http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/eo/19991122/en/19991122119.html

Rosie Guns for Kmart

Those adorable Sesame Street characters that normally appear opposite talk-show host Rosie O’Donnell on her Kmart commercials need to start looking for another costar.

The Queen of Nice has decided to stop appearing in commercials for the superstore chain because of its pro-gun stance. She’s an outspoken anti-gun advocate amd Kmart is one of the nation’s biggest gun sellers.

“Rosie’s probably going to become more proactive in terms of gun control, so she didn’t want to put them in a difficult position,” says O’Donnell spokeswoman Lois Smith. “She’s doing commercials until Christmas. She’s still going to work with
them with philanthropic affairs, she’s just not going to do commercials. It was something that she thought about for a while and she just thought it was the right and fair thing to do.”

In spite of the split, Rosie’s camp swears the talk-show host and the chain are still buddies. “Rosie and Kmart are very close. They love each other,” insists Smith.

But Kmart was decidedly less enthusiastic. A company statment reads, “Kmart has enjoyed our highly successful advertising relationship with Rosie O’Donnell over the past five years.”

The credo also says the two parties “have mutually agreed that she will no longer appear in Kmart television commercials upon expiration of the current contract on December 31.”

However, according to the New York Daily News (which quoted an unnamed Kmart “insider”), Rosie was actually canned because of all the bad press her activism was bringing.

In any case, the two will still collaborate on O’Donnell’s For All Kids Foundations, however.

The timing of the split seems strange, considering the Emmy-winning host was being called out as a hypocrite months ago for attacking firearm supporters while being paid as a representative for a monster gun seller.

In May, O’Donnell attacked Magnum, P.I. alum Tom Selleck on her show for his pro-gun politics.

After several minutes of debating gun control, Selleck lost his patience, and asked Rosie, “Do you think it’s proper to have a debate about the NRA? I’m trying to be fair here. This is absurd. You’re calling me a spokesman for the NRA.” (The NRA ad campaign Selleck appeared in was sloganed, “I’m the NRA.”)

In Rosie’s place is the mother-daughter country duo, the Judds. The Kmart corporation says their “Changing for the Better” campaign will be the “centerpiece” of the upcoming millennium campaign.