MSNBC notes that Ellen DeGeneres has bounced back nicely since committing career suicide by coming out of the closet.

They say timing is everything. Ellen DeGeneres was a little ahead of her time. In 1997, one year before the premiere of "Will & Grace," with all its openly gay characters, Ellen revealed on her sit-com and in real life that she's gay. Her career went into a free-fall. But with the help of a lost fish named Nemo and a white hot, Emmy award-winning talk show, owned in part by NBC Universal, Ellen has once again found success.

I've just about followed Ellen's entire career, and in her case, timing isn't everything. It helps to be able to recognize what audiences want.

I first saw Ellen doing stand-up on HBO, and thought she was brilliant. On average, female comics aren't as funny as their male counterparts (I'll probably get hammered on that one), but Ellen was definitely an exception. I was delighted to see that she was getting her own TV show, and when her primetime sitcom, "These Friends of Mine", debuted in 1993 it didn't disappoint. It was about her and her quirky friends that lived across the hall, and in this viewer's opinion it was hilarious. But after the hiatus, either Ellen or the network had retooled the show into being centered just on her. The friends were gone. The show still worked pretty well, but in light of the success of "Friends", which debuted in 1994, the new direction seemed like a huge mistake.

Still, "Ellen" was a decent sitcom and it seemed to carry the ratings for the first few years. But when Ellen announced she was a lesbian in 1997 things definitely went down hill. Some would say that Ellen was just ahead of her time. But I think the success of "Will and Grace" (which I don't watch) and downfall of "Ellen" illustrates that it wasn't her homosexuality that killed the show, rather her sudden shift of creative gears. "Will and Grace" have always had a gay theme, whereas "Ellen"'s gay theme was thrust upon an unsuspecting audience. As a regular viewer I was dismayed to see all the other cast members shoved aside as every single show became about Ellen being gay.

Personally, I could care less that Ellen is gay, and had suspected it all along. What it came down to is that I didn't want to watch a show about her being gay. I wanted to watch a show that made me laugh and whose characters I was emotionally invested in. But "Ellen" became a train wreck and just wasn't fun to watch anymore.

In the end, I'm happy to see Ellen is doing well. I've only seen her talk show a few times, but from what I've seen it's witty and very well received. I wish her the best of luck in her career and hope that she's learned to recognize what audiences want and give it to 'em in spades.