On the March 21 broadcast of his nationally syndicated radio show, Glenn Beck aired a clip from the March 20 edition of ABC's The View in which co-host Rosie O'Donnell -- during a discussion on allegations of torture at Guantánamo Bay -- said to conservative co-host Elisabeth Hasselbeck: “Okay, wait, Elisabeth, you have to stop, you have to stop. You can ask a question but you can't just blather on your opinion.” Beck then said of O'Donnell: “She goes off on her opinion every step of the way. But there's a conservative on the show and she's shut down. You can't just say your opinion. What the hell is this show all about, you fat witch? What is this show about?” Later, Beck claimed that O'Donnell has “blubber ... just pouring out of her eyes,” and asked, “Do you know how many oil lamps we could keep burning just on Rosie O'Donnell fat?” Steve Burguiere, the executive producer and head writer of Beck's radio show, who is known on-air as “Stu,” also attacked O'Donnell: “I mean, she's the type of idiot that watches documentaries online about 9-11 and conspiracies that a fourth-grader made on a PowerPoint and believes them. So there's much more to go to on that direction than just her rolls and rolls of hideous fat.”
In the same broadcast, Beck -- recently hired by ABC News as a “regular commentator” for Good Morning America -- complained: “I can't take it that Rosie O'Donnell can be put on ABC television, mainstream, unquestioned, by the mainstream media. She can say whatever she wants to say, she can take the sides with, what's his name, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, a guy who was the mastermind behind 9-11. She can make him into some sort of a martyr without anybody at ABC, NBC, CBS -- mainstream media, they say nothing about that. Nothing.” As Media Matters for America has noted, Beck claimed on the March 16 broadcast of his show that O'Donnell “has more contempt for the United States of America than the guy who is the number-two guy of Al Qaeda.”
Premiere Radio Networks, which syndicates Beck's radio show, claims the program is heard on more than 230 radio stations nationwide. According to Talkers Magazine, the program reaches more than 3 million listeners each week.
From the March 21 edition of Premiere Radio Networks' The Glenn Beck Program:
BECK: I am so sick of the double standard in the media on -- when it comes to an opinion like mine. I've got a crazy opinion, I'm a hatemonger, you know. I'm a hatemonger that just wants to lock people up, wants to put Muslims behind razor wire, that wants to kill Katrina victims, wants to see all 9-11 families burn in some sort of fiery death. Yes, that's me, the hatemonger. Yet Rosie O'Donnell can be on ABC television, mainstream, she can be celebrated, she can be defended. And what does she say? Well, I'll give you the latest on the Rosie blog on who caused 9-11. Wait until you hear the destruction of the World Trade Center, and why it happened.
[...]
BECK: I can't take it that Rosie O'Donnell can be put on ABC television, mainstream, unquestioned, by the mainstream media. She can say whatever she wants to say, she can take the sides with, what's his name, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, a guy who was the mastermind behind 9-11. She can make him into some sort of a martyr without anybody at ABC, NBC, CBS -- mainstream media, they say nothing about that. Nothing. She goes off on her opinion every step of the way. But there's a conservative on the set who's shut down. You can't just say your opinion. What the hell is this show all about, you fat witch? What is this show about?
[...]
BECK: Try to find an intelligent whale joke.
STU: Exactly.
BECK: I'm just -- I'm saying, because the whale jokes and the blubber that she has just pouring out of her eyes --
STU: There's no reason to go to her weight. I mean, she's the type of idiot that watches documentaries online about 9-11 and conspiracies that a fourth-grader made on their PowerPoint and believes them. So there's much more to go to on that direction than just her rolls and rolls of hideous fat.
BECK: Do you know how many oil lamps we could keep burning just on Rosie O'Donnell's fat?
STU: See, that -- that's --
BECK: Sorry.
STU: You're back to the facile whale jokes, and there's no --
BECK: Think about how much perfume we could make out of Rosie O'Donnell. Again, too easy.