Rosie & Elisabeth's Deface-Off?

Fri., May. 25, 2007 11:31 AM PDT by Gina Serpe

The bad bloodshed at The View has gone from face-off to deface-off.

A day after Rosie O'Donnell and Elisabeth Hasselbeck's split-screen political smackdown turned personal, one of O'Donnell's cronies could be in trouble for some kindergarten-variety retaliation.

According to the New York Post, O'Donnell's longtime chief writer, Janette Barber, was escorted from The View's studios Thursday after being caught drawing mustaches and generally vandalizing posters of Hasselbeck adorning the walls of the show's offices.

O'Donnell herself was neither on the show nor in the vicinity of the midtown Manhattan offices at the time; she had taken a preplanned day off to celebrate partner Kelli Carpenter's 40th birthday. O'Donnell has yet to comment, or even blog, about the alleged incident.

But ABC has.

The network confirmed to E! News that "photographs at The View's offices were defaced." While the network spokesperon did not confirm whether the defacer was Barber, who worked on O'Donnell's old daytime show and frequently pops up in video postings on rosie.com, its statement attempted to distance O'Donnell from the incident.

"Rosie O'Donnell was not in the building," the network statement said. "ABC Legal and Human Resources are investigating the matter."

On Thursday's show, View master Barbara Walters, who was absent from Wednesday's headline-grabbing blow-up, did her best to restore order to the chatfest by spending as little time discussing the televised war of words as possible.

"Aunt Barbara is back, and there will be peace in the kingdom," she said. "It's a hot weekend, so everybody cool off!"

Although Walters opted not to rehash the argument, in which accusations of cowardice and terrorism were bandied about, and said that cooler heads should have prevailed, she indicated the verbal sparring was par for the course.

"We were all on the same team. And usually, if we had big things to discuss we used to do them off camera. Yesterday it was on camera. But on the other hand, the show went on yesterday as normal—if there's such a thing as normal on this show."

Now the Rosie exit watch is in full effect.

In the wake of Wednesday's explosive argument, there has been increasing speculation that O'Donnell, scheduled to depart the show when her contract ends in three weeks, may be looking to cut and run much sooner.

In a posting on the "Ask Ro" section of her blog posted Wednesday, O'Donnell responded to viewer queries about whether she would acclerate her depature by writing: "Well u know/when its time 2 go."

On Thursday, she answered a similar question by writing, "I have said all I needed."

"When painting there is a point u must step away from the canvas as the work is done," she wrote. "Anymore would take away."

O'Donnell, who also wrote that she is "so sad" over not only the confrontation but the producers' handling of it—"imagine my surprise...a split screen just like [Jerry] springer I am so proud"—told another fan that she had "no idea" when she would return to The View.

But ABC does.

The network said that O'Donnell is due to return as program moderator on Tuesday morning.

Set your TiVos.