Rosie rankles; Trump tramples: We all win

While Your Mayor spent the day arduously filling out forms, the Grudge Match of – well, the way things have gone this year with Paul McCartney and Heather Mills, Paris Hilton, Brandon Davis and Lindsay Lohan, Whitney Houston and Bobby Brown, Candy and Tori Spelling, Keith Olbermann and Bill O’Reilly, Britney Spears and K-Fudd, Mel Gibson and the Jews, Michael Richards and his sanity and on and on and on, it’s probably only the Grudge Match of the Week – was unspooling, this time between Rosie O’Donnell and Donald Trump.

O’Donnell struck first, slagging Trump for having bad hair and pardoning Miss USA for behaving like Paris or Lindsay (but, thankfully, not like the former Miss Nevada). Rosie ragged on the Donald for doing something to call attention to himself, an odd gripe for someone who once published a magazine named after herself.

Trump struck back quite amusingly, calling her “disgusting� and a “loser� and suggesting that he’ll “probably� sue her. This didn’t exactly have Rosie quaking in her boots. All this left CNN’s the usually articulate Anderson Cooper utterly flummoxed.

Hard to know who to root for on this one. They’re going at each other so vociferously no doubt because they’re so alike – they’re both quite enamored with the sound of their own voices, a dynamic Trump’s show “The Apprentice� trucks in, throwing a pile of Type-A’s in a room and letting them go at one another until only one person emerges, leaving the place looking like a scene out of “Dexter.� Ego v. Ego: Is there anything more fun to behold from afar? Key words: from afar.

I spoke with Trump on Monday, before the whole mess broke; even the Miss USA pardon hadn’t come out. So I didn’t get to revel in any billionaire Rosie-bullying. Trump did thoughtfully manage, unbidden, to slag Martha Stewart, however, calling her incarnation of “Apprentice� “terrible� and “a fiasco.� Clearly, he was just getting warmed up for the bout with Rosie, who has transformed "The View" from a koffee klatch into tag-team trash talk.

A while back, I implored UCLA Live to schedule an evening pitting Tony Snow against David Gregory. I hereby rescind that request: A cage match between Rosie and The Donald would be much more entertaining: "Your hair's stupid!" "You're ugly!" "You're full of yourself!" "You're full of yourself, and there's a lot more of you to be full of!"