An interview with Elisabeth Hasselbeck aired last night on "Access Hollywood" that I grabbed off their website this morning. "The View" co-host and George Bush fan club president was asked if she would define Rosie O'Donnell, who she had an on-air showdown with last month, as a friend.
"You know, truthfully, I think a friend is someone who you have positive communications with, so I don't know if I would define us as friends right now. I did define us as friends, but I'm not going to make the leap to assume that we will or will not be friends in the future....We had so many conversations and a true friendship...If you looked at the big picture I always looked at us on the same team, even though our politics were so different.”
But as Barbra Streisand said to Robert Redford in "The Way We Were" : "People ARE their politics!"
She described her relationship with Rosie off-camera as “one of the closest relationships [she] had with anyone on the show” and went on to explain how she benefited from working with her saying, “We really did challenge each other, but I loved that. I found such meaning in this job because we were able to turn the lens on one another, as good friends should do.”
In response to a post by Rosie on her blog which said, “I never tried harder to be friends with someone. I don’t think we ended up there,” Hasselbeck said: “She sent me two emails right after that and I sent her one back. It was a really great email, so hearing these things after really surprises me.”
Anyway, with the Rosie stuff sure to die down (until Rosie's book this fall!), we try and move on to who might replace the irreplaceable O'Donnell. Here are Hasselbeck's thoughts on some of the recent guest co-hosts:
Whoopi Goldberg: “I thought she did a great job when she was here. She has a very calming personality.”
Sherri Shepherd: “I love Sherri Shepherd. I think she is such a good soul! I love to talk to her about being a mom, I think she's funny, and I think she's easy to talk to.”
Kathy Griffin: “Funny, so funny. I think that she would actually bring that fire, that spark. She's a bit of an instigator.She would instigate sharp discussions, so I think that would be a lot of fun as well."