PAT O’Brien, 60, who’s spent most of his career covering sports and hosting tabloid TV shows, is suddenly worried about poor people and the unemployed.
“The Insider” correspondent O’Brien – who likes to sign off his e-mails, “There is more to life than increasing its speed” – sent a message to the staffs of “Insider” and “Entertainment Tonight” over the weekend that read:
“Hi, folks, I just spent a couple of days in Iowa – I’m a little bit of a favorite son there – and I spoke with maybe a thousand people and was very hands-on. Even Joe Biden said, ‘You should be running (for president)!’ But what I came away with was, these people can’t afford gas, books, food or schools or movies!
“I was approached a hundred times by people asking, ‘Can you help us?’ I tried to tell them we care, but they didn’t buy it. They wanted to, but watching Anya and Lara [Spencer] pick out accessories makes the viewers want to vomit. I’ll get killed for this, but I’m actually the one not afraid for my job. I want people to be happy.”
The segment on “The Insider” O’Brien referred to is the “Look for Less” feature, in which Spencer and her stylist show viewers how to look like her affordably. “It’s a very popular segment and gets the most hits on the Web site,” a source said, adding:
“He is very jealous of Lara because she is the sole host of the show – she has his old job. It’s amazing the show sent him to interview Joe Biden. It’s just so arrogant and comes from his insecurity and jealousy.”
O’Brien was demoted from hosting “The Insider” after a stint in rehab in 2005 when voice mails surfaced of him drunkenly asking a woman for sex. Of the e-mails, he explained to Page Six, “I’m trying to create a discourse. The American people want honesty. I just raged against the machine. We can change the world.”