Oct 31, 2008  |  By: SCOTT SODE  | COMMENTS     

Obama and McCain can try, but there’s nothing better than a “View” feud.

I get the sense that mostly everyone turned off “The View” after Rosie O’Donnell departed and Whoopi Goldberg took her place. I even remember my own breaking point: sometime in September 2007 when co-hosts Joy Behar and Elisabeth Hasselbeck started barking at each other about some political topic, and Goldberg — as moderator — shut down the argument, basically telling them that there were two sides to every issue. I was aghast. Where was “The View” of yesteryear, the one with a split screen? Two sides to every issue? Sure it’s true, but it’s hardly fun. It’s like getting your news from Brian Williams instead of Rachel Maddow. Lame.

But thankfully, this “voice of reason” Goldberg didn’t last long. Sometime in April she finally had enough of Hasselbeck’s relentless conserv-a-babble. Slowly, over discussions regarding Jeremiah Wright and the n-word, “The View” began to reclaim its status as event television.

Today, the show’s entertainment value has far surpassed O’Donnell’s reign. “The world is flat” co-host Sherri Shepherd screams and waves her finger in Hasselbeck’s face,

provoking self-described “Mother” Barbara Walters to intervene. When Hasselbeck tries to connect Obama to Bill Ayers, Goldberg glares at her and says succinctly, “It’s crap.”

Behar calls Rush Limbaugh a terrorist. And Hasselbeck — poor Hasselbeck — so fed up with all four of the women ganging up on her that she resorts to “imagining” her points and wearing a self-designed pro-McCain T-shirt on the air. It’s the kind of television you could only dream about, and it happens at 11 in the morning.

Indeed, Hasselbeck has looked tired and angry lately, much like her hero John McCain (and perhaps even more tellingly, much like O’Donnell before she flew the coop). It might be her own fault. There is nothing wrong with having a conservative perspective, but Elisabeth has always argued points like McCain has run his campaign: floundering and flustered by an intelligent liberal idea, she resorts to distractions — Bill Ayers, socialism, Obama Kool-Aid, “maverick,” Bill Ayers again — and hopes (and prays, to appeal to the base) that something will stick. She simply doesn’t have the experience, the pipes, or frankly, the knowledge, to be the lone voice of dissent.

But I’m loath to make this an I-hate-Hasselbeck column, especially when she was my favorite survivor from the Australian season. Plus, it’s hard to criticize her as a partisan hack who always-and-forever tows the party line when Behar does the same thing for the other side. 

Just because we agree with the red-headed funny woman doesn’t mean she’s any less guilty. And, let’s face it, with her affinity for Monica Lewinsky barbs, you could hardly continue the political metaphor and call Behar the show’s transformational Barack Obama.

To be fair, Hasselbeck has quite an intelligent record on gay rights. Not only has she repeatedly made the argument (oddly enough, her most cogent one) that it is heterosexuals — not gays — who are ruining marriage, she was the only panelist who really took guest co-host and conservative Christian Star Parker to task for not believing that same-sex couples deserve the same rights as heterosexuals — and used the Bible to do it.

“As a Christian woman, that’s something that I often struggle with,” she said, before quoting scripture to affirm a pro-gay point. “Love is the ultimate law in terms of the Bible, so loving a person for who they truly are — I don’t see anything wrong with that.” Funny how when Hasselbeck goes off her Fox News, Palinesque script, she actually sounds like the old McCain, the one on that bus.

Besides, in terms of event television, Elisabeth is absolutely vital to the show. “The View” without Hasselbeck is like “The View” with Lisa Ling. Forgettable.