Book Review: Celebrity Detox: The Fame Game by Rosie O'Donnell

I prefer to wait until all the hoopla settles before reading some authors and Rosie O'Donnell's much discussed book Celebrity Detox: the Fame Game required extra time for the hysteria surrounding its release to calm down.

O'Donnell's' writing style is easy to read and visually evocative but, what I most value and respect about her is she has a purity of heart and a generosity of spirit that is particularly needed in this current climate of hate and vengeance and death that we're mired in. Unfortunately that is where my flattery ends. This book was hollow and revealed next to nothing original or previously unspoken about the toxicity of fame but, worse than that are the character flaws revealed about O'Donnell herself; narcissistic, controlling, unreasonable, emotional unstable and prone to grandiosity and hysteria. Obviously, she is human and entitled to have flaws but, what makes her somewhat obnoxious is how judgmental she is of others when she herself is so un-evolved and seemingly duplicitous.

O'Donnell discloses nothing of any heuristic value in her thesis that fame is toxic except to say fame makes the celebrity detached from the reality of daily living; who did not already know that? She provides no concrete examples of her own personal experience of being an overly pampered celebrity; she only tells us that fame is like a drug that elevates the consumer above the crowd into a hierarchy of structural jealousies and wealth. Readers of this review may be waiting for me to site further examples or information regarding how poisonous fame is revealed to be in Celebrity Detox: the Fame Game but, that's it folks; there is no more information, no more sharing and certainly no more insight other than the short couple of sentences I've written here.

I walked away disappointed because O'Donnell missed a great opportunity to inform the fame and celebrity obsessed North American culture about the true underbelly of what happens to the human psyche when one is worshipped and elevated to God-like status. I tend to read between the lines and I have to be honest that what I read between her empty prose about fame is that it's really not that bad to be famous, it has some costs with privacy but, all in all it's not that bad. This message is the absolute last thing this culture needs: more people clawing and scratching to get on TV.

Finally, O'Donnell accuses the public of killing Anna Nicole Smith; in a book littered with outrageous conclusions this one was particularly absurd considering this drug addicted, mentally unstable and former stripper worked her entire life to be famous, I would think Smith is responsible for her own death.

O'Donnell delves into her time at the View but, once again says little and reveals nothing we didn't already know; for example, she has opposing political views from neoconservative pro-war co-host Elizabeth Hasselbeck and long time View staff members were intimidated by O'Donnell's large persona. Rather obvious statements that viewers garnered first hand with their own eyes and with reports in the media so there's nothing new there either. While working at the View O'Donnell writes about her obsession to bully her fellow co-hosts into removing the ear pieces they wear that connects them with the control room, called an IFB, she writes ad nauseam about the meetings and failed attempts to strong arm Joy and Elizabeth into removing the ear pieces. O'Donnell rants about these IFBs page after page after page which left me utterly beside myself trying to figure out what had her so obsessed with these ear pieces and I could not find anything rational or useful about her tirades about the IFB; she becomes fixated that the IFB are inauthentic and ruin spontaneity. I don't know how the staff at the View worked with her day in and day out, in her own words she comes across as a bully, and irrational tyrant.

O'Donnell seems to get fixated and obsessed with people and ideas easily and with alarming regularity, like the IFB and her fanatical love affair with Barbra Streisand; page upon page of ruminations on Streisand and how she is important to the very fabric of existence on the planet earth. These strange fixation and obsessions which reveal mental instability were the few unexpected revelations in O'Donnell's book.

One topic O'Donnell was surprisingly honest about was Barbara Walters; O'Donnell states clearly what we all knew, that Walters lied about not telling to Donald Trump the infamous statement 'don't get in the mud with pigs'. O'Donnell clearly says Walters lied and betrayed her by saying disparaging things about her to Trump and then staying out of contact for almost two weeks after the incident; she was also honest about a huge and ugly fight between the two women when O'Donnell confronts Walters and blatantly calls her a liar.

O'Donnell then goes on to weep that Walters was not being a good mother to her which made me incredibly uncomfortable because I got an insight into O'Donnell's mental illness and psychological instability that jeopardized my ability to give any of her artistic endeavours merit. Is any of this particularly revealing however? I conclude that it is not, Walters is an 80 year old woman who continues to make tens of millions of dollars working in an industry that devours people daily; we already knew Walters was vicious, manipulative and self-serving .

The only people excluded from O'Donnell's judgement are gay people, for example the strange singer Clay Aiken, who apparently Kelly Ripa did not like and therefore that makes her a homophobe. Is it not possible to dislike Aiken without being homophobic? I would venture to say that it is possible and highly probable that Aiken can be disliked without it being about his sexual orientation.

O'Donnell gives a pass to former New Jersey governor Jim McGreevey who hired an Israeli to head the Homeland Security Department and then proceeded to have a sexual affair with him and when the Israeli threatened to go public with their relationship McGreevey staged a news conference blathering on about being a 'gay American' with generous smatterings in his speech about 'God'.

After putting national security at risk and publically humiliating his family, McGreevey proceeded to abandon his wife and child and write a memoir detailing his lies, deceptions and all around psychotic behaviour while blaming his abhorrent character on living in the closet and blaming everyone including America and his wife for forcing him to live as a closed gay man. O'Donnell dedicates several pages to defending McGreevy and agreeing with him that all his despicable behaviour is due to homophobia and the difficulty of living in the closet. What I garnered from these two examples in her book was that for O'Donnell being gay excuses all manner of unacceptable and sociopathic behaviour which is highly hypocritical considering how harshly she judges heterosexual politicians who lie, cheat and harm.

O'Donnell is a kind hearted humanitarian who devotes much time, energy and money to helping under privileged kids and speaking out against Americas illegal and immoral wars in Afghanistan and Iraq; she deserves respect for this. However, in her book Celebrity Detox: the Fame Game what is revealed most glaringly is her mental and emotional instability and nothing new was illuminated about fame and celebrity and no potential solutions were brought to the table; ultimately one writes about a societal issue in order to provide enlightenment and a possible course of action to remedy the ills discussed and O'Donnell's book fails on both counts. Celebrity Detox: the Fame Game is an irrelevant body of work.