Well, maybe. But...

American Prospect has an article by Jennifer L. Pozner which argues

Why do right-wing pundits hate Rosie O'Donnell so much? Because she was the lone ardently progressive voice in corporate news programming.

Well, maybe. But...

I would just like to state, for the record, that it is not necessary to be right-wing to hate Rosie O'Donnell. Sometimes it's just a matter of having good taste.

And as much as I take it as a given anything that annoys lying ideologues with anger management problems like Sean Hannity or black-hearted Republicans like Joe Scarborough, is good...

...well, notice something. That article, which is 1, 965 words long, was written to laud O'Donnell for being "a consistently progressive, feminist voice." Yet Pozner writes-

I didn't always agree with O'Donnell (all feminists don't all think alike, after all). I was certainly disappointed by her over-the-top 9/11 conspiracy theories, and her indefensible, racist mocking ("ching chong, ching chong") of Asian accents. I was also surprised that she defended Don Imus in the wake his "nappy-headed hos" controversy. Sure, comedians tend to stick together, but Imus hasn't been spewing "humorous" hate speech in some dank basement with a two-drink minimum -- this was a guy who admitted hiring a producer to do "nigger jokes" on a show featuring political and journalistic bigwigs.

-before going on to conclude that O'Donnell's "departure [from morning television] will leave a gaping hole."

Yet the number of times the article quotes anything she actually said is, exactly, twice. And one of those is, as above, "ching chong, ching chong."

The other statement this strong, progressive, feminist voice is credited with making is:

"I'm fat and I'm gay"

Whoo!

It seems to me that if Ms. O'Donnell were really such an important voice, then surely anyone, but especially someone writing an article in defense of her would have been able to find evidence to support that in her actual statements.

Instead, what this article says (and illustrates) many times over is...people like Hannity and Scarborough are lying, black-hearted Republican ideologues with anger management problems. Which is true. But it doesn't make Rosie O'Donnell herself worth any more.

This is the same "okay, looked at on the merits, X is shit but it's all we have so we'll keep swigging it down like champaigne" thinking that gives us "The L Word" and Alanis Morissette.