‘View’ Insider: Barbara Walters Giving Elisabeth Hasselbeck ‘Enough Rope To Hang Herself’

Our breathless coverage of the backstage bitchfights befalling The View in these tense days leading up to the election have elicited what will surely go down as the Golden Age of View-Issued Denials. From Whoopi on Regis and GMA, to a very special “We All Love Each Other!” Hot Topic, to a show rep chuckling off our McCain T-shirt ban story, to Sherri Shepherd telling CNN the tales are as flat-out wrong as the Earth itself is flat, never before have the ladies doth protested so much. And yet, further reports of animus come. The Chicago Sun-Times ran a story yesterday claiming that things had “gotten so ugly, they only speak on air or when a camera is anywhere in their vicinity.” Accurate? Yes, says a Defamer source who’s managed to penetrate their inner kaffeeklatsch sanctum:

I can confirm for you that this story is indeed true. In spite of the declarations of “peace and love” on camera, these two ladies do not speak to each other off camera anymore. Elisabeth has pretty much burned her bridges over there with the non-stop, right-wing rhetoric. It has gotten so bad that even Barbara had to warn her about not attributing statements to Barack Obama without proof.