Today was quite a momentous day on The View. It was the day Barbara Walters stopped trying to hide her indifference (or just plain confusion) toward the guests, Whoopi Goldberg lost all remnants of her sense of humor, and Elisabeth Hasselbeck asked a relevant question.
So what brought all this craziness about? Why, Stephen Colbert, of course. If you're gonna mess with the Papa Bear, you'd better be ready to face the cub.
After the now requisite chatty preamble to the meat of the interview (in which Barbara told Stephen he made no sense, allowed a quite lengthy awkward pause to hang in the air, quizzed him on the factually inaccurate deaths of his family members and asked which Stephen Colbert she was talking to), finally the conversation turned interesting comprehendible.
While promoting his newly joint venture with Jon Stewart, the Rally to Keep Sanity and/or Fear Alive, he gave a few examples of things to be afraid of.
"Bedbugs. I'm terrified of them. They're everywhere…I hear they're in the couch on The View. That's why Whoopi and Joy jumped up the other day…You weren't being rude to Bill [O'Reilly], you were just trying to get away from the infestation."
And with that, they were off.
"Do you think that Whoopi was being rude to Bill?" Hasselbeck probed. "Honest opinion about what went down that day."
"Because I'm on your show, I agree with Whoopi," Colbert deftly replied. "I think there should be mosques everywhere. I think this would make a good mosque. This studio would make a lovely mosque. We're facing east, aren't we?"
"If he had even made that much sense, I probably would've been able to handle him," Whoopi said.
Colbert then launched into his tried-and-true routine about Bill feeling the truth and not letting little things like facts get in the way of his emotions (that this was a bit, incidentally, was clearly lost on his couch mates).
As a result, tensions and voices were once again raised, Babs let out some uneasy groans and Colbert was forced to play his trump card, getting up and storming off stage à la Whoopi and Joy Behar (who sadly was out today).
You may never make Babs' list of most fascinating people, Stephen, but it's stuff like this that keeps you on top of ours.