This argument precipitated Rosie's last day. Before any of you even think of spewing forth your anti-free speech venom, whether or not you like Rosie O'Donnell or Elisabeth Hasselbeck, these two women were brave enough to engage in a debate that is not seen anywhere else on television. What we do see on television is states with different colors where red believes blue is evil, and blue believes red is evil. The "evil" idea works well with the culture of fear that people like Karl Rove use against us. It seems to me that, Hasselbeck does support a notion of "evil" - she was thrilled to see Rosie's words twisted and was indeed cowardly for Elisabeth to sit there, [not] look Rosie in the eye and let her drown. Rosie posed a rhetorical question for which it was unreasonble to interpret that Rosie was calling the troops terrorists. If you think about the number of 655,000 people killed in Iraq, can you justify that number? Since there were no WMD's in Iraq, do you think there were 655,000 "terrorists"? I mean, really, do you think that Al Quaeda has even 655,000 members world wide? If you have a point of view on this, I would like to hear it, because I can't begin to justify the deaths of that many people. If Bush had let the UN lead on this matter, we would not be in this position. If you are a true patriotic American, you value freedom of speech. When different people debate different ideas and views, those are patriotic Americans. When you try to shut someone down for expressing their point of view, you are anti-American. When you try to force your moral view on others, that is anti-American. When you try to limit the freedom of others, that is anti-American. And for the record, I personally like Sherri Shepherd very much. I think she should be a permanent member of The View because she brings a fresh and just-different-enough point of view to the table.

• published: 02 Nov 2008
• views: 827426
• author: Guye Lewis