Celebrity Detox: (the fame game) by Rosie O'Donnell Read Free Book Online

LEG—ARLENE
    LOOK AT
    RIGHT
    THE TELEPROMPTERS SAYS
    ARE YOU ARLENE
    CANCER, IN THE LEG
    SHHHH
    THE RIGHT LEG
    HOLD
    COMMERCIAL BREAK
    60 SECONDS
    TIME IS RUNNING
    RUNNING
    RUNNING
    SAY IT
    ALL
    “I’m not wearing an IFB,” I said, almost right off the bat, because this was essential to me.
    I CAN’T
    I WON’T
    I NEVER HAVE
    I NEVER WILL
    NOT ON LIVE DAYTIME TV
    I AM NOT A NEWSCASTER
    I AM NOT A PUPPET
    NO
    The IFB is not a bad instrument per se. It has an important place in broadcasting—IFBs were essential, I’m sure they were useful when the Twin Towers were falling and more information was pouring in by the minute. But in general, I don’t believe it’s a good idea to multitask talk. And as far as I’m concerned, I already have too much incoming. I have always been able to hear people conversing in the green room. I have always been able to hear extraneous chitchat around me; I have always been able to hear the buzz the camera makes when it runs, and all this sound—it is unbelievably tiring.
    Barbara, I think, had a hard time with my IFB refusal. My guess is that to her, a former newscaster, not wearing an IFB is a very bad idea. “Nothing real can ever happen when you’re wearing it,” I explained. I don’t think she bought it.
    Feud Number 1: Kelly Ripa
    Kelly Ripa had Clay Aiken on her show. Now, Clay Aiken, he’s a young man, twenty-six maybe. He was a special ed teacher living with his mom before he became super famous. He’s one of the biggest recording stars in the last twenty-five years, a real American idol. The world loved him. I watched as fame swept him into the pipeline—I was rooting for him. Gay rumors swirled around him—was he? Is he? The fact is, the public doesn’t know what Clay Aiken thinks or feels or is because that’s how Clay Aiken wants it to be. And that is as it should be.
    So Clay Aiken went on Kelly Ripa’s show.
    What happened when he went on Kelly Ripa’s show? It was clear to me that she didn’t like him, for whatever reason. Some people do not click—they didn’t. He had his Claymates in the crowd, holding up signs and screaming for him, and he tried too hard—and she was having none of it. So during some inane segment he interrupted and he put his hand over her mouth as a joke, as if to say, “Let me get a word in, kid, pass the ball, share.”
    And she said, “No, no, no.” She spoke as though he were a child. And then she said, “I don’t know where that hand has been.”
    And she took a condescending sip of water while making eyes at the audience.
    “Low blow,” I thought.
    And Clay, he just crumpled up, like a little boy thinking he had done something wrong.
    So I said, on air the next day, that Kelly’s comment was homophobic, and she called in to the show, wanting to have it out with me on air. Which she did. They put her live on the phone. How dare I. I should know better. She has germaphobia. She likes gay people. I am irresponsible. Yes, well, okay. Got it!
    But I am just saying that the whole incident looked to me like a gay person who had just had the gay card played on them.
    That’s how I saw it.

    The Kelly Ripa Feud was about many things for me: fairness, trust, respect. Would the Kelly/Clay incident have gone any differently if I was wearing an IFB? I say “no”—some say “yes.”
    Barbara I’m sure thought the Kelly Ripa Feud would have been avoided had I been wearing my IFB. I don’t want to go through a long explanation of why that’s not so. It suffices to say that Barbara just doesn’t get it, my IFB hatred. She doesn’t have to get it. She doesn’t have to learn how to do improvisational comedy at seventy-eight or eighty-one or however old she is. She’s a broadcaster, and when you’re a broadcaster you use an IFB.
    “What’s it stand for?” someone asked me the other day. “IFB, what’s that stand for?”
    God, I don’t know. I didn’t know. I thought about it for a minute. And all I could come up with was