Rosie O'Donnell, The View and the Mainstreaming of Hateful Nonsense

Bernard Goldberg, visiting The O'Reilly Factor, distilled Rosie O'Donnell's bizarre rants with an incisive turn of phrase:

The real danger is that they're mainstreaming this hateful nonsense.

Hateful nonsense indeed. Her most recent diatriabe contained an allusion to a U.S. Government conspiracy to destroy World Trade Center 7:

...I do believe that it’s the first time in history that fire has ever melted steel. I do believe that it defies physics that World Trade Center tower 7—building 7, which collapsed in on itself—it is impossible for a building to fall the way it fell without explosives being involved. World Trade Center 7. World Trade [Center] 1 and 2 got hit by planes—7, miraculously, the first time in history, steel was melted by fire. It is physically impossible... To say that we don’t know that it imploded, that it was an implosion and a demolition, is beyond ignorant. Look at the films, get a physics expert here [on the show] from Yale, from Harvard, pick the school—[the collapse] defies reason.

Fortunately, Popular Mechanics has offered a scathing response to Rosie (hat tip: LGF). Using scientific data, engineering reports, analysis, and research, it has eradicated O'Donnell's sick meanderings. Read the whole thing; I've created an illustrated summary of the key facts.


"Initial reports from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) misunderstood the amount of damage the 47-floor WTC7 sustained from the debris of the falling North Tower—because in early photographs, WTC7 was obscured by smoke and debris."


"...Towers 1 and 7 were approximately 300 ft. apart, [a] small [distance] for structures that large. After further studies, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) told PM that debris from the 110-floor North Tower hit WTC7 with the force of a volcanic eruption. Nearly a quarter of the building was carved away over the bottom 10 stories on its south face, and significant damage was visible up to the 18th floor..."


"The North and South Towers of the World Trade Center weren’t knocked down by planes—they both stood for more than a half-hour after the impacts. But the crashes destroyed support columns and ignited infernos that ultimately weakened—not melted—the steel structures until the towers could no longer support their own weights... Ms. O’Donnell fundamentally misstates the case with her use of the word “melting”: Evidence currently points to WTC7 also collapsing because fires weakened its ravaged steel structure."


"Tower 7 housed the city’s emergency command center, so there were a number of fuel tanks located throughout the building—including two 6000-gal. tanks in the basement that fed some generators in the building by pressurized lines.. Steel melts at about 2,750 degrees Fahrenheit—but it loses strength at temperatures as low as 400 F. When temperatures break 1000 degrees F, steel loses nearly 50 percent of its strength. It is unknown what temperatures were reached inside WTC7, but fires in the building raged for seven hours before the collapse."


"Demolition experts tell PM that wiring a building the size of WTC7 for clandestine demolition would present insurmountable logistical challenges... there’s a clear-cut engineering explanation for why the building fell the way it did. Trusses on the fifth and seventh floors of the building were designed to transfer loads from one set of columns to another; with the south face heavily damaged... The entire building fell in on itself as the slumping east side dragged down the west side in a diagonal pattern. Still, damage to the Verizon Building... directly west of WTC7, and to Fiterman Hall... directly north, show that it was hardly an orderly collapse."


"NIST is currently preparing its final report on the collapse of WTC7, which is expected to be released this spring. In order to address concerns of conspiracy theorists, the organization added “Hypothetical Blast Analysis” to its research, according to a December 2006 progress report. The report also points out that 'NIST has found no evidence of a blast or controlled demolition.'"

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In other words, there's no credible evidence that the U.S. Government -- which has proven itself incapable of fixing the Alternative Minimum Tax or illegal immigration -- orchestrated a conspiracy of epic proportions. There's a word for folks who believe in this stuff, but I'm not allowed to say it in mixed company.

And consider the fact that Rosie O'Donnell is offered a forum on a major network to excrete these despicable concepts. And that such a venue provides these outrageous blatherings with a tenuous currency.

Rosie's vile secretions need to be excised from The View. ABC management should terminate her contract -- with extreme prejudice -- so that she can return to life as a magazine publisher.


Oven-baked good readin', just like Mama used to make:
Alphabet City, Dr. Sanity, Hot Air, Leaning Straight Up, New Quebec, What the Crap?, 7.62mm Justice