Though John McCain suspended his presidential campaign yesterday, third party candidate Paris Hilton is still busy courting voters. The heiress dropped in on The View today to replay her famous video rebuking McCain, and the clip prompted an inquisitive Joy Behar to ask, "You're not really going to be able to vote, are you?" After citing a friend who lost his right to vote after spending time in the "slammer," Behar was informed that Hilton did, indeed, still retain the ability. We're sad, too, Joy — the idea that Paris Hilton has any sort of political influence is almost as tragic to us as Whoopi Goldberg's hideous Ed Hardy t-shirt. [The View]

Though she's always been out on a limb as The View's resident conservative, Elisabeth Hasselbeck has found herself increasingly without allies over the past few weeks. First, she prompted a "Don't go there!" from an angry Whoopi Goldberg, then she sold out potential first lady Michelle Obama at a luncheon for Cindy McCain. And were the McCains grateful? Not so much! Why, it's enough to make a gal wonder if there's any place left to turn — and according to the National Enquirer, there is one deep, dark place:

John McCain went on The View this morning to talk oversimply about all the typical emotional hot-button issues you'd rather hear Sarah Palin mispronounce stuff while talking about. But shit, Whoopi made it kind of awesome! After getting John McCain to babble off the classic "strict constructionist" platitudes about how the Founding Fathers who wrote the Constitution would have definitely wanted all those hypothetical future states it would annex over the next hundred fifty years to be allowed to decide for themselves whether to outlaw a type of surgery that would gain popularity some time after the invention of reliable anesthesia they could have easily forseen would occur sixty years into the future at the time of the signing…Whoopi asked if she should be worried about returning to slavery!And stupid strict constructionist Republicans: how do they not have a comeback for this one? Has John McCain never spoken to a black person? Because that will actually have to change! Anyway, Barbara Walters saves it by imagining herself as some sort of latter-day Harriet Tubman.

Elisabeth Hasselbeck flew into Minneapolis today to host a luncheon for the terrifyingly taut-faced First Lady candidate Cindy McCain, and though The View's resident conservative has hardly hid her feelings on the presidential election, she's also remained relatively mum on the subject of Michelle Obama — until now. The two women met for the first time when Obama guest-hosted The View in June, and Hasselbeck's catty comments may ensure that the visit was Michelle's last. Says the New York Times:

After all of Hollywood weighed in on the new McCain "Celebrity" ad (well, Britney's publicists and Fake Paris Hilton, at least), it was only natural to turn to the ladies of The View for the last word. Unfortunately, that last word is shrieked, shouted, and stomped to death as Whoopi Goldberg and Elisabeth Hasselbeck spar over the ad with such vitriol that View producers were no doubt tempted to drag the split-screen out of mothballs. Enjoy this delightful screaming match as Whoopi yells "Don't go there!" at a booed, sulking Elisabeth (while Sherri Shepherd gets out nothing but a delightfully chirped "Ludacris!").

We're sorry to note this morning that the laff-a-minute presidential opus W. has earned its first negative review, and it's one from which the film may have difficulty recovering: Elisabeth Hasselbeck needed only the trailer to swear off Oliver Stone's all-star romp through the life and times of George W. Bush, citing the filmmaker's "bias" and critical treatment of a sitting Commander in Chief. Her outraged View co-hosts Sherri Shepherd and Whoopi Goldberg — the latter still stung by the crippling backlash to trailers for her 2006 classic Homie Spumoni — warned of the implications of judging too harshly before seeing the film, but it was no use. Damage control is on at Lionsgate, meanwhile, where desperate marketing kingpin Tim Palen reportedly earmarked up to a third of his studio's new $340 million credit line for an early, spoilerrific David Letterman rave. Alas, some bells just can't be unrung. [AOL]

Today, friends, is one that brings us deep concern for the ladies of The View. First, we learned that outspoken pro-life activist Sherri Shepherd "had more abortions than I would like to count." (How many, we wonder, would she have had no problem with counting?) Then came this uncomfortable exchange between veteran nutjob Shirley MacLaine—who, let's face it, hasn't been playing with a full Mah Jong set since somewhere around the Hoover administration—and Elisabeth Hasselbeck:

· After holding it in through years of her own private hell, the N-word finally makes Elisabeth Hasselbeck cry. We salute Whoopi Goldberg's restraint in not climbing over the table and drying her tears one slap at a time. [The View]
· Carpetbagger blogger David Carr's crack-rock memoir The Night of the Gun give Emily Gould a run for her NYT Magazine money. [NYTM]
· Matthew McConaughey plans to start a record label; three guesses as to what kind of music he'll feature. Actually, no. One guess. [NYP]
· Roman Polanski wants the LA District Attorney to review the new documentary about his sketchy 1978 rape conviction. Another review? Is it being re-released again? [NYT]
· Hooray for Hollywood, home of the second-worst industry growth rate in the country! [THR]
· Zach Braff is leaving Scrubs — conveniently enough, only a few seasons after its viewers did. [Variety]

• Hotelier Ian Schrager is paying $14.9 million for the triplex penthouse at 40 Bond Street. Once it's complete, Schrager will kick back in a 8,500-square-foot space, with 4,000-square-feet of outdoor space and 11-foot ceilings. [TRD]

Jessica Simpson has officially perfected the art of turning every opportunity to promote whatever is currently going on in her “career” into a public display of desperation. Ever since that gruesome Chicken Or Fish fiasco, we cannot think of a single time the game day curse has appeared on television without making a complete ass of herself. And Jessica managed to continue the pity parade on The View today. Dodging all questions related to her shockingly successful new country single, Simpson instead spun the interview into an embarrassingly blatant attempt to announce to the world how totally in love she and long-suffering QB Tony Romo still are. See Simpson hard at work, and tell us if we’re the only ones noticing a very eerie resemblance between the new Jessica and the bleached, gum-chewing, tear-drenched Britney Spears circa her “We’re just country, y’all!” era.

Finally, after years of thinking good girl Anne Hathaway's sleazy (possibly ex!) boyfriend was the K. Fed to her Britney (or is it the other way around?), the formerly controversy-free actress is beginning to show the most subtle of signs that all is not fairy dust and rainbows in her world. In this clip from today's View, resident bitch-in-benevolent-clothing Elisabeth Hasselbeck asked how Anne got along with the more frequent tabloid cover flier Kate Hudson on the set of this fall's Bride Wars. And after witnessing the normally cool under pressure Hathaway struggle to grit her Chicklet teeth and pretend all was peachy keen between the two leading ladies, we finally got some visual confirmation of the rumors of tension between Hathaway and Hudson that we've been hearing about for months. Watch Anne's true colors fly after the jump.

Everyone's favorite daytime punching bag Elisabeth Hasselbeck has undergone an impressive physical transformation in the six months since birthing son Taylor Thomas, shedding every trace of her pregnancy weight and showing off her newly shredded, Survivor-era physique on the cover of this month's Fitness magazine. (An alternate cover, featuring The View co-host in a revealing two-piece bathing suit reading, "Mission Accomplished," was ultimately deemed to be in questionable taste, and rejected in favor of the fetching aqua design you see above.)

In these politically charged times, we are hard pressed to think of four more qualified individuals to address the delicate issue of race and religion than three comediennes and a former reality show contestant. That said, we don't cast The View, we just watch it. And this morning's show featured a real humdinger of a Hot Topic, as the conversation between the ladies of The View turned once again towards the controversial subject of the Reverend Jeremiah Wright. As Whoopi and Joy attempted to bring Elisabeth to the realization that she may have unfairly slighted Obama by equating his views on race in America with his Reverend's, the backed-into-a-corner Liz broke out one of the more ridiculous analogies we have ever heard air on public television. Expect a lawsuit from the good people at JIF and Smucker's to be filed within the hour. [The View]

While we certainly hope that the ladies of The View are ladylike when it comes to using the ladies' rooms at other lady celebrities' houses [Ed. Note - That's a lot of ladies!], the same can't be said for the men who man Barbara Walters' camera crew. In this clip, Walters politely told the story of how her visit to Casa Cyrus for her (barely watched) Oscar special turned into a literal shitshow, with toilets overflowing and Miley's "very nicely attractive mother" Tish bitterly hissing under her breath that she didn't mind one bit. But the icing on the shitcake is the way in which the Cyrus clan says "Thanks For Visiting, Come Again Soon!", which, in a surprising twist, does not come in the form of a Hallmark card, but rather an engraved tchotchke in the shape of a golden toilet.

In case any of you ugly ducklings out there stare at the impossibly adorable and feisty Elisabeth Hasselbeck, The View panel's hawkish contributor, and see in her an unattainably shrill ideal, fear not. She too was once a gawky pre-adolescent, smiling past the sadness through a wall of orthodontic appliances and tragically outmoded frames purchased at the short-lived Sally Jesse Raphael Optical Centers (Your Glasses—and Some Tough Love—in About An Hour!™).

Reality-show-contestant-turned-TV-host Hasselbeck is the youngest-and dumbest-host on The View.

Big fat loudmouth Rosie O'Donnell and former sneaker designer Elisabeth Hasselbeck have reportedly called a truce on the feud that began when they shared a little table on The View. O'Donnell apparently approves of Hasselbeck's infant son Taylor Thomas, the world's newest uninformed nut, saying: "He's very, very cute. I saw him on TV, and I sent him a lovely gift, and (Hasselbeck and I) have been e-mailing each other. And peace prevails." Then Donald Trump jumped out of the bushes and hit O'Donnell over the head with a sack of doorknobs. Hatfields and McCoys, those two!

The crazy one's back on The View! Elisabeth Hasselbeck returned from her brief maternity leave, dragging her little half-quarterback baby onto the show with her. The ladies did an entire hour of "HOT TOPICS," also known as the "wait for Sherri and Liz to say something jaw-droppingly stupid" segment, just so that Hasselbeck would have an opportunity to say something stupid about Iraq. The baby, like most View guest hosts, just looked terrified.

[The View's Elisabeth Hasselbeck returning to her New York City apartment today, with gifts for her son, Taylor Thomas. This was Hasselbeck's first day beck on the show; image via INF]

Positively glowing and sporting a matching set of milk-engorged bosoms, Elisabeth Hasselbeck made her much-hooplah'd return to The View today with new baby Taylor Thomas in tow, the adorable newborn hoisting a tiny I Heart Huckabee placard that owed a major debt to the infant campaigning techniques trailblazed by The Incredible Picketing Baby. While a cautious Joy Behar noted that perhaps the hot lights, a studio audience, and the Viewmaster piping instruction into the baby's earpiece to "coo a segue into Hot Topics" might have all been a little overwhelming for a seven-week-old, a positively gushy Sherri Shepherd couldn't get enough of the new addition to their lineup, insisting Elisabeth fill her in on every last detail about the birth, including the name of her stork delivery service.