio. (She's actually 44.) She is better known as a stand-up comic turned character actress (Sleepless in Seattle, A League of Their Own) turned daytime TV queen. From 1996 to 2002, as the Broadway-boosting, Tom Cruise-crushing star of The Rosie O'Donnell Show, O'Donnell won six Daytime Emmys as Outstanding Talk Host. In the late 1990s, Newsweek dubbed her the Queen of Nice for being a bright light in a murky sea of Sally Jessy Raphaels, Geraldos and Jerry Springers. O'Donnell vacated her desk job for the same reason she originally sought it out: To spend more time with family. She and partner Kelli Carpenter are parents to four children, one of whom Carpenter gave birth to in 2002. (O'Donnell gave her version of Ellen DeGeneres' "Yup, I'm gay" interview to ABC News in 2002.) After her show ended, O'Donnell developed a reputation for being not nice. Much of her image was fueled by a protracted legal battle over her defunct women's magazine, Rosie. In recent years, O'Donnell has maintained a low profile, even while producing a Broadway flop, launching a cruise line for gay and lesbian families and venting about David Letterman's show and others on her blog.
  Source: E!Online

• August 6, 2005 - Former television talk show host Rosie O'Donnell will return to Broadway August 30 in a production of Fiddler on the Roof, the show's producers said on Monday. Rosie will star opposite actor and playwright Harvey Fierstein in the musical running at the Minskoff Theater in Manhattan. Fierstein who is playing Tevye, a milkman, will be joined by Rosie as his wife Golde, according to a statement. "As a twenty year friend of Rosie's, I couldn't be happier that we will finally share a stage together," Fierstein said in the statement. Fierstein is best known for his award winning "Torch Song Trilogy," three one act plays exploring the lives of gay men.
  Source: Reuters

• March 13, 2005 - Rosie O'Donnell is returning to TV, and at the same time resurrecting her acting career. O'Donnell will star in a made for TV movie about a mentally challenged woman. It is her first foray back on network television since she retired her talk show in 2002.
  
  Riding the Bus with My Sister: A True Life Story, by Bryn Mawr writing professor Rachel Simon, is about Simon's retarded sister who spends her days riding a bus in a small Pennsylvania city where she chats up her favorite drivers, dispenses advice and stands up to people who find her a nuisance. It is expected to air May 1, 2005, on CBS-TV. Check your local listings for the time in your area.
  
  The telefilm will be produced by Larry Sanitsky (The Pennsylvania Miner's Story and Oldest living Confederate Widow Tells All) for CBS.
  Source: Gay Wired - By Jed Lang

• March 30, 2004 - R Family Vacations, the first travel company devoted to gay and lesbian family vacations, has teamed up with Metropolitan Community Churches (MCC), the world's largest and oldest church group with an affirming ministry to the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender (GLBT) communities. MCC will be performing wedding ceremonies and offering interfaith services aboard R Family Vacations' historic inaugural cruise in July.
  
  "We are honored to partner with MCC, their support of gay and lesbian families is truly inspiring," said Kelli O'Donnell and Gregg Kaminsky, co-founders of R Family Vacations. "We are thrilled to be able to offer guests the opportunity to attend interfaith services or to marry on the cruise while surrounded by family and friends."
  
  R Family Vacations week-long cruise aboard the brand new luxury cruise liner the Norwegian Dawn, will depart from New York City on July 11th 2004. Ports of call will include Port Canaveral, Key West, Nassau and Norwegian Cruise Line's own private Bahamian island. In addition to providing world-class entertainment and the opportunity to meet other GLBT families, this Caribbean cruise will provide a breathtaking setting for wedding ceremonies.
  
  Dr. Cindi Love, chairman of the board of directors of MCC and senior pastor of MCC of Greater Dallas, will serve as Pastor in Residence on the cruise. "We are proud to support R Family Vacations and applaud their commitment to offering GLBT families not only a vacation, but a support network of other parents and children just like their own," said Love. "We are looking forward to joining the hundreds of GLBT families from around the U.S. on the cruise in a celebration of love, faith and a couple's decision to step forward in both." MCC is the largest international vehicle for public education about homosexuality and Christianity. At the vanguard of civil and human rights movements for over 30 years, MCC addresses the important issues of racism, sexism, homophobia, ageism, and other forms of oppression. Founded in 1968, MCC has an inclusive membership of over 43,000 members in 300 churches worldwide.
  
  R Family Vacations creates vacations for gay and lesbian travelers and their family of choice — children, parents, relatives, friends, couples and individuals. By creating an instant community where everyone is welcome, R Family Vacations confirms you don't have to compromise your lifestyle to go on a vacation.
  Media Contacts: MCC: Kristi Ward, Director, Public Relations: (303) 517-1880 or kward@mergemediagroup.com
  R Family Vacations: Amy Paternite/Two Five Media: (973) 275-5558 or ap@twofivemedia.com

• February 27, 2004 - The bride said, "I do." Then Rosie did, too. Angered by President Bush's crusade to make it illegal for them to marry, Rosie O'Donnell and her lesbian partner, Kelli Carpenter, joined the rush down the aisle in San Francisco yesterday.
  
  "We were inspired to come here by the sitting President and the vile and vicious and hateful comments he made," the former talk-show host proclaimed after planting a kiss on her longtime love. In tying the knot, the country's most famous lesbian couple took center stage in the debate over gay marriage sparked by Bush's call Tuesday for a constitutional amendment banning it. The private ceremony was presided over by lesbian city treasurer Susan Leal.
  
  "There was not a lot of ad-libbing, even though Rosie is a comedian," Leal said later. "They smiled a lot; they had a lot of tears in their eyes." O'Donnell and Carpenter were cheered as conquering heroines as they strode hand-in-hand down the steps of the ornate marble rotunda of city hall, serenaded by the San Francisco Gay Men's Chorus singing Chapel of Love.
  
  "We really did, we got married," O'Donnell said. "This is my brand-new wife." A beaming Carpenter held up their marriage license for the cheering throngs, some of them crying tears of joy, to see. O'Donnell made it clear that it was her anger at Bush, as much as her love for Carpenter, that prompted her to board a plane for the West Coast. "One thought ran through my mind on the plane out here - with liberty and justice for all," O'Donnell said. More than 3,300 gay and lesbian couples have gotten hitched over the past two weeks, since new San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom's defiant decision to allow same-sex nuptials. Underscoring their roles as parents of four children, the couple said they planned to return to New York last night in time for parents' day at their children's school today. "With four kids under 8, there will be no honeymoon," O'Donnell joked.
  Source: New York Daily News - By MARY PAPPENFUS in San Francisco, and DAVE GOLDINER in New York DAILY NEWS WRITERS

• November 22, 2003 - One thing is being lost in the debate over gay marriage, and that is that every citizen is supposed to be guaranteed equal protection under the law. In court, a person cannot be forced to testify against his or her spouse. Married couples enjoy the same level of confidentiality granted to doctors and their patients, or lawyers and their clients.
  
  Homosexual couples, on the other hand, have no such guarantee. This was recently seen in the lawsuit against Rosie O'Donnell. Her partner Kelli was compelled to testify in the case, regarding personal conversations between them. The spouses of the people suing O'Donnell could not be forced to testify, because of the marriage protection.
  
  Allowing gay marriage isn't just about tax deductions or medical benefits or hospital visitation rights. It's also about providing equal protection under the law for all American citizens, regardless of race, gender, creed, color or sexual orientation.
  Source: The Oregonian - By Jordan C. Lund

• November 12, 2003 - For all the bitching and backstabbing revealed during the bitter legal battle between Rosie O'Donnell and publisher Gruner + Jahr, the verdict is hardly a doozy. Minutes after both sides rested in the case, the judge said that neither deserved damages from the demise of O'Donnell's eponymous magazine.
  
  "It seems to me...we're just dealing with bragging rights here, who wins and who loses," said New York State Supreme Court Justice Ira Gammerman. No evidence or testimony during the trial suggested that either side caused the other to lose money, said the judge. Both parties pumped some major coin into the project. The magazine lost money and then it folded, he said. "There's no evidence that the magazine would have made any money at all," said Gammerman, who is expected to announce his official ruling later this month after collecting paperwork from both sides. He did leave open the possibility that O'Donnell could ask G+J to cover her legal fees.
  
  However, O'Donnell is unlikely to appeal. She recently told Us Weekly that she would abide by the judge's decision, no matter what. "Let a judge decide," she told the magazine. "If he says, 'Pay them $100 million,' then I'll pay it—but, honey, it would devastate."
  
  After the judge ruled, O'Donnell said she had "no vengeance toward the companyI'm simply happy about the fact that it is finally over." She expressed her appreciation to Gammerman and vowed never to discuss the company ever again. She wasn't above using the post-trial platform to plug her musical, Taboo, which opens tomorrow. The Broadway show, about London's club scene in the '80s, features the poster child for the shoulder pad decade, Boy George.
  
  An attorney for O'Donnell declared the judge's decision "a victory in our view" and said they were "very pleased" that the judge thought "it was ill-conceived lawsuit and that the other side was not entitlted to anything." The onetime talk-show host exited Rosie magazine in September 2002. The magazine, which launched in April 2001, proceeded to fold in December 2002. G+J slapped a $100 million breach-of-contract suit on O'Donnell when she walked. She countersued for $125 million, accusing the publisher of monopolizing editorial control and manipulating the magazine's circulation numbers. And thus, the anticlimactic judgment concludes one of the juiciest trials media watchers have had the pleasure of covering in minute detail.
  
  Among the dirt revealed during the two-week trial:
  • A tearful former Rosie staffer testified that O'Donnell told her liars "get cancer" while suggesting the woman, a cancer survivor, was lying about the magazine's operations. During a break in the trial, O'Donnell told reporters she had called the exec the next morning and apologized.
  • The chief financial officer of G+J admitted on the stand to fudging the magazine's circulation numbers to keep O'Donnell on board—a discrepancy the company had been guilty of before with YM magazine.
  • Marketing exec Cindy Spengler and editor-in-chief Susan Toepfer conspired to do a "little 'ding dong the witch is dead' song and dance" after O'Donnell's departure. The silly send-off included burning sage leaves in her office to remove the bad vibes.
  • The lunacy continued as O'Donnell said she had a colleague remove pictures of her children from G+J CEO Daniel Brewster's office after she walked out, explaining, "I didn't want his vibrations near my children's spirits."
  • Squabbling over editorial control with Toepfer lead O'Donnell to feel she'd been the victim of a "coup d'etat," the angry celeb testified. "Susan Toepfer was trying to take over my magazine. Having a magazine with my name on it go out to the public without my control was never an option for me."
  • For her part, Toepfer portrayed O'Donnell as a maniacal freak in her testimony. "It was basically, 'You can't meet with my staff. You can't give them ideas,'" Toepfer paraphrased O'Donnell. "'If I'm not the boss of this, I will bring it down. I will close the magazine down.'"
  Ultimately, neither side came out a winner in the trial, which irrevocably tarnished O'Donnell's "Queen of Nice" routine and portrayed G+J as a ruthless corporation determined to win at any cost.
  Source: E! Online, Inc - By Lia Haberman

• August 17, 2003 - Power people lost their power just like everybody else during the 2003 blackout - but some celebs did have clever ways of coping. Rosie O'Donnell was at home in Nyack, Rockland County, when her nanny called to say she was stranded in Manhattan with her sister-in-law and her two children. "Walk over to Chelsea Piers," O'Donnell told Geraldine. "I'll pick you up." So while nanny and company hoofed it over from Chinatown, O'Donnell and her daughter Chelsea Belle, 5, jumped into her powerboat and headed down the Hudson. Along the way, she got a call from two friends, identified to us only as Dan and Greg, who were uptown with Greg's pregnant sister and her husband. "Walk over to the 79th St. Boat Basin," said O'Donnell. "I'll pick you all up." When she finally reached Chelsea, there was a mob of people on the pier. "One guy offered Rosie $100 if she'd give him a lift to Hoboken," says a source. "She said, 'I can't. But you're welcome to spend the night with me in Nyack.'" The guy passed up the invitation, but by bedtime O'Donnell and her girlfriend, Kelli Carpenter O'Donnell, had 10 people sleeping over. "I was inspired by Tom Cruise," O'Donnell told them. "He always saves people in a crisis."
  Source: Rush and Molloy Daily News

Rosie's House Up For Sale

• January 16, 2003 - Last August Rosie put up for sale her five-story turn-of-the-century townhouse on Manhattan's Upper West Side [reduced from $6.9 million to $5.7 million, Ed]. Now it looks like Rosie O'Donnell is leaving South Florida. Rosie's Star Island mansion is officially on the market. In case you're shopping for a house, the asking price for 43 Star Island Drive is $16.7 million. Rosie told reporters that she wants her children and all their toys to be under one roof — and that appears to be in Rockland County, New York.
  Source: Click10.com

Rosie O'Donnell Adds Baby Girl to Clan

• November 29, 2002 - Rosie O'Donnell's girlfriend has given birth to a baby girl. Kelli Carpenter, the comedian and former talk show host's longtime partner, gave birth to Vivienne Rose O'Donnell Friday at an undisclosed New York hospital, O'Donnell spokeswoman Cindi Berger said Saturday. "Mothers and baby are just great. The baby weighed 6 pounds, 6 ounces and is 19 inches long," Berger said

  Carpenter and O'Donnell named the baby Vivienne after the main character in the book Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, and Rose after O'Donnell's mother, Roseanne, Berger said. O'Donnell has adopted three children — Parker, 7, Chelsea, 5, and Blake, 3. Friends of the two say they used an anonymous sperm donor after they were unable to adopt a 4-year-old foster child named Mia, because Florida state law bars gay adoption. The two women reportedly have signed a legal agreement that gives them equal rights as parents. Carpenter is a former Nickelodeon cable network executive who has legal status as a co-parent of Blake. She has filed to become the legal guardian of Parker and Chelsea, according to friends of the couple.

From Queen of Nice to Royal Bitch?

• June 25, 2002 - Take this Koosh ball and shove it.

  Rosie O'Donnell was either living a lie as the "Queen of Nice," or all those years of sappy sweetness on her daytime talk show have finally pushed her to the breaking point. Whatever the case, the once chipper gal is celebrating her talk-show retirement by going on a celeb-trashing spree, throwing nasty jabs at Bill Clinton, Michael Jackson, Sharon Stone, Anne Heche and Oprah Winfrey. Or, in her own words: "I'm no longer a TV talk-show host. The über-bitch ain't so nice anymore."

  Yes, Rosie has snapped.

  Boston and New York newspapers have published some jaw-dropping snippets from O'Donnell's weekend performance during a star-studded party at the Mohegan Sun casino in Uncasville, Connecticut. Just a day after Bill Clinton showed up at the casino to receive an honor (and then broke out his saxophone for a performance), the Democrat O'Donnell dissed the ex-President and said she refused to speak to him.

  "He disgusts me," she told the crowd, according to the New York Post. "And I know I'm not supposed to say this because I'm a good Democrat, but I didn't want to [talk] to him. If I [did], I'd say, 'You really pissed me off. Because you said to my face, "I did not have sexual relations with that woman," and then put the scarlet-letter blow job on her soul for the rest of her life. And you want to make nice? I hate you.'"

  According to the New York Daily News, she also said that when she was at Liza Minnelli's wedding (which she called "the gayest thing since my last show"), she refused to talk to Michael Jackson because "I make it a rule not to speak to pedophiles." When the audience gasped, Rosie said, "Oh, come on. I think you all know that kid was probably telling the truth or else Michael wouldn't have paid him off. . . he's a freak. . . and not in a nice way." Of course, she didn't stop there, either. "He's cream-colored and has no nasal passages whatsoever. He doesn't look human. Did he look into the mirror one day and say, 'Perfect?'"

  Also a target for Rosie rage: Sharon Stone, whom O'Donnell said missed the Mohegan Sun bash because she was prepping for her next movie role—in 2004. She also ridiculed Stone for once reciting the words to John Lennon's "Imagine" during a bizarro speech at an AIDS fundraiser. Rosie then ripped into Anne Heche for claiming she was never really gay, and Oprah Winfrey, who was too busy at "home counting her money" to make an appearance on The Rosie O'Donnell Show.

  Source: Mark Armstrong, E! Online

Rosie Cruises Off Into Sunset

• May 22, 2002: The Rosie O'Donnell Show ended its six-season run with a show that was like most other episodes of the Emmy-winning series. Well, if you don't count the dancing beast, gay jokes, champagne-serving hunk and lawn-mowing Tom Cruise, that is. Guests for Rosie's final live episode — which, as she pointed out to Larry King last week, ended on the 10-year anniversary of the day her talk show idol Johnny Carson ended his Tonight Show run — included the singing, dancing casts of Broadway shows like Beauty and the Beast, Chicago and 42nd Street, as well as Rosie's celeb pals Vanessa Williams, John Lithgow, Christine Ebersole and her 1998 Tony Awards cohost Nathan Lane.

  After the elaborate opening numbers that paid tribute to Rosie's famous devotion to Broadway, the show did indeed start off like most other Rosie eps, complete with an introduction to bandleader John McDaniel, a story about her daughter's recent monkey bar accident, news about production studio Warner Bros.' $1 million donation to her For All Kids Foundation charity and audience giveaways that included Elmo-adorned goody bags and, lucky duckies, the new TiVo Series 2 DVR. The "Queen of Nice," who capped her foray into daytime talk by nabbing Best Talk Show and Best Talk Show Host trophies at last Friday's 29th Annual Daytime Emmy Awards, then explained that there will actually be another six weeks of new Rosie installments, thanks to a slew of episodes that were filmed and never before aired. Then it's reruns until the fall, when Sabrina, the Teenage Witch star Caroline Rhea takes over Rosie's seat behind the desk. Rhea will have her work cut out for her, though, with ratings for 90 percent of the top 10 daytime talk shows down this season, including Rosie, which has seen a 19 percent downturn in viewership.

  But Wednesday was all about the celebration, including a jovial, wise-cracking Lane, who not only brought a champagne-serving, shirtless waiter named Shane ("my personal valet and aromatherapist"), but who also let loose with a non-stop string of jokes that included several references to his and Rosie's much-discussed sexuality.

  "Well this is the biggest gay celebration since Liza's wedding, isn't it?" Lane said.

  And to Shane: "Shane, drop and give me 10. No, I'm just kidding. Drop and I'll give you 20," Lane quipped in an aside that surely must have left some of the soccer mom audience with mouth agape.

  And later, "I didn't know you were gay!" the Tony winner joked when telling Rosie what he'd learned from reading her recent autobiography. "I would have looked for you at the meetings. And I would have sent you cards on all the big gay national holidays...the birthday of the Cosmopolitan, Fashion Week and I Haven't Told My Mother's Day!"

  And the hits just kept on coming, as Rosie gifted a pair of employees with Emmy statues and a new boat and PT Cruiser, was serenaded by Tony winner Ebersole with "My Funny Valentine," and aired a five-minute clipfest that showed her love of children, Broadway and all things pop culture by interspersing personal footage of her children and girlfriend Kelli Carpenter with appearances by favorite guests like Bette Midler, Barbra Streisand and Cruise and post-September 11 tributes. "I wanted to put together something that showed the convergence of my real life and my show life into one, which is sort of the reason we're done with this program," said Rosie, who turned down a reported high eight-figure offer to host the show for two more seasons in favor of spending more time with her family.

  Not that the exiting talker will have too much time on her Koosh Ball, Ring Ding-lovin' hands, as she'll continue her self-monikered magazine, will adapt her autobiography, Find Me, into a two-woman Broadway musical (along with newswoman Linda Ellerbee) next spring and has confirmed that she and Carpenter are expecting a December baby that will grow the O'Donnell/Carpenter brood to four (the star already has three adopted children).

  "Right behind me on the stage right now are the people who put this show together for six years, and without them, truthfully, this show would not have been anything. Give it up for everybody here, who did an amazing job for six years," said Rosie. "And you know, I didn't know how to end the show, but I was thinking, 'Who would be the right guy?' and, well, this is the one that came to mind." And then, Rosie apparently lounged off into the sunset, as the final moments of the episode showed Rosie's dream man, a jeans- and T-shirt-enrobed Tom Cruise, pushing a lawnmower. "Hey, Rosie," Cruise spoke to the camera. "I cut your lawn, and here's your lemonade."

  Source: Kimberly Potts, E! Online