Ring Around the Rosie

It has happened again.
Some months back, when actor/producer Mel Gibson made headlines by enagaging in an anti-Semitic tirade, then blamed alcohol for his remarks, I wrote that while Gibson may suffer from the disease of alcoholism, he suffers from the disease of prejudice as well.
Little did I know at the time that actor Michael Richards would come along shortly thereafter and spew anti-black venom at a comedy club that sounded like it was scripted by the White Citizens Council. I wrote that Richards had done the impossible: He made Mel Gibson look like Mahatma Gandhi. Sometime later, I criticized conservative columnist Ann Coulter for being shrill, bombastic, absolutely devoid of any sense of decency.
Then along comes Rosie O'Donnell.
Rosie, from her catbird seat on the daily televised gabfest called The View, has managed to make Coulter look like a learned pundit whose insight and analytical skills bring crystal clarity to complex issues.
Let me say this about Rosie O'Donnell. She's gifted comedian and has devoted much of her time to the care, feeding and education of children.
She is also the sworn enemy of Bill O'Reilly and Donald Trump for which she should receive our undying gratitude.
But somewhere along the line, Rosie has bought into some of the most outlandish conspiracy theories this side of the grassy knoll.
It's not unusual for a somehwat dark world view to emerge among the Hollywood liberal chic who see a lot of right wing secret agents lurking in the shadows, especially during a Republican administration.
Rosie, however, has elevated goofiness to a new level and doesn't care who knows it. Here are a couple of hightlights.
O'Donnell says she believes the Iranian seizure of British Royal Navy personnel was a hoax, intended to provoke a war with Iran. To underscore her beliefs, she writes on her blog in a strange mixture of haiku and text message shorthand:

"the british did it on purpose into iranian waters as US MILITARY BUILD UP ON THE IRANIAN BORDER
we will be in iran before summer as planned
come on people u have 2 c i know u can"

Never mind that almost all evidence points to the fact that the British were in Iraqi waters and that the Iranians were the provacateurs here.
But if that conspiracy isn't deep and dark enough, get a load of this one:
Rosie said she believes 7 World Trade Center had been imploded, in line with 9/11 conspiracy theories. "It is impossible for a building to fall the way it fell without explosives being involved." She commented that she had no idea who might be behind such a deed, but argued in a blog entry that the building was blown up to destroy evidence of the corporate financial scandals at Enron and WorldCom.
We needed further evidence that Enron and WorldCom. were scams?
This particular theory moved the decidedly nonpolitical Popular Mechanics magazine to launch into an explanation of the events surrounding the destruction of 9/11 in a gentle attempt to question Rosie's engineering credentials.
By buying into 9/11 conspiracy junk, Rosie puts herself on the same wave length with those who believe the attacks were planned and carried out (1) the U.S. Government, (2) military mad hatters (3) the international Jewish conspiracy, (4) UFOs or (5) all of the above.
Along the way, O'Donnell has ripped the judges on American Idol for racism at the same time she was criticized for mocking the Chinese language while finding time to come to the defense of terrorist Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, suggesting the government elicited a false confession from the 9/11 mastermind by "using torture, robbing him of his humanity and treating him like an animal."
It must be exhausting to be Rosie. Every way you turn, there's another conspiracy to reveal.
She, of course, has every right to speak her piece. And if ABC television wants to pass off street corner oratory as entertainment, so be it.
Maybe these people will all go away if I stop writing about them.