Whoopi Goldberg is taking a leave of absence from “The View” — but not, as it turns out, as a well-earned forced vacation after a series of outbursts that would have ended the tenure of any of the show’s token conservatives.
Instead, according to the entertainment news site Extra, she’s leaving the show for a bit to film a streaming series in Scotland.
According to Extra, co-host Joy Behar announced Monday that Goldberg would be taking a leave of absence.
“If you’re wondering where Whoopi is, the girl’s got a movie she’s making and she will be back when she finishes whatever she’s doing. So, she’s gone for a while,” Behar said.
Goldberg is starring as the villain in an adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s fantasy novel “Anansi Boys” for Amazon Prime. Considering it stars my second-least favorite “View” host in a film adapted from a book by one of my least favorite novelists on arguably the worst major streaming platform, I won’t be watching. Whoopi is excited, however.
“I have been a fan of this book for a very long time,” Goldberg told the Hollywood news site Variety in a story published last week. “When Neil Gaiman told me it was being brought to the screen, I did everything I could to be part of it to help make people aware of Anansi and all his magic.”
Whatever. The point is that she’s off “The View” until May 2 — but only to fulfill professional obligations. However, it’s worth noting that if Goldberg weren’t a liberal and had gone on any of the on-air rants she’s indulged in recently, she’d be off “The View” until May 2 and beyond because “The View” would no longer be one of her professional obligations.
Let’s recap, shall we?
On Jan. 31, Goldberg insisted during a debate on “The View” that the Holocaust was “not about race.”
“It’s about man’s inhumanity to man. That’s what it’s about,” she said, adding “these [Nazis and Jews] are two white groups of people. But you’re missing the point, you’re missing the point. The minute you turn it into race, it goes down this alley. Let’s talk about it for what it is: It’s how people treat each other. It’s a problem. It doesn’t matter if you’re black or white.”
That night, she went on Stephen Colbert’s late-night show and continued to defend the comments, saying that “as a black person, I think of race as being something that I can see.”
Related:
“When you talk about being a racist, you can’t call this racism,” Goldberg told Colbert. “This was evil. This wasn’t based on skin. You couldn’t tell who was Jewish. You had to delve deeply and figure it out. My point is: They had to do the work.
“If the Klan is coming down the street and I’m standing with a Jewish friend, I’m going to run, but if my friend decides not to run, they’ll get passed by most times because you can’t tell who is Jewish. You don’t know.”
This ended with a two-week suspension for Goldberg and a pro forma apology, saying that the Holocaust “is indeed about race because Hitler and the Nazis considered Jews to be an inferior race.”
Even still, the New York Post reported Goldberg was “livid” over the suspension and threatened to quit the show.
After President Joe Biden’s State of the Union speech — in which Colorado Republican Rep. Lauren Boebert interrupted the president as he talked about flag-draped coffins to remind him of the fatalities in the Kabul airport bombing, which he had failed to mention — Goldberg had this message: “Who the hell do you think you are, little girl?”
The “imagine if this were a conservative” turnabout game is tiresome, I’ll grant you. The reason it feels so overused, however, is because, sadly, it’s so instructive on so many occasions.
Imagine, if you will, Meghan McCain used the same language about a “squad” member who interrupted a Republican president’s speech — something that’s certainly not out of the realm of possibility. When House Speaker Nancy Pelosi essentially interrupted the end of then-President Donald Trump’s final State of the Union by theatrically tearing up her copy of the speech on camera, what if McCain had said, “Who do you think you are, old crone?”
So, would McCain get 15 minutes to clean out her office or would she just be summarily escorted out of the building? You be the judge.
Finally, let’s not forget the out-of-touch rant Goldberg engaged in after slap-gate at this year’s Oscars. In that incident, co-host Tara Setmayer criticized Hollywood’s out-of-touch “elites” for giving Will Smith a standing ovation for winning Best Actor less than an hour after assaulting comedian Chris Rock on stage.
“But then they give him a standing ovation, though, Whoopi. Which I think again goes back to why some people feel like Hollywood elites are a bunch of hypocrites,” Setmayer said. “Because they go out there and they give these statements of moral superiority about things and political statement and then –“
Goldberg then interrupted and told Setmayer to“stop with this ‘elite’ stuff.”
“A lot of us work for a living. We work, we collect the check, we got families, we try to do the same thing, the good stuff that everybody else tries to do. And it really pisses me off when people start to talk about people who work in Hollywood,” she said.
“If you’re pissed off about somebody or how they act, don’t put it on all of us, because that’s like saying all black people like chicken.”
Exactly. Hollywood entertainers are just like the rest of us. For instance, when we repeatedly and publicly insist in a work environment that the Holocaust had nothing to do with race, we all get the same two-week suspension and get to return to our job as if nothing really happened.
Saying Goldberg and others in Hollywood are “elites” is bigotry on the level of “saying all black people like chicken,” the same way Goldberg twice denying the Holocaust was about race isn’t bigotry on any level because it “wasn’t based on skin.”
They’re not treated any differently — which is why, after all this, Whoopi is off to make a movie in Scotland. Just like what would happen to the rest of us if we acted like Goldberg did, right?
Author: C. Douglas Golden
Source: Western Journal: Whoopi Goldberg Missing from 'The View' After Outbursts: 'She's Gone for a While'
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