There have been the squabbling siblings (Rosie O’Donnell and Elisabeth Hasselbeck), the family troublemaker (Whoopi Goldberg, always ready to pick a fight), the wayward child (Star Jones, banished from the fold after she seemed to be caught in a lie about her sudden weight loss), the sister who never quite seemed to fit in (Debbie Matenopoulos, who came and went in a blink of an eye), the provocateur (Jenny McCarthy, with her campaign against childhood vaccinations), the wacky cousin (Sherri Shepherd, who once said that she didn’t know if the Earth was round or flat), the outspoken, wisecracking aunt (the comedian Joy Behar) and the responsible middle child (Meredith Vieira, the former “60 Minutes” correspondent, whose bizarre one-time revelation that she didn’t wear underpants didn’t undermine her news credentials and much-needed voice of reason when discussions veered off into cuckoo-land)…
When the topic of the Iraq war came up, Ms. O’Donnell laid into her co-host. “Every time you’ve been hurt, did I reach out to you?” said Ms. O’Donnell on the show. Ms. Behar tried to intervene (“It’s not personal!” she shouted), but the two went at it, their grim faces displayed on a split screen. “Defend your own insinuations!” Ms. Hasselbeck said.
“Frankly, every time I defend them, it’s poor little Elisabeth that I’m picking on,” Ms. O’Donnell replied.
“You know what?” Ms. Hasselbeck shot back. “Poor little Elisabeth is not poor little Elisabeth, O.K.?” An exasperated Ms. Behar demanded the show stop. “Let’s go to commercial,” she said.
Ms. O’Donnell left the studio and did not return. Still the tension lingered. “It was like a Thanksgiving dinner gone awry,” Ms. Shepherd said.
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