the unedited rantings of a fat 42 year old menopausal ex -talk show host

March 12, 2005 11:41 AM

formerlyROSIE hit Blogger with Rosie O'Donnell's name and photo in the profile, but of course we all knew the poems about the Black Album were posted by some fan or mocker. But the New York Times interviewed Rosie and confirmed that she indeed wrote this blog. The article depicts Rosie as the ultimate blogger, though some may feel she belongs on LiveJournal.
posted by NickDouglas (34 comments total)

"I don't know if she is doing some form of haiku or a terrible Faulkner imitation."
Bwahaha. Ah. How weird. We are all equals now, even if we had a strange talk show for a while. Or something.
She really does write oddly. Maybe she has ADD.
posted by blacklite at 11:54 AM on March 12, 2005

so when I sit down face to face with him
in my depo - I tell him
marty - the nebbishy jewish below average lawyer
before we start – I say hey

“listen my kid had a briss - on the 8th day -
performed by a moyle - I buried his foreskin in the backyard”

this is no joke
stunned silence
he does not quite know what to do with me

Nobody really exists on the internet; nothing you say on the internet matters because nobody exists on the internet; I will write this. /insane
posted by underer at 12:07 PM on March 12, 2005

I refuse to click on these links on the grounds that Rosie O'Donnell is the single most irritating human being of all time.

Your honor, I rest my case.
posted by Dr. Wu at 12:16 PM on March 12, 2005

Your, honor, I bring to the stand a witness in this matter, one Carrot Top.

*jurors and the rest of the court people flee*
posted by graventy at 12:44 PM on March 12, 2005

god alone knows why she thought poetry is the ideal form for her thoughts and observations.

i met her once--mid 90s--still shivering when i think back to those cold, dead eyes
posted by amberglow at 12:50 PM on March 12, 2005

Rosie's ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to her blog.
/Sorry again, Nick.
posted by PhatLobley at 1:01 PM on March 12, 2005

Well, it wasn't any mystery that it was her blog, exactly. It is linked prominently on the main page of Rosie.com. Though it's still kind of fabulously hard to believe.
posted by RJ Reynolds at 1:03 PM on March 12, 2005

i think it's pretty cool that someone that well known would blog ... it'd be cooler if she did it a little better, though ...
posted by pyramid termite at 1:10 PM on March 12, 2005

Rosie probably wants to thank you for all your making a big fuss about her ! Thank you !

Tomorrow fuss: zoophilia and Rosie

We now resume our normal blogging
posted by elpapacito at 1:14 PM on March 12, 2005

You know what? I applaud her courage (now I sound like I belong on her show) for just expressing herself just as anyone else would, without hiring designers and PR people. But then, I use livejournal.
posted by Eideteker at 1:16 PM on March 12, 2005

Do you think that perky (and cute!) Katie Couric has one of those newfangled blogs?
posted by fixedgear at 1:31 PM on March 12, 2005

I liked it -- maybe because i have ADD...maybe because my poems aren't better.

I never found her too annoying, and if ever i did...i know how to change the channel(or go outside -- blasphemy.)

kudos rosie...
posted by schyler523 at 1:35 PM on March 12, 2005

It's just as readable as the NYT; in fact more, I think.
posted by carter at 1:36 PM on March 12, 2005

Phat: You rock.

I actually like Rosie's blog, even though I detest her role as an example and cause of America's dumbing down. She represents all that Europe hates about our country -- gluttony, anti-intellectualism, bigotry, and slobbering adoration of the mass media machine -- while still offending the Americans that Europeans hate (the Christian Right).

But now she's so vulnerable, and that's cute.
posted by NickDouglas at 1:42 PM on March 12, 2005

What's the difference between blogging and livejournal? I thought they were the same thing?

Is there some kind of attempt to make a pecking order where non-livejournal users try to make themselves out as The Real Thing or something?

If so, is that just the usual attempts by people to try to claim status over others, or is it motivated by a deeper fear that livejournal rips the mystique off blogging, exposing it for what it is, and thus creating a need to believe one's own writings are more important than some 14 year old girl's vapid diary?
posted by -harlequin- at 1:43 PM on March 12, 2005

i thought livejournal is more online diaries, and blogging is about links and comments on them?
posted by amberglow at 1:51 PM on March 12, 2005

Livejournal is a community of blogs that are interconnected under the umbrella of 'Livejournal'. A regular blog is something that stands alone.
posted by Arch Stanton at 1:55 PM on March 12, 2005

Blogger is a specific site for weblogs and usually attracts small-time blogs. LiveJournal is more community based and goes further to encourage links between bloggers. It includes features like "current mood" and is often ridiculed for attracting teenage goth girls and the like.

These are only stereotypes that I mercilessly exploited. Yes, they often arise from desparate status-seekers. But just as a man on the street in a suit usually is making more money than a man on the street in blue jeans, a Blogger blog is usually less personal and diary-like than a LiveJournal.
posted by NickDouglas at 1:55 PM on March 12, 2005

I really dislike most bloggers. The way they call each other "peer" and "associate" while citing someone's meaningless interpretation of the latest drudge report exclusive. Livejournal may have gone downhill since 2002 or so, but at least ljers don't come off as pretentious children playing dress up with their Edward R. Murrow Ken dolls.
posted by bunnytricks at 1:57 PM on March 12, 2005

amberglow:
Ah. That works. (Well, as a stereotype anyway, since the website (livejournal or blogger or something else entirely) seems to be entirely irrelevant to that, since the toolset is the same for both activities, and both sites are used for both activities).

/read a few blogs, but not too familiar with the culture.
posted by -harlequin- at 1:59 PM on March 12, 2005

NickDouglas: What do you get for having a "big-time blog?" Don't cite the .0000001 percent of cases where someone makes money on them.
posted by raysmj at 2:20 PM on March 12, 2005

She could at least use punctuation. We need periods and commas, Rosie.

It's like trying to watch TV through static. No, it's more like trying to watch "The Rosie O'Donnell Show" through static, but giving up because Rosie is so obnoxious.
posted by Agrippina at 2:21 PM on March 12, 2005

I liked it.

Sure, it's tempting to snark, but in the end I think it's pretty cool that a gen-u-wine celebrity maintains a Blogspot weblog that she actually seems to write herself.
posted by cedar at 3:26 PM on March 12, 2005

Rosie can't find the shift key either!
posted by LarryC at 3:35 PM on March 12, 2005

Livejournal may have gone downhill since 2002 or so, but at least ljers don't come off as pretentious children playing dress up with their Edward R. Murrow Ken dolls.

That's because most of them ARE children.
posted by justgary at 3:39 PM on March 12, 2005

And this is a resounding fuck you to all of you LJ-haters. LJ is no different than Blogger, except inasmuch as there is the focus on networking/community-building/etc.

The tool is precisely, as noted above, the fucking same. Just like MeFi, there's a cross-section of children and grownups, idiots and smart people, assholes (exemplified here, it seems) and nice people. Grow up, elitist snobs.
posted by dirtynumbangelboy at 4:29 PM on March 12, 2005

my public outlet is more real than yours... so there!

why does this bashing of Livejournal or blogger or whatever remind me of all the sellout talk in the late 90s.

Now if it was a joke on geocities.. i would laugh
posted by ba3r at 5:35 PM on March 12, 2005

I've been reading Rosie's blog a few days and have gone through her archives as well. She mentioned that she was writing more "stream of conscious" rather than poetry. Some of it does read as poetry, intentional or not, bad or not.

Irritating? Maybe, but we all have our moments, eh?

Regarding the journal/diary/[web]log semantics: yeah, at the beginning people seemed to do one or the other. Now, most people do a little bit of everything. I write journal-style, yet I call it a blog. Does it really matter what they're called?
posted by deborah at 6:31 PM on March 12, 2005

Next you'll be telling me Nick Nolte's is real too...

(even with the now-prominently-displayed "work of fiction" signage)
posted by First Post at 6:52 PM on March 12, 2005

I'd rather not continue the Blogger-vs-LJ fighting, as most actual bloggers are quite at peace with the "other side." At least all of those worth speaking of.

Raysmj: Mostly fame. But Stephanie Klein got a book deal, Brian Crecente got hired to write Kotaku, Jason Kottke will get some sweet job offers when he re-enters the working world, Raed and Salam informed the world about Iraq...

Having a "big blog" can do all sorts of things. As Danah Boyd says, blogs "have an array of practices associated with them." "What can blogs do" is parallel to "What can TV do" or "What can telephones do;" the answers are myriad and evolving -- even if the witty gems are buried under mindless chatter.
posted by NickDouglas at 8:02 PM on March 12, 2005

Pretty surprising she's writing and out there, considering most celebs stay away from that kind of thing. More power to her.
posted by xammerboy at 8:06 PM on March 12, 2005

I really don't think it should have been "better written". She is obviously just writing whatever the hell comes into her mind, and I think that is really cool considering how famous she is. She seems almost unconscious of her fame, or at least purposely not making a big deal out of presenting something professional. I liked her blog a lot better than her TV show, which isn't saying much because I hated her show. One of the last celebrities I would have expected to see writing their own blog.
posted by sophist at 12:07 AM on March 13, 2005

NickDouglas: As predicted, you told me about .0001 of all cases.
posted by raysmj at 2:55 AM on March 13, 2005

My point, by the way, was your comment was akin to saying, "She has a blog on Blogger, which is where the small time blogs go." So freakin' what? It's a blog, for cryin' out loud.

I guess she doesn't want to be famous, to go for that "big-time blog." What makes a blogger "famous," in any case, is just as arbitrary and connections-driven, oftentimes, as regular fame. (The most irritating part to me is seeing how, for the longest time, "fame" was built upon whether you were up-to-date with design, and whether you used MT, or what. Now it's how much you can talk out of your ass about politics, in most cases. Atrios can do this via Blogger, and do great.)

And you don't get paid much of anything, if anything, for all that effort, small audience or no. Rosie, I'm sure, is pretty comfortable on the financial end, and, again, famous already, so this is a fun thing for her. Whatever floats her boat is cool, and was to begin with.
posted by raysmj at 4:56 AM on March 13, 2005