Yesterday’s New York Times included “Back to ‘Talking Smack’ With Rosie, Donald and Barbara,” in which Jacques Steinberg keeps us up to date on where Barbara Walters and Star Jones are in this mess.

From her perch on “The View” last week, Ms. Walters scolded Mr. Trump over his contention that she regretted hiring Ms. O’Donnell for the talk show, only to get into a backstage shouting match herself with Ms. O’Donnell on Monday that was loud enough to be overheard by others and recounted to The New York Post.

To hear Mr. Trump tell it, even Star Jones — who was effectively fired from “The View” last June, only to stun Ms. Walters on live television by pre-emptively announcing she was leaving — has gotten into the act.

“I just got a congratulatory call from Star Jones,” Mr. Trump related yesterday in a telephone interview, just after noon.

About an hour earlier, on yesterday’s live episode of “The View,” Ms. Walters had the option to ignore the latest salvo from Mr. Trump, an open letter he wrote to Ms. O’Donnell, reprinted in the morning’s edition of The Post, in which he again described a conciliatory phone call he says he received over the Christmas break from Ms. Walters expressing frustration with Ms. O’Donnell.

“Well, he’s at it again,” Ms. O’Donnell told the studio audience yesterday as soon as she had taken her seat on one end of a long glass table on the “View” set, directly opposite Ms. Walters. “You O.K., Barbara?”

“I’m O.K.,” Ms. Walters responded. Then, taking the bait, Ms. Walters added: “That poor, pathetic man.”

“Give me a high five,” Ms. O’Donnell responded as she stretched across the table to meet Ms. Walters’s hands with hers, a “View” equivalent of a tag team in wrestling, however shaky. “He just can’t let go,” Ms. Walters said. “We’re moving on.”

Moving on — that means Rosie’s about to bring up Apprentice ratings and Donald’s gonna concentrate on Barbara, the “sad figurehead dominated by a third-rate comedian,” for a little while.

Out.com reports that even Madonna’s chiming in:

On Thursday’s Today, Madge says she heard about the battle while vacationing and immediately dashed off an e-mail to her old pal O’Donnell. “I have to hear it from the horse’s mouth,” Madonna told host Meredith Vieira. “Basically, I mean, she’s a stand-up comic. I think all stand-up comics talk about provocative things in their monologues before shows, and I think that’s a commonplace thing.” Madonna then admitted to not knowing exactly what was said, “but I have a feeling that if every stand-up comic was penalized for saying politically incorrect things or provocative things, I think they’d all be hung in the public square.”