Barbara Walters after Joy Behar and Whoopie Goldberg walked offstage because of Bill O’Reilly’s comments: You have just seen what should not happen. We should be able to have discussions without washing our hands, and screaming and walking off stage. I love my colleagues, but that should no have happened.
Bill O’Reilly: “Let me break this to you. Seventy percent of Americans don’t want that mosque down there.” [Later cited a CNN poll.]
William James “Bill” O’Reilly, Jr. (born September 10, 1949) is an American television host, author, syndicated columnist and political commentator. He is the host of the political commentary program The O’Reilly Factor on the Fox News Channel, which is the most watched cable news program on American television. During the late 1970s and 1980s, he worked as a news reporter for various local television stations in the United States and eventually for CBS News and ABC News. From 1991 to 1995, he was anchor of the entertainment news program Inside Edition.
In early 2007, researchers from the Indiana University School of Journalism published a report that analyzed O’Reilly’s “Talking Points Memo” segment on FoxNews. Using analysis techniques developed in the 1930s by the Institute for Propaganda Analysis, the study concluded that O’Reilly used propaganda, frequently engaged in name calling, and consistently cast non-Americans as threats. O’Reilly responded, asserting that “the terms ‘conservative,’ ‘liberal,’ ‘left,’ ‘right,’ ‘progressive,’ ‘traditional’ and ‘centrist’ were considered name-calling if they were associated with a problem or social ill.” The study’s authors claimed those terms were only considered name-calling when linked to derogatory qualifiers. Fox News producer Ron Mitchell wrote an op-ed in which he accused the study’s authors of seeking to manipulate their research to fit a predetermined outcome. Mitchell argued that by using tools developed for examining propaganda, the researchers presupposed that O’Reilly propagandized.
Joy Behar: “This is America. This is America.”
Joy Behar (née Occhiuto; born October 7, 1942) is an American comedian, writer, actress, and a co-host of the talk show The View. Behar began hosting her own gossip news and commentary program in the fall of 2009, titled The Joy Behar Show on CNN’s sister network, HLN.
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL), in an open letter to Behar, admonished her description of then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld as “Hitler-like,” noting that “Hitler’s actions during the Second World War and his responsibility for the Holocaust have no parallel in history.” The ADL described Behar’s comparison as “inappropriate and offensive,” noting that Hitler’s name should not be “taken out of context or used for personal attacks or vendettas.”
Behar has also drawn criticism numerous times from the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights. Catholic League president William A. Donohue remarked that Behar, who was raised a Roman Catholic, “is no stranger to Catholic bashing,” pointing to her statement, “Don’t you remember when you went to Communion? ‘In vino veritas.’ The priests were all drunk, don’t you remember?” The Catholic League maintains, “There is an anti-Catholic animus evident among the panelists on The View, with Rosie O’Donnell and Joy Behar being the worst offenders.”
Whoopie Goldberg: “So you’re saying that Americans are not smart enough to recognize that while it is part of our constitution to say freedom of religion and freedom to worship … and there were 70 families who are Muslim who also died in that building. So you’re saying that his (Obama’s) saying thay have the right to do it and not saying anymore than that is why his approval rating has gone down.”
Whoopi Goldberg (Caryn Elaine Johnson; November 13, 1955) is an American comedian, actress, singer-songwriter, political activist, and talk show host of The View.
Goldberg’s first appearance on the show — replacing Rosie O’Donnell — was controversial when she made statements about Michael Vick’s dogfighting as being “part of his cultural upbringing” and “not all that unusual” in parts of the South. Another comment that stirred controversy was the statement that the Chinese “have a very different relationship to cats” and that “you and I would be very pissed if somebody ate kitty.” Co-host Elisabeth Hasselbeck defended Goldberg — saying that her comments were taken out of context by the press, because she repeated several times that she did not condone Vick’s behavior.
Goldberg also created controversy when on September 28, 2009, during a discussion of Roman Polanski’s case, she stated that Polanski’s rape of a thirteen year old in 1977 was not “rape-rape”. Goldberg later clarified that she had intended to highlight the exact charge brought against Polanski, namely statutory rape, as unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor, rather than rape with an unwilling participant.
After comedian Kathy Griffin referred to Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown’s daughters as “prostitutes”, Goldberg said that if anyone insulted her daughter like that, she exclaimed, “I would beat their ass.” The audience reacted with shock, and support and applauded.
On April 1, 2010, Whoopi Goldberg joined Cyndi Lauper in the launch of her Give a Damn campaign to bring a wider awareness of discrimination of the GLBT community as part of her True Colors Fund. The campaign is set to bring straight people in to stand up with the gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender community and stop discrimination.
Barbara Walters: “It was extremists. You can not take a whole religion and demean them …”
Barbara Walters (born September 25, 1929) is an American broadcast journalist and author, who has hosted morning television shows (Today and The View), the television newsmagazine (20/20), and co-anchor of the ABC Evening News and correspondent on ABC World News (then ABC Evening News).
In 2007 Barbara defended co-host Rosie O’ Donnell after she made slanderous remarks against Donald Trump and the winner of the miss USA pageant. Donald firmly responded by saying, “Barbara is off the list.”
On March 3, 1999, her Today Show interview of Monica Lewinsky was seen by a record 74 million viewers — the highest rating ever for a journalist’s interview. Barbara Walters asked Lewinsky, “What will you tell your children about this matter?” and Lewinsky replied, “I guess Mommy made some mistakes,” at which point Walters turned to viewers and said, “And that is the understatement of the century” to close the interview.
Elisabeth Hasselbeck did not get many words in on this segment of the show.