Mining the Rosie in Whoopi

DOPPELGANGER Whoopi The second Rosie O'Donnell bolted from the set of The View, the search for a loudmouth liberal to replace her at the oval table began. While one might have expected ABC to attempt to tone it down and bring in a less divisive personality to fill Rosie's vacated seat, they did just the opposite. The search appears to have ended with Whoopi Goldberg.

But if a boisterous, chubby, lesbian scared middle America, how about a boisterous, chubby, black, rumored lesbian?

Whether Whoopi will prove as controversy-prone a host as Rosie is unknown. But she's got the credentials to make the switch look seamless. Her first high-profile dustup with political correctness came all the way back in 1993, when she came to the defense of then-boyfriend Ted Danson, after the actor appeared at a Friars roast in blackface. The exhibition of bad taste caused daytime TV's favorite pothead Montel Williams to say, "I was confused as to whether or not I was at a Friars event or at a rally for the KKK and Aryan Nation."