Sometimes you pick up the most interesting tidbits in unexpected places. Like when you’re watching The Hour with George Stroumboulopoulos, and Valerie Bertinelli is on to talk about her new book, Losing It: And Gaining My Life Back One Pound at a Time, and they get sidetracked. Follow the links to see the video and learn that Schneider’s moustache on One Day at a Time was glued on every week. Then they get onto politics.

VB: I’m already in trouble, some people don’t even want to read my book because I say one bad thing about George Bush.

GS: [What did you say?]

VB: Well–that I don’t agree with my father. He’s a Republican and he raised me to be a Democrat, and so I’ve got the Republicans pissed off at me now, and it’s like, wait, whoa, dude, slow down–

GS: [You don’t really care what they think?]

VB: Well, I’m not ultra-liberal and I’m not ultra-conservative, and I think the United States is not either, we’re in the middle, and our voices in the middle aren’t being heard, and that’s what I was trying to say
…

VB: Valerie Bertinelli, shut up!

GS: [No, but, but there is that element, I’m wondering, because people do listen to what you say, or at least they…]

VB: Well, my voice isn’t any more — I mean, I have a platform, but I’m not any more important than anybody else but I am allowed, I mean I do vote, I’ve been voting since 1979, so I’m allowed to say who, you know, I feel comfortable with in our country, but, and I’m not comfortable with our administration, I’m not comfortable with the war that we’re in, I think we should have finished Afghanistan, and oh I can’t believe I’m going here. *sigh*

GS: [bring it on] (applause)

VB: no I’ll get more people hating me, but do you know what, I think, I think it’s very important that we didn’t finish our war in Afghanistan, and, and now the Taliban’s coming back in, an–and they’re getting strength again, and if we had just finished Afghanistan, and really done the work and not spread our poor Godforsaken troops so thinly

GS: [could you say this in the States? Could go in the states and talk like this?]

VB: Nnoooo…. as a matter of fact, book sales have gone down dramatically!

GS: [You can already write “New York Times Number 1 Bestseller” if you want]

VB: Right, okay, but I — I just believe in our troops, and I believe in our young men and women, and I just, I think they’ve been given a-a bad rap and a bad place to go, and we shouldn’t — (frustrated, to self) oh, shuttup!

GS: [keep talking, I’ll cancel the commercial break, just keep talking! Ah, do you look at it different because you’re a mother, you’re a mother, you have a son who’s at that age]

VB: Right, and if it isn’t– you know, yeah, I don’t want my son going to war, for a war that I don’t believe in. I believe in Afghanistan, but I don’t believe in Iraq, but I believe in the men and women over there, and I think we need to support them, and I don’t agree that if you don’t support the troo– that, –you can support the troops but not support the administration–

She kind of flubs the ending there, but I think it’s pretty clear what she’s saying. Maybe it’ll be good for book sales in Canada.