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I couldn't wait to see if daytime diva Star Jones Reynolds would take her earrings off once Rosie O'Donnell took a seat next to her on "The View."
Whenever a black woman tells you to hold her hoops, you know that a version of WWE's "RAW" is about to jump off. And Star had every right to go into smackdown mode, with the way Rosie put her on blast in her blog.
In a May 14 post, titled "Star View," written in annoying free verse, O'Donnell says: Star Jones had weight loss surgery/she had part of her stomach bypassed/that is how she lost 1/2 herself/she refuses to say this/which is her right/but we do not have to pretend/we do not know.
O'Donnell is primed to replace the departing Meredith Vieira as "The View's" moderator. One of the conditions of O'Donnell's arrival is reportedly Reynolds' departure. Executive producer Barbara Walters, who is said to have had it up to here with Star's shameless self-promotion - here being above that mountain of Payless shoes Reynolds endorses - is apparently all too willing to oblige.
So we probably won't get to see Star and Rosie go to the mat. Not that I was ever an O'Donnell fan. Never bought the Queen of Nice routine, which turned Cruella DeVille-ish during the Rosie magazine fiasco. A Tom Cruise crush? Puh-leeze. That was as contrived as Michael Jackson bending Lisa Marie Presley back for a movie-star kiss.
Still, you'll never see me wearing a "Team Star" T-shirt either.
Reynolds just doesn't connect to women in the way that Oprah, Katie Couric and Ellen DeGeneres do. Sure, she may count Vivica A. Fox, Lela Rochon and Holly Robinson Peete among her Hollywood homies. But Reynolds, swaddled in dyed minks, dripping in diamonds and accessorized with pocket puppies, has more in common with, say, Paris Hilton, than she has with everyday sistahs.
As one of my girlfriends puts it: "When I come to Star as a black woman, I need somebody I can relate to, not somebody to tell me how to tighten my weave."
Ever since she burst onto the scene in 1995 as a plus-sized prosecutor who got her 15 minutes alongside the other lawyers-turned-pundits during the cultural hurricane that was the O.J. Simpson trial, Star has been hellbent on stardom, achieving it in a way that is crass, overexposed and disingenuous.
She strode every red carpet expressly to tout her fabulousness. She proclaimed she was comfortable in her own skin and proceeded to undergo an undercover makeover, shedding more than 100 pounds in record time. She got herself engaged, then threw herself a lavish wedding, unabashedly shilling, on "The View," the companies that sponsored her freebie nuptials.
"It's so obvious she's trying to get attention and that's what turns people off," says Todd Boyd, a University of Southern California professor who studies celebrity fakery 24/7. "It's like she's a female Dennis Rodman. All those stunts and things and look what happened ... She set herself up for ridicule."
Even after all of her antics, I still might have been willing to cut Star a break because of my Diana Ross Rule. I remember, even as a kid, how Ross got on my nerves preening and posturing on "The Ed Sullivan Show," but the overwhelming emotion I felt watching the Motown diva was pride.
In 2006, there aren't that many African-American women living in the spotlight. For that reason alone, they deserve the benefit of my doubt. The more we prop them up, the more they reflect back positively for the rest of us.
But Star's reflection is cloudy. Last year, she wrote a health book, "Shine: A Physical, Emotional, and Spiritual Journey to Finding Love," in which she shares her beauty and health "secrets" but never comes clean about her weight-loss method.
There are hundreds of thousands of women - particularly African-American women - who struggle with obesity. To me, Reynolds missed a golden opportunity. She could have been an inspiration; instead she's just another celeb hawking product.
And that's why I was looking forward to an O'Donnell-Reynolds throwdown. It would have been as juicy as seeing Whitney and Bobby battle it out on "Being Bobby Brown."
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Annette John-Hall: ajohnhall@phillynews.com
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(c) 2006, The Philadelphia Inquirer. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service.
