Catching Up

I worked a double at the restaurant on Monday. At 11:38 a.m., my friend John texted me.

"Omg are you watching the view??"

Immediately I was distracted from the empty chairs at empty tables and brought into a place I haven't seen since the sun was still shining on Boston.

What was happening, I had to know. What John told me next, I have to tell you, ruined me for the rest of the brunch shift. He said that what was happening--an entire segment with Ann Coulter--was second only to the Rosie-Elizabeth fight.

Tingles. All over my body.

Speaking of Rosie, one quick aside. Deidre Imus was also on the show that day. She was talking about being a vegan or some other green blah blah blah. Barbara, Sherri and Whoopi interviewed her.

So Deidre mentioned that she and her husband--Don Imus, if you're not in the know--have a cow named "Barbara Walters." The real Walters struggled through layers of (alleged) face lifts to feign amusement.

Then Imus showed the audience where the love between her and her husband lives.

"Barbara also now has a granddaughter," she said. "And we named her. Her name is Rosie."

Babs became a deer that'd just been hit. Whoopi almost choked on a raspberry. And Sherri was laughing so hard that she had to lean on the table for support. It was exponentially shorter than the Ann Coulter debacle that I can't wait to write about, but it was no less a demonstration of the show's brilliance.

So onward to Ann Coulter. On my break between brunch and dinner shifts, I flew home to watch The View on TiVo. In the segment before Coulter even joined them, the ladies were ripping her book apart at the Hot Topics table, with Barbara reading a selection from it in a tone better befitting a eulogy for someone who stole your true love.

By the time Coulter came out, it was a--stop it! I'm not gonna say cat fight--mothafuckin cage match. No shit, have you seen that new movie The Wrestler? With Mikey Rourke. The guy who melted ice on Kim Basinger's nipple in 9 1/2 Weeks? The comeback kid who's had so much (alleged) work done on his face that he's starting to resemble Barbara Walters.

Well the fight scene in that movie is sorta what this looked like. Only the Ann Coulter smackdown was probably more campy.

Here's the thing, what made the segment so brilliant was not the mere fact that Coulter was reduced to a shaky-voiced red neck with an (alleged) eating disorder and a lot of (very apparent) self-hate. Nay, the best part of the interview was watching each of the five ladies manifest her inner bitch proudly.

Joy was the one who made Coulter feel like a dickhead by laughing in her face the. entire. time.

Whoopi was the one who went at Coulter fists and fingers ready.

Sherri was the one who lost her temper by not losing her temper.

Elizabeth was the Judas, the one who denied her association publicly.

And then there was Barbara. Ever the proper passive aggressor, Babs was the one who, when confronted with Coulter's charge that she had read from her book as though she were reading Mein Kampf, read another passage, this time with the cadence of someone reading the Bible for the Pope.

Grrrrr, bitches! Way to show all those talking dickheads on cable how to handle bullshit. I swear The View is the best place for honest, human interviews. Look what they did to McCain. Think of what they could do with Obama or Bush.