"When Whitney Houston wasn't here the first day of November sweeps, if I was totally nice I would have said, `Whitney Houston was sick today, we hope she feels better,' I didn't. I gave her a few ribs here, a little shot there. `Nice,' to me, has a connotation of passivity. I'm not passive.'' Instead of Truth vs. Falsehood, O'Donnell posits a new moral spectrum: Humane vs. Sensational. If her interviews err on the soft side, that's fine with her (pg. 44): "Maybe I'm thin-skinned, but I don't know how Jay Leno makes fun of these people and then has them sit on his couch,'' O'Donnell says. "He called to congratulate me when I won the Emmy award, and I told him that I found it really offensive for him to be doing jokes about Cody and Cassidy Gifford. If he wanted to take on their parents, and he could live with himself for doing that, then he should. But he should leave the children, who are innocent, out of it.''