When Rosie O'Donnell left The View in a huff because she had a fight with a weirdo, there was a chance that The View would become dull in her absence – and then they brought up the subject of killing dogs.
Yesterday saw Whoopi Goldberg's first appearance on The View filling Rosie O'Donnell's shoes. When she was first announced as The View's new moderator, Whoopi Goldberg promised that she wouldn't be as massively opinionated as Rosie, which meant that when the subject turned to an American footballer who faces jail for financing a dog-fighting organisation and directly participating in the drowning and hanging of under-performing dogs, Whoopi Goldberg stuck to her word and refused to say anything contentious about it. Except for when she said that all people from that part of America like drowning dogs so it's all OK. Oh, we're paraphrasing – but that's mostly the gist.
Rosie O'Donnell-period The View was characterised by Rosie's vehement refusal to back down on any issue whatsoever. It didn't matter if she started fights with monkey-haired reality TV stars or her arguments spiralled out into uncomfortable ten-minute split-screen screechfests that Rosie would rather quit The View than apologise for. But when Rosie O'Donnell left The View to concentrate on writing her memoirs and not hosting any gameshows, it left a very important void – the void that needed to tell Elisabeth Hasselbeck to shut up her creationist wankery every now and again.
And that void was filled by The View's newest member Whoopi Goldberg, whose arrival signalled a new period of calm discussion rather than the rabid spittle-spraying of old. When Danny DeVito visited Whoopi's The View he'd sensibly discuss his new drinks range instead of drunkenly vomiting sick into his mouth like he used to. And when the case of Michael Vick – the NFL sportsman suspended and facing jail for participating in an illegal dog-fighting ring, including involvement in the brutal murders of some dogs – came up, Whoopi Goldberg very calmly told everyone that murdering dogs isn't wrong because everyone does it where Michael Vick comes from. The New York Post reports:
The "Hot Topics" section turned bad, very bad, when Whoopi brought up NFL dog-killer Michael Vick… Yes, newly mellow-fellow Goldberg, who has said hers would not be a contentious tenure, actually defended Vick, saying that all that nasty business really wasn't Vick's fault because, after all, in the culture he comes from, this kind of thing is normal. What culture is that? … "The deep South," Whoopi said, as though pitbull fights there are as common as Dairy Queens and beauty queens. "It's like cockfighting in Puerto Rico," she said. "There are certain things that are indicative to certain parts of the country."
You see? Whoopi Goldberg on The View is just like Whoopi Goldberg on Star Trek: The Next Generation, dishing out reasonable, level-headed commentary about other cultures, only with more of an emphasis on how brilliant it is to torture and kill dogs in illegal fighting rigs. And this was just on her first day – give Whoopi Goldberg a week and she'll be saying how genocide is Ok because they did it in Burundi once.
As always, to put this in context for British readers, Whoopi Goldberg discussing Michael Vick's dog fighting on The View is like the GMTV weathergirl saying that she doesn't mind if Wayne Rooney goes badger-baiting on Loose Women. And, understandably, that's sort of a big deal if you're into that kind of thing.
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Si Daugherty says
Walters gets bimbo Rosie on, bimbo makes idiotic comment (unscripted?), lots of news furor, ratings go up, bimbo quits, Walters gets bimbo Whoopi on, bimbo makes idiotic comment (unscripted?), lots of news furor, ratings go up. Another throw-away bimbo comes on.