In case you live in Antarctica and hadn’t heard, Mel Gibson is back in the news for leaving a series of expletive, threat, and racial slur-laden emails on the voicemail of his now ex-girlfriend Oksana Grigorieva. This week on The View, cohost Whoopi Goldberg rose to Gibson’s defense, saying that he isn’t racist and his real problem is that he is an alcoholic who says crazy things when he has been drinking. The comments raised so much fury that Goldberg reportedly got tons of phone calls and emails from angry viewers. On today’s show, she claimed that some people had called her home and yelled at her assistant, who was the one answering the phone.
I don’t know if this actually happened or if she’s exaggerating for effect, but let’s all take a moment to remember one of the rules of assistant karma: even if you are really mad, do not take it out on the assistant. Goldberg is the one who made the comments. Her assistant is probably overworked and underpaid, and in addition to dealing with all of his boss’ shit he now has to get yelled at by strangers because his boss said something on television and people are mad about it. I can’t tell you how many times I got yelled at by people my boss had offended, and you know what? It made me vow never to do it to someone else. Do not continue the cycle of assistant abuse. Just yell at Whoopi instead. Or stop caring about what celebrities say on TV.
Being a PA on a TV show means you might get called on to run any number of random errands. However, one assistant on The View really had to go above and beyond the call of duty last week. Elisabeth Hasselbeck, the worst interviewer on television, was going to do a “hot topic” segment about how she disapproves of some stores carrying low-cut panties for little girls. [Elisabeth has a two-year-old daughter, Grace.] That meant a poor PA–who happened to be male–had to run around Manhattan kids’ stores trying to find a pair of this low-cut underwear that Hasselbeck could hold up during her segment. He managed to find a pair, but I’m curious how many stores thought he was a creepy pedophile and followed him around the store?
The worst part of this whole ordeal? The only reason this story is known is because the cohosts talked and laughed about it on air during a special “backstage on The View” episode. It figures that a woman who was basically handed a major network broadcasting job despite her only TV experience having been a contestant on a reality show wouldn’t understand the value of the hard work other people do in order to make her stupid self look good.
Rosie O’Donnell used to be the Queen of Nice, and then she was the woman who fought on air with airhead cohost Elisabeth Hasselbeck on The View. But is Rosie making up with Elisabeth? According to The National Ledger, Rosie had her assistant call chichi baby boutique Petit Tresor to order a baby gift for Elisabeth, whose second child is due any day now.
To slightly reword a quote from Mr. Percy Bysshe Shelley: “Assistants are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.”
When Michael Jordan was an undergrad basketball star at the University of North Carolina, he majored in Geography. What about Tim Hasselbeck, better known for being the husband of View harpy Elisabeth “Rosie Hater” Hasselbeck than for being a third-string quarterback for the New York Giants? When he was an athlete at Boston College (where he met the missus), Tim majored in Administrative Studies.
Welcome to STA, Tim! If your team finally gets tired of paying you to sit on the bench, you can always fall back on your administrative career. We’d be happy to let you join our assistant ranks, although we’re sure the pay is a little less than you’re accustomed to.
Now that Rosie is off of The View, we here at STA feared that the show’s drama factor would be drastically reduced. Fortunately, our old pal Martha Stewart (who seemed to handle prison just fine, unlike some people) can always be counted to stir up some controversy. While Martha was taping a View appearance that aired last Friday, her driver was arrested. Page Six reports that Martha was not happy and was overheard on the phone screaming at her assistant. The highlight? Martha allegedly yelled, “How could you do this to me? Don’t you do background checks on people? He was Egyptian! What do I pay you people for?” It’s not quite Ricki Lake’s afterbirth, but…damn.
