Rosie's Memoir Lets It All Hang Out

By Jocelyn McClurg, USA TODAY,

USA Today

Posted: 2007-10-02 11:23:43

Filed Under: Rosie O'Donnell, TV News, The View

(Oct. 2) -- In her new book, Rosie O'Donnell says she and Barbara Walters are friends who have found "a way to love" each other.

But it's doubtful Walters will feel the love when she reads Celebrity Detox: The Fame Game (Grand Central, 209 pp., $23.99), due in stores Oct. 9.

Photo Gallery: Quotable Rosie

Barnes and Noble / AP

Rosie O'Donnell has never been one to hold back. With her new book, 'Celebrity Detox: The Fame Game,' the former "queen of nice" is expected to open up wounds from past feuds. Here are some past quotable highlights:

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After suggesting Walters, 78, is too old to keep up with the demands of The View, O'Donnell says her co-star betrayed her during the infamous Donald Trump blowup last season.

"You're a liar," O'Donnell recalls shouting repeatedly at Walters before they went on the air.

Later, as the warring co-hosts tried to make up, O'Donnell told her mentor: "… you did not defend me. And I have been a good, loyal daughter to you. And I want you to be a good mother to me. Don't let the bad man hurt me."

Paging Dr. Freud.

Reading Celebrity Detox is like having a patient on the couch without the necessary medical degree to sort through what's insightful and what's just nutty.

This is a train wreck of a book — part self-help psychobabble, part searing memoir — by a grown woman who lost her mother as a child.

It's baffling and fascinating and brutally honest, although some stories defy logic.

As a child, O'Donnell says, she broke her own hands and fingers with a wooden coat hanger and a small baseball bat. And nobody noticed?

Feed

She also has fuzzy recollections of a man climbing in through her window as a child to molest her — until her mother cut down the tree.

Too-much-information is not a concept O'Donnell embraces. You will learn how fame affected her bowel habits, that she "inseminated" her partner, Kelli, and that her son once told her, in the bathtub, that he didn't like her fat belly. (She told him she didn't like it either.)

Score one for Rosie: She's the rare star willing to reveal her own insecurities and hubris. She writes openly about her ambivalence toward fame and money. She says she felt like an outsider on The View ("I was hugely threatening"), which she left after an on-air spat with Elisabeth Hasselbeck.

Like her or not, O'Donnell in Detox provides a big blast of fresh air in an industry that enshrines shallowness.

Oddly, O'Donnell has canceled interviews to promote her book, including one with Walters' ABC colleague Diane Sawyer and another with USA TODAY.

She wrote on her blog that she does "not feel ready to discuss or defend the things i shared on those 209 pages."

How un-Rosie-like.

2007-10-02 06:49:37

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5233 comments

depurr3 06:13:35 PM Feb 07 2008

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IF ROSIE O. IS NEWS WORTHY THERE IS REAL TROUBLE IN MEDIA TOWN... ROSIE NO ONE CARES ABOUT YOU. ALL YOU ARE IS A LOUD MOUTH, NO CLASS, NOOOO TALENT, WHITE TRAILER TRASH OF A WOMAN.. OR MAN. WHICHEVER. DEAR DO YOU REALLY THINK PEOPLE ARE LAUGHING WITH YOU? I DON'T THINK SO. PLEEEEEEEEASE JUST GO AWAY!!!!!

hjoe14 05:50:01 PM Jan 02 2008

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Rosie is a very funny person, and I have always enjoyed her comedy. Why don't you leave ROSIE ALONE!

thomasf451 02:19:38 AM Oct 10 2007

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way to go rosie you rock

meusaoh 07:54:00 PM Oct 08 2007

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Well armywhoeveryourare, I am a republican and proud of it, and I get my news from wherever I darn well please, and I am not an idiot. I don't have the time nor the inclination to read a book about Rosie or any other stinking liberal. She is not running for president or any other office that I know of, so she is a total waste of time to even care about. You and she have a right to your opinions just as I have a right to mine. And I don't need you or anyone else telling me what to do, what to read, what to think, who to get my news from. It's still a free country for now, but it seems that people like you and Rosie, want everyone to think like you do, or else you're an idiot. Well I say that you and your kind are the ones that are idiots.

Metrodad123 11:28:55 PM Oct 07 2007

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Everybody needs a heapin' help o' Rosie.

QueenAnnalise 11:23:33 PM Oct 07 2007

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I agree with armytras.

nanasbabybarn 11:20:07 PM Oct 07 2007

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ARMYTRAS ..... Way to go!!! I honestly could not have said it better myself! I'll simply add my final comment to the rest of you .... GET A LIFE! and leave Rosie alone to live hers!

scarfli47 10:55:36 PM Oct 07 2007

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mikiesmonkey must spank his--you are nothing more than a puppet yourself---any thought of your own? i doubt it , moron

coracham 10:44:00 PM Oct 07 2007

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Rosie thank god your a no good has been now thats a ROYAL pain still in everyones butt

HJB103055 10:16:34 PM Oct 07 2007

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I used to think she was great. What happened to her?

cowboycreations5 07:30:49 PM Oct 07 2007

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What does it take for her to go away? I am soooo sick of hearing her name and hearing her voice. Why is she famous anyway she has no talent. To bad she's gay her and Bill O'riley would make a great match. Neither one of them think any opinion but their's is valid. And you can't shut either one of them up.

wilsonfamilyhere 05:05:00 PM Oct 07 2007

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Im sorry but Rosie hates herself, Thats her problem. Shes needs to just go away.

wilsonfamilyhere 05:05:00 PM Oct 07 2007

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Im sorry but Rosie hates herself, Thats her problem. Shes needs to just go away.

longbeard003 05:01:58 PM Oct 07 2007

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Rosie licks *****

pameapples 05:00:46 PM Oct 07 2007

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bluefeather10 12:25:10 AM Oct 07 2007

Report This! rosie needs to take a long vacation...a quiet one...so we the public can rest up from her big mouth and constant need for attention

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Why did you come here in the first place? Who is forcing her on you????

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