The American audience just ain’t what it used to be!

We now spend Thanksgiving eve at the bars, not in front of the TV with our families. And if we ARE watching TV? We wanna see gunfire and explosions and sex and gore, not singing and dancing.

Rosie’s variety show, which aired Wednesday night on NBC, only brought in 5M viewers, a very tragic number for a major special on a major network.

I bet when MTV airs its Britney documentary on Sunday night it’ll match or beat those numbers, despite being on a cable network.

America loves its DRAMA!

Rosie O’Donnell poses with her partner (wife?) Kelli Carpenter and Fran Drescher at Rosie’s Gala in NYC on Monday night.

I don’t have much to say about this, except for that Fran Drescher always looks fantastic. She has really aged well.

Also: I am firmly opposed to any sort of ban on gay marriage, as you all know by now. A ban on pantsuits on the red carpet, though? I’d vote for that shit.

Here’s Rosie’s response to this.

Middle school: the richer you get, the longer it lasts.

Rosie O’Donnell will be returning to television, but kept far, far away from Elizabeth Hasselbeck.

She’s going to do a live variety show on NBC.

And not only will the show be live, but Rosie will be giving out prizes to the show’s at-home audience … live. Producers are hoping this combination will be a successful way to battle the DVRs of the world, and that people will be more inclined to tune in when it actually airs. Frankly, I sincerely doubt this approach will make so much as a dent. But maybe I’m overestimating my fellow Americans. I usually do.

They’re also hoping it’ll help them battle cable television, which is taking up an increasingly large chunk of television viewership.

“This will reinvent the idea of what a variety show is for 2008,” NBC vice president alternative Craig Plestis said. “There’s very few performers willing to put themselves out there live. It makes it more TiVo-proof, and it’s something none of the cable networks can do.”

Fox is planning to launch their own variety show, starring Sharon and Ozzy Osbourne, set to air in winter or spring. NBC’s hoping for a first-mover advantage; they’ll be starting Rosie’s run in late November.

Both shows sound like total snoozefests to me, but, then again, I’m totally not their target demo.

It’s rare that we see Rosie O’Donnell wearing makeup for an off-camera appearance, but she got herself all done up for Comedy Central’s autism fundraiser on Sunday night in NYC.

She’s still not a hottie or anything, but it’s a huge improvement.

Okay: What is wrong with Rosie O’Donnell’s face?

Is this some sort of disease?

Or did she just break out with adult-onset freckles?

You have to truly love someone to stay with them when their face looks like that. Although I guess we could have said that about Rosie even before the weird freckle thing.

And check out her hands! Was she in a bar fight?

Anyway, here’s Rosie and wife Kelli at the Sherie Renee Scott benefit concert in NYC.

What. The fuck. Is on. Her forehead?

She looks like a damn Cardassian.

Yeah, that’s right. I just made a Star Trek call. What’re you gonna do about it?

Despite their much-publicized feud last year, it appears The Donald is willing to go to any lengths to ensure the upcoming celebrity season of The Apprentice doesn’t bomb, including offering arch-nemesis Rosie O’Donnell a spot on the show.

Trump reportedly offered Rosie a whopping $2 million for 12 days of work on the show. The offer came through producer Mark Burnett’s office.

“I wouldn’t do it for $200 million,” Rosie responded.

Give it up, Trump. No one cares about The Apprentice anymore, and throwing a bunch of incompetent D-list celebrities into the mix isn’t going to help. If we want to see how celebrities approach a marketing and sales task, we can check out the latest videos on TMZ.com. No need to tune into NBC to watch them do the exact same thing, except with nauseating levels of product placement and your little gems of “wisdom” tossed in.