Ocelopotamus

I don’t know what was in the air last week, but it was a banner week for jaw-dropping altercations, smackdowns and ruckuses (should that be ruckae?) caught on video. Here are the three that made a biggest impression on me.

1. Boxer vs. Inhofe vs. Gore.

Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe is one of those guys who doesn’t believe in global warming, or at least he pretends he doesn’t in order to please the people who pull his marionette strings. As Al Gore was testifying at the Senate hearing on global warming last week, Inhofe did his best to treat Gore like a doormat, attacking and insulting him, and then refusing to let Gore respond or defend himself. In the video (link below), he keeps cutting Gore off and telling him that if he wants to respond, he can respond “in writing.”

Barbara Boxer, the committee chairwoman, puts up with this for a while, patiently asking Inhofe to allow Gore time to respond. But when Inhofe refuses to behave himself, Boxer finally decides she’s had enough and it’s time to cut Inhofe into teeny tiny pieces by telling him, “You’re not making the rules. You used to when you did this. Elections have consequences. So I make the rules.”

… and the crowd goes wild. Watch the video here.

2. Rosie O’Donnell vs. Elisabeth Hasselbeck.

A remarkably similar situation to the one above. Filmmaker Rory Kennedy is on The View, talking about her new documentary Ghosts of Abu Ghraib. Elisabeth Hasselbeck keeps interrupting Kennedy, insisting that torturing people is OK because it’s part of Keeping America Safe. Kennedy is very patient in explaining why engaging in torture isn’t effective and does our country more harm than good, but Hasselbeck thinks there’s a pony in the torture issue somewhere and won’t let Kennedy talk. Finally Rosie lets her have it.

3. Lily Tomlin vs. David O. Russell.

This isn’t something that happened last week, but wow. Just wow. Lily Tomlin and director David O. Russell tearing into at each other on the set of I Heart Huckabees.

This one isn’t really fair, because we don’t know enough about what led up to this to have a sense of why Tomlin and Russell are at each other’s throats like this, and who is really at fault here. Still, it’s astounding to see an actor of Tomlin’s stature being addressed in such reductive four-letter terms.