Jonah Goldberg

TV personality Rosie O’Donnell is heavily criticized after she raises questions about the 9/11 attacks and who was responsible for them. On ABC’s popular morning show The View, which she co-hosts, O’Donnell suggests that a recent confession by alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, where he’d admitted responsibility for 9/11 and other terrorist attacks, was false and had been elicited by using torture. [WorldNetDaily, 3/15/2007; Fox News, 3/16/2007] In a March 15 posting on her Internet blog, she raises questions about World Trade Center Building 7, which collapsed late in the afternoon of 9/11, such as, “The fires in WTC 7 were not evenly distributed, so a perfect collapse was impossible,” and, “Molten steel and partially evaporated steel members were found in the debris.” She lists various official records that were supposedly destroyed when WTC 7 collapsed, including records of investigations of Enron and other companies. [WorldNetDaily, 3/19/2007] Two weeks later, she says on The View, “I do believe… it is impossible for a building to fall the way it fell without explosives being involved, World Trade Center 7.” Asked who she thinks was responsible, she replies, “I have no idea.” [MSNBC, 4/5/2007] O’Donnell is subsequently fiercely attacked by some commentators. Fox News host Bill O’Reilly accuses her of “spitting out the worst propaganda that is fed to [her] by far-left American haters on the net.” [Fox News, 3/30/2007] MSNBC’s conservative host Joe Scarborough calls for her to be fired. Jonah Goldberg writes in the Los Angeles Times that O’Donnell “seems to think that [The View] is the perfect venue to audition as grand marshal for the next tinfoil hat parade.” [Los Angeles Times, 4/3/2007; Chicago Sun-Times, 4/10/2007] At the end of April, O’Donnell announces she is leaving The View, reportedly because she has been unable to come up with a contractual agreement with ABC. [ABC News, 4/25/2007] She plans to address the collapse of WTC 7 in a special segment of the show before departing. [New York Times, 5/16/2007] She also reportedly books the producers of the popular 9/11 conspiracy documentary Loose Change (see April 2005-January 2006) to appear on The View. [New York Post, 5/27/2007] But neither of these plans transpires, and she last appears on the show late in May. [Associated Press, 5/25/2007] Brian Frons, the president of ABC’s daytime television group, says in a statement, “We had hoped that Rosie would be with us until the end of her contract three weeks from now, but Rosie has informed us that she would like an early leave.” [Fox News, 5/25/2007; New York Times, 5/26/2007] In her defense, the Toronto Star writes that O’Donnell “had to go,” because she “messed up the pretty picture that the corporate media present.” [Toronto Star, 5/1/2007]