Trump and Rosie

Okay, I'm going to comment on the Rosie O'Donnell/Donald Trump feud just this once.

I have been fascinated by Trump's inability to let this go. He acts as though Rosie O'Donnell is beneath him, but continues to respond with uncontrolled rage to every barb she tosses at him. He doesn't seem to understand that she is deliberately goading him into making an ass of himself.

Anyhoo, on the occasions that I do read about the feud, rather than simply overhear it on TV, the coverage of how it started usually goes something like this:

The Rosie-Donald feud began last month after Trump announced that Miss USA Tara Conner would keep her title, which had been in jeopardy because of underage drinking. He owns the pageant.

O'Donnell said his news conference had annoyed her "on a multitude of levels" and that the twice-divorced real estate mogul had no right to be "the moral compass for 20-year-olds in America."

This is wrong. This spectacle did not begin over anything that O'Donnell said about Trump. Trump has been an object of criticism since the 80s. Sure, the media have generally responded positively to the image that he tries to project of himself, but there have always been those willing to call him out as the crass egomaniac that he is.

What Rosie did to make Trump lose his mind was to hold him out as an object of ridicule. She did that not with anything she said, but with a brilliant piece of impromptu physical comedy. When O'Donnell flipped her hair over to the other side of her head, pursed her lips and slumped her shoulders, she turned him into a physical joke. This was probably the first time that Trump had ever been forced to acknowledge that everybody knows that his ludicrous hairstyle is a combover. I think it's a simple as that. With her mockery, O'Donnell found the softest spot in Trump's oversized ego. She pierced right through it, and Trump just can't let it go.