Take A Little Time to Enjoy The View

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Really.

THE SURVIVOR

By MAUREEN CALLAHAN

July 24, 2007 -- IN her four years on “The View” - ABC’s exceptionally dysfunctional morning talk show - 30-year-old Elisabeth Hasselbeck has become a source of morbid curiosity for viewers and critics alike, who can’t quite figure out how she still has her job.

She may seem like a girl right out of a Tom Petty song (blond, all-American, married to a jock) but she has, as the show’s lone conservative voice, been criticized as a rigid, often incoherent thinker. This on a show where rigid, incoherent thinking has been vocalized by many a co-host - from Star Jones to Joy Behar to Rosie O’Donnell. So: No small feat.

And yet Hasselbeck - a former reality-TV star - has outlasted news veteran Meredith Vieira (who quit for the “Today” show), original cast member Jones (fired) and, most recently, O’Donnell, who quit the show early after that infamous, explosive on-air screamfest with Hasselbeck in May (an incident neither would discuss).

So, she’s outlived seasoned broadcast professionals . . . how?

“That’s a very tough role to fill on ‘The View,’ and she’s got enough nerve to hang in there,” says TV Guide senior correspondent Stephen Battaglio, who adds that ABC’s research shows Hasselbeck is popular with young mothers in red states. “She does her best. Do I think her next job is going to be as a political correspondent? No.”

Sarah D. Bunting, co-editor-in-chief of the Web site Television Without Pity, says Hasselbeck’s presence has become key: “Even if people are watching to hate her, it’s showing up on YouTube, it’s showing up on industry blogs, advertisers are getting the eyeballs,” she says. “She could have an IQ of 170. I doubt it. She’s taking advantage of the power vacuum, and they’re not gonna move her. This is what she’s there for right now: to get kicked.”

In fact, Hasselbeck is often such an inept debater that she’s been the subject of conspiracy theories: The show’s otherwise liberal co-hosts wanted a mockable lightweight. She’s a Stepford wife parroting the beliefs of her equally conservative husband, New York Giants third-string quarterback Tim. She’s fed talking points by the show’s right-wing executive producer, Bill Geddie.

“I’m not back there briefing her,” Geddie says. Her appeal cuts across all age groups, and her fans, he says, don’t care about her politics. “She has many thoughts that are shockingly conservative to me.”

Indeed, Hasselbeck has argued on-air that adulterers can’t be good parents, that the morning-after pill is tantamount to abortion, and that, “especially in a time of war” (one of her favorite phrases), torture is necessary. She typically responds to information she finds discomfiting with “I’d like to research that.” She has used the nonexistent word “desperacy” more than once. She has brushed off U.S. casualties of the Iraq war as “unfortunate,” while noting the U.S. has an all-volunteer Army.

“This is what liberals are afraid of - that the conservatives in the rest of the country believe this stuff without a well-considered view,” Bunting says. “If you are on TV just squeaking your way through an argument that has cost America thousands of lives, the conclusion is: She doesn’t know what she’s talking about.”

Interestingly, Hasselbeck says she never wanted to be any kind of pundit (she studied design at Boston College) or have a career in television: “If I had written out my plan,” she says, “I didn’t think I would be doing this.” Yet exec producer Geddie remembers things differently: “I got major pressure from her agent, saying, ‘You have to see this girl.’ ”

“She is a walking dichotomy,” says her former “Survivor” castmate Jeff Varner. He says when they first met, “I thought she was incredibly creative, honest, a sweet girl - but there was something underneath those eyes that was not that. She’s very shrewd. I always thought she would make the call that was best for Elisabeth.”

Still, they bonded. After “Survivor,” they both got gigs at the E! network and talked twice a week. He remembers her freaking out over whether she’d get the seat on “The View.” “I think I got one e-mail from her after she got hired on ‘The View,’ and that was it,” Varner says. “She dropped me. I sent her a gift when Grace was born. Never got a thank-you.” He pauses. “I’m hearing that Rodger [Bingham, a fellow “Survivor”], who was really close to her, is not hearing from her. Maybe an e-mail at Christmas.”

Funny - at a recent taping, an audience member asked Hasselbeck if she was still close with Bingham; she said yes, but it was hard, given that he’s a farmer and is up early in the fields.

“He’s not a farmer!” Varner says, laughing. “He works for the Department of Agriculture in Kentucky.”

“I talked to her over Christmas,” says Bingham, reached by cellphone one Sunday after church. “We send her little girl presents. She sends us ice cream every Christmas. A couple of pints, comes frozen every December.” Which perplexes Bingham, as he doesn’t particularly like ice cream: “If it’s around, I’ll eat it.”

Bingham, 60, memorably sacrificed himself on “Survivor” so that Hasselbeck could stay - and reap an extra $20,000 in prize money. He says they never really discussed that. “She really didn’t know that at the time, I don’t think,” he says. He takes a long pause. “Uh . . . you know, I guess she would’ve - she would’ve seen that on the show. I think she mentioned it to me once, and I said, ‘Well, you would’ve done the same for me.’ ”

“She’s a smart girl and a smart businesswoman,” says Varner. “But I never trusted her. And I don’t trust her today.”’

Hasselbeck grew up in Providence, R.I., (though she speaks with a faint “Fargo”-esque accent). She credits her architect dad, Kenneth - “the coolest, most creative man I’ve ever met, ever” - and Elisabeth, her “freethinking” mom, a lawyer who “started the first female fraternity at her college” - as the sources of her indefatigable self-esteem. “They never laid down any sort of foundation of, like, prejudice.” She has one brother, Kenneth, “two years younger, but much wiser,” and, she says, her polar opposite, politically.

Hasselbeck herself didn’t become politicized until a few years ago: “You know when we were in Australia for ‘Survivor,’ we had, I was supposed to fill out my absentee ballot. For the election. That was the controversial Gore/Bush, the whole Florida fiasco. Um, and I . . . I didn’t. I was, like, too busy. And I think it was Nick Brown who was out there with me, said, you know, ‘You didn’t fill out your absentee ballot? Like, how do you not fill out your absentee ballot?’ And then I realized what I had missed out on. So I really started a, an investigation, like why I was such an idiot as to not fill that out and partake in something that, you know, the women in Iraq just got a chance to do for the first time. You know, why? Why wouldn’t I take advantage of a right that’s granted to me? That wasn’t always there? And I kind of recommitted to, um, reading as much as I could and learning as much as I could about, um, politics.”

She says it took her a few years to build what she calls “a library of Web sites.” What does she read every day? “Um . . . I think anyone in my - obviously now for news, if you need something flashy, some celebrity or social news - it’s TMZ. You go there first. Ummm . . . you know, I like National Review online, um, I’ll go to townhall.com, media research center - for pointed issues, you know? And not only those, because I love the New York Times, Sunday Styles, you know I love the opinion sections, because it’s a lot, a lot of the time things I’m not in full support of, want to get perspective on, or just want to hear - I just want to make sure I’m fresh on both sides of the issue.”

To that end, Hasselbeck says she considers herself a “contemplative conservative.” Meaning? “I constantly think and am saturated in my mind and heart about what these issues are and what it means, especially now,” she says. “I think the why is more important than ever. Why? Like, why do you believe that? Why do you think we should still or not be in Iraq. Why? And so, those questions, they haunt me.” She laughs. “I like to actively pursue the answers,” she continues. “As much as possible.”

So Hasselbeck doesn’t understand why she is still considered “The View”’s intellectual featherweight (this on a show where O’Donnell claimed the government was behind the collapse of 7 World Trade Center). But the show’s “Hot Topics” segments - in which the women spend the top 20 minutes of the show extemporaneously discussing anything from the Iraq war to Britney Spears - has become squeamishly entertaining for this very reason.

Just last week, after telling Hasselbeck “your head is under a rock,” co-host Behar lost it:

Behar: “Bush has just vetoed a bipartisan bill that would extend health care for 4.1 million children in this country! Now that is not a compassionate conservative.”

Hasselbeck: “I’d like to investigate that.”

Behar: “Well, go ahead. Here it is [shaking paper under Hasselbeck’s face]. Paul Krugman, the New York Times.”

Hasselbeck: “Where are the parents of these children?”

Behar: “They’re poor!”

This debate, such as it was, elicited outrage among viewers, who immediately logged on to “The View” ’s insanely popular forum on Television Without Pity. A sampling:

“Usually, I think Elisabeth is just ignorant and uninformed . . . she has a large mean streak.”

“When she said, ‘Where are these kids’ parents?’ she f - - - ing lost my support. WTF? They are poor.”

“No one can be this ignorant.”

“Bitsy seemed nutty, ridiculous, and uninformed as usual. But, dare I say it, I enjoyed her today. She talked back to Babs and did not completely trample over Joy.”

So, what does Hasselbeck think of this animus? “I, I think that . . . obviously it’s wrong,” she says. She thinks it’s a reaction to her youth and hair color: “I mean, I’m young, yes. ‘She’s young, she’s blond, she’s conservative - we hate her.’ Good! Well, I don’t hate you because you disagree with my opinions. I kind of dropped that in like the fifth grade.” She smirks. “I think we should be able to - especially now - not judge people based on political opinion and have such hate.”

And she does seem to elicit hate from broad quarters. Last season, an episode of “Law & Order” named a victim of rape and murder “Elisabeth Hassenbeck”; when she called the show’s producer to complain, he hung up on her. Guest stars routinely snub her. The endlessly quotable Donald Trump, fresh off his feud with O’Donnell, switched sides, calling Hasselbeck “one of the dumber people on TV” and “an imbecile.” On any number of blogs she is referred to as “Bitsy,” “The Ditz,” “Elisabitch” and “Hasselcrack.”

The pop-cultural tipping point for Hasselbeck came last year, when a clip of the women heatedly discussing the morning-after pill was endlessly posted, then wound up on nighttime entertainment shows; Hasselbeck, in the gleeful parlance of many blogs, “lost her s - - t.”

“Elisabeth, calm down,” Walters scolded. “I can’t!” Hasselbeck exclaimed. “This makes me so upset, Barbara!” She tearfully ripped up her index cards. Producers quickly cut to commercial, and when they came back, Hasselbeck was crying, curled up, on the sofa, in Walters’ frail lap.

“I, I - I think certain issues are so worthy of emotional high-voltage,” Hasselbeck says today. “I just think they are. So, that was a day, although maybe it was seen as a hard day, or bad day for me, that was a good day, because I feel as though that’s me.”

Let’s ask Barbara Walters what she thinks. Hello, Ms. Wal - “Yeah whaddya want?” Walters barks. Well, when Elisabeth broke into tears and crawled on to your lap - “She is the most conservative member [of the show],” Walters responds tersely. “I think she’s pro-life. I think it was about stem-cell research. I’m very fond of her. By the way, I think she looks wonderful. She’s just so sunny.”

Walters does reiterate Hasselbeck’s appeal among young women viewers, who relate to her as a wife and mother (the Hasselbecks have a 2-year-old daughter, Grace, and are expecting their second child in November). “She tells whhooon-derful stories about her daughter,” Walters coos. “For example, on yesterday’s show, she told this adorable story about having to borrow her daughter’s diapers.” (The short version: Hasselbeck peed in two of them after a long car ride to Jersey.) “It was a wonderful story.”

And this may the key to Hasselbeck’s staying power on “The View” - she may be as gleefully ill-prepared as ever, but she’s not to be underestimated as a strategist. With Jones’ and O’Donnell’s seats still empty, Hasselbeck finds herself in an odd position of strength. That is, until the next moderator is hired, the group dynamic shifts once again, and Hasselbeck adjusts accordingly. “Rosie was really good because she was willing to engage with and challenge Elisabeth,” says TV Guide’s Battaglio. “I think they’re going to have a hard time finding a new moderator willing to do that. They might just say, ‘This is hopeless; why bother?’ ”

“If I were one of the women on this show, I would just be tired of her at this point,” says Television Without Pity’s Bunting. “Joy Behar, I think, is even done trying with her. But she does generate a lot of press.”

Hasselbeck, ever the strategist, knows who makes the ultimate call as to whether she returns after her maternity leave begins in November, and she misses no opportunity to praise her boss, Walters - often and on the air.

“She has a gift,” Hasselbeck rhapsodizes. “Her techniques are strong. She has a knack for interviewing people where she really hears what they’re saying. She can read prompter like nobody else. The amount of research that she does alone. I would never trade working with Barbara Walters every day with any, any course in the United States. Like, this is - it’s serious stuff.”