It’s she-said, she-said

New York —  IT was Tuesday morning on “The View” and Elisabeth Hasselbeck was outnumbered, again.

That’s not unusual on ABC’s tumultuous daytime coffee klatch, which has emerged as a pop culture staple this season with its freewheeling showdowns on subjects as varied as premarital chastity and prewar intelligence failures.

The topic this time: Don Imus and the slur he used to describe the Rutgers University women’s basketball team. The ladies agreed it was offensive but unexpectedly didn’t think he should necessarily be penalized -- all except Hasselbeck, that is.

“Along with freedom of speech, there’s discretion and responsibility, and I feel like we toss those two things out,” she said vehemently, crossing her arms and pressing them down on the glass-topped table.

That provoked co-host Joy Behar. “You have to be careful what you say ... “ she started.

” ... I am careful what I say ... “ Hasselbeck retorted.

“No, about what you say about firing people for speech,” Behar continued, her voice rising. “You are in that position. It could happen to you.”

“You know, if I said what he said, I should be fired,” Hasselbeck shot back.

Rosie O’Donnell jumped in. “What’s the next step, Elisabeth?” she asked, turning to face the younger woman. “Your job is going to be taken away if you think or say something that America doesn’t like?”

Even Barbara Walters, in her own genteel way, piled on: “What we are saying is, the man said he has learned. He’s done everything he possibly can, and to take him off the air?”

Time for a commercial break. O’Donnell walked over to the studio audience to take questions as Behar and Walters slipped backstage.

Hasselbeck was left sitting at the table, alone.

It’s a position the 29-year-old often finds herself in nowadays. Amid the cacophony of controversies that have drawn attention to “The View” this season -- Donald Trump’s feud with O’Donnell (and then Walters) over his handling of the Miss USA scandal, Danny DeVito’s limoncello-fueled intoxication -- Hasselbeck has improbably emerged as the show’s ballast.

The youngest and most conservative member of the four-person panel, she persistently defends the Bush administration, positioning herself as punching bag, foil and fire-starter for her co-hosts, who frequently jostle for the opportunity to challenge her statements.

Hasselbeck has become more outspoken -- and essential -- in that role since the arrival this season of O’Donnell, the show’s moderator, who seems exasperated and disgusted by her pro-Bush views. In February, O’Donnell dismissed her as “very young” and “very wrong” as they debated the government’s electronic eavesdropping measures. A few weeks later, during an impassioned discussion about torture, the older woman accused her of “blather” and snapped: “Elisabeth, you have to stop.”

All this political passion has given “The View” a renewed sense of relevance in its 10th year. Originally conceived by Walters as a forum for women of various backgrounds to dish about matters great and small, the program seemed poised to disintegrate into back-biting last season when Star Jones Reynolds exited amid a storm of counter-accusations. But this season’s table talk -- especially the ripostes between O’Donnell and her petite bete noire -- has elevated the show’s profile beyond its midmorning audience. Partisan blogs, cable shows and entertainment magazines alike now raptly follow developments on the water cooler mainstay.

“ABC has to be thrilled,” said Bill Carroll, director of programming for Katz Television Group, who tunes in at work so he won’t miss any sparks. “No one has talked about daytime television, except the failures, for years.”

The possible departure of O’Donnell, who is weighing whether to extend her contract past June, has only amplified the program’s dramatic tension.

Sometimes the debate at the table gets so heated that Hasselbeck’s brother will call after the show to make sure she’s OK. Walters said recently that when she watches on her days off, “my heart is in my mouth.”

But the young co-host insists she couldn’t be happier with the program’s dynamic and her key role in it. “I actually liked today,” Hasselbeck said contentedly, settling on a chair in her pistachio-green dressing room after the taping, a throw pulled over her bare arms. “I like it fiery.

“I am not bullied,” she added firmly. “I can handle my own.”

What really bothers her is when people assume the one-time “Survivor” contestant and wife of New York Giants quarterback Tim Hasselbeck is a lightweight.

“Maybe because Tim plays football, they think I’m some sort of cheerleader,” she said. “I’m not. I’m throwing the ball.”

On ever-firmer ground

IT’S a stance she’s grown more comfortable asserting in the 3 1/2 years since she succeeded then-fellow-twentysomething Lisa Ling at the “The View” table.

Executive producer Bill Geddie initially resisted hiring a reality television star. Now, he said, “it’s hard to imagine the show working without her. That’s a big change from where we were a few years ago, where it seemed to me we were just going to be rotating young people through that chair. She’s gotten indispensable.”

In part, that’s because of O’Donnell, whose arrival at “The View” this season has not only attracted hordes of publicity but made the other co-hosts, notably Hasselbeck, raise their game, Geddie said.

Brian Frons, president of daytime for the Disney-ABC Television Group, said he thinks Hasselbeck “has grown enormously at defending her position, not based on emotion but with facts.

“And she is kind of tough,” he added, joking: “I kind of actually wonder one day if we’re going to get a fistfight.”

Hasselbeck and O’Donnell maintain that they’re friends, despite their on-air clashes. They have play dates together with their young children and share a love of craft projects. “To be able to have the fire that we have at that table and then talk about how we want to monogram and embroider our kids’ denim -- it’s really crazy!” Hasselbeck said. “I know it’s hard to wrap your brain around. We are political rivals, but it stops there.”

In a statement, O’Donnell did not address their on-air dynamic but called Hasselbeck “an absolutely wonderful mother. It’s been a delight getting to know Elisabeth and her family,” she added. “We all get along great.”

If there’s tension in the show’s makeup room, it’s over whether O’Donnell will re-up for another year of provocative banter.

“I hope she does,” Hasselbeck said. “I tell her every day, ‘We have a lot to talk about -- you better be here.’ ”

O’Donnell’s inflammatory remarks -- including her recent suggestion that the World Trade Center’s Building 7 was brought down by explosives on Sept. 11 -- draw criticism, but they’ve also helped boost the program’s audience to a record 3.8 million viewers in the first quarter of this year. The show has gained 500,000 viewers this season, a spike of 17%.

The program’s success, along with the outsized attention O’Donnell attracts, has gotten rival networks and syndicators chattering about luring her away to do a solo show again.

O’Donnell hasn’t indicated which way she’s leaning.

“I don’t know,” she told an audience member who asked about her plans. “We’re going to have a family meeting at the end of May to see what’s going on, and every kid gets a vote.” (On her blog, she wrote that viewers would know her decision June 1.)

Losing the controversial daytime star would be a substantial blow to ABC, which has giddily watched “The View” take off.

“I hope she stays,” Frons said, declining to discuss the negotiations. But if O’Donnell bolts, he maintained that the program will not falter. “We would look to reconstitute the show in another new, fresh way.”

For her part, Hasselbeck doesn’t plan to go anywhere.

“I’m definitely growing in this job,” she said. “But it’s a lifestyle, so you have to have stamina and you have to really be willing to open the doors to your life and your home. And as long as that works for me, I want to be here.”

Her mettle moment

TELEVISION was never a career the Rhode Island native imagined pursuing. After studying fine arts at Boston College, where she captained the championship softball team and met her future husband, she went to work for Puma as a shoe designer.

A co-worker there told Hasselbeck about a reality TV show that marooned its contestants in the Australian outback. Though she had never seen the first season of “Survivor,” “I just knew that this was something I was supposed to do,” she said. “The emotional support my family gave me was so great, and the emotional support Tim’s family was giving me was so great, that it felt almost like I couldn’t mess up, you know? And I didn’t like that feeling. I wanted to feel like, OK, without those hands under me, I want to know what I’m made of.”

Hasselbeck, one of the final four contestants, returned home weighing only 94 pounds.

“I don’t think any Purple Hearts should be given out over it, but I do feel like, personally, I kind of learned what my limits were,” she said.

Two years later, when she was selected from more than 1,000 applicants to join “The View,” she was elated -- and terrified. “I was pretty sick to my stomach most every morning, I think,” Hasselbeck said.

Early on, the young co-host rarely steered the conversation.

“She had to feel her way a bit,” said Meredith Vieira, who moderated the show until this season, when she left for NBC’s “Today.”

Hasselbeck is much more confident these days. Visitors to her dressing room are greeted by a sign that reads: “Everyone’s entitled to my opinion.” A gift from her sister-in-law when she joined the show, it was hidden on a back wall until recently.

The birth two years ago of her daughter was a key turning point. “It’s almost like she came back to the table at that moment after having Grace as ‘I am a woman now too,’ ” Frons said.

Hasselbeck agreed that her outlook has changed: “I’m very concerned about what this world is going to be like for my daughter.” A self-described “contemplative conservative,” Hasselbeck has even grown more fervent about issues such as national security -- and more forceful about articulating her stances, often exclaiming, “Hold on, hold on!” when her co-hosts try to shoot her down.

At home, she and her husband -- who she said is “probably even more conservative than I am” -- passionately discuss politics as they watch shows such as Fox News’ “Hannity & Colmes.” On-air, she regularly defends the war in Iraq, much to the incredulity of her co-hosts.

“I don’t understand how you can still support this administration,” Behar told her recently. “What is it that you still are backing them for? What?”

Vieira said she doesn’t think she would hold up as well under the constant interrogation.

“There were times that I and the audience felt she was being ganged up on,” she said. “The level of discussion can get pretty loud. But I don’t remember an instance where it seemed to bother her. I don’t think people realize just how strong a person she is because she’s so delicate and so pretty.”

Jones Reynolds said the young co-host manages to assert her opinion without allowing on-air disagreements to become personal. (Hasselbeck is the only former “View” colleague with whom she keeps in touch.) “I don’t think that Elisabeth has a mean bone in her body,” Jones Reynolds said.

Because Hasselbeck tempers her views with sunniness, some viewers wince at how much criticism is directed her way.

“Rosie picks on her endlessly,” said Marie Gillman, 38, a teacher’s assistant from Bergenfield, N.J., at a recent taping. “When Elisabeth says something, she jumps down her throat for having an opinion.”

O’Donnell has admitted on her blog that her tone can be “bully-ish,” but “we like each other,” she wrote recently. “we don’t talk politics in real life.”

Hasselbeck insists that they resolve their disputes quickly and move on.

“I never walk out of here upset,” she said. “There’s no, ‘Poor Elisabeth.’ Don’t worry about this girl. I’m A-OK.”

matea.gold@latimes.com