Once King placed a liverspotted hand upon the party-end of the glorious mullet before him, pulled the hunter's weary head towards his welcoming, sunken chest, and gently whispered through the windchimes dangling from the apologetic guest's ear, "Everything's going to be OK. Now tell me who you are and why you're here? Some bad thing you did?," the healing process was underway. Soon, Dog would be explaining to a rapt America that a poor vocabulary was at least party to blame for the ugly incident, a trivial problem that's easy enough to correct: once better educated, his angry brain should have a much more varied selection of hurtful words to choose from, minimizing his reliance on any one slur.

• Larry King Live [CNN.com]
• Previously: A Sing-Along Racist Tirade With Dog The Bounty Hunter [Defamer]

Rightly realizing that the show's audience probably has no idea about the extent of their guest host's online popularity, Whoopi invited them to cringe at the unrelenting string of gaffes that still have a sweat-slicked Holly Hunter awaking from fitful sleep, screaming, "Why can't you fucking hear me! Am I in hell?" Disappointingly, the still-painful montage wasn't followed by Miller's tearful reunion with Hunter and a do-over of the original interview unimpaired by the "satellite problems" that plagued their first meeting, just some chatter about how the combination of God and her equally beneficent View saviors have pulled her back from "the precipice upon which you were standing," to borrow Goldberg's typically eloquent words.

• The View [ABC.com]
• Previously: A Brave Holly Hunter Barely Survives Junket Nightmare [Defamer]

The source adds that while her appearance has not yet been confirmed, "the idea is to have her come on and apologize for the VMAs. She's weighing the offer." [...]

Though Spears has been keeping a low profile since the show, a source tells Us that at least some within her inner circle are receptive to the Emmy idea and are urging her to do it.

However, a source close to Spears says: "I can't say this is 100 percent not true. All I can say is that the Emmy people aren't dealing with her record company, her manager or her agents at William Morris. So if she is doing anything for the Emmys then it's not going through the official channels."

Putting aside for a moment speculation about who exactly comprises the "inner circle" mulling the idea (our best guess is that the strategic thinktank consists of Sean Preston, her other, still-unnamed baby, career-planning chihuahua Mr. Shaky, and a part-time cleaning lady with limited English skills but a kind smile), there is perhaps no one on the planet with more experience in post-trainwreck mob-mollification than Emmy host Seacrest. Even if Spears' apology (and, God willing, an entire do-over performance like the one recently offered by Extra) is met with a shower of catcalls and boos by TV Academy members upset that their big night has been hijacked by a crass, ratings-grabbing publicity stunt, the mesmerizing combination of Seacrest's blinding smile and the hypnotic cadence of his unrelenting positivity will quickly have them cheering like an auditorium full of Idol auditioners who've just been told they're all going to Hollywood.

• Emmys Source: Show in Talks With Britney Spears [USMagazine.com]

All-Baldwin Friday Morning continues here at Defamer with the above clip of the alienated, shouty dad's highly anticipated appearance on today's episode of The View, a segment so exhaustively previewed in the media that its actual broadcast was doomed to anticlimax. Still, even if we feel we've read every obligatory, publicly contrite word before, our role in any celebrity's televised Redemption Tour is to patiently listen and nod along as if we're hearing it all for the first time, lest crisis managers decide such desperation moves have lost their effectiveness and deprive of us future talk show mea culpas.

BONUS! The LAT exhaustively chronicles Baldwin and Basinger's tumultuous relationship. Don't miss the bit about how the actress used a Luna bar to interfere with her ex-husband's "therapeutic involvement" in their daughter's life.

• The View [ABC.com]
• Baldwin-Basinger: Look back in anger [LAT]