On Tuesday evening it was announced that Whoopi Goldberg, liberal host of ABC News’ daytime talk show “The View,” had been suspended following highly controversial comments about the Holocaust.
“Effective immediately, I am suspending Whoopi Goldberg for two weeks for her wrong and hurtful comments. While Whoopi has apologized, I’ve asked her to take time to reflect and learn about the impact of her comments. The entire ABC News organization stands in solidarity with our Jewish colleagues, friends and communities,” ABC News president Kim Godwin said in a statement.
Goldberg issued a half-hearted apology for her remarks both on twitter and while on the show but the damage had already been done.
The controversy began when Goldberg, during Monday’s broadcast claimed that the Holocaust was “not about race,” because the Nazis and the Jews were both white. She asserted that “man’s inhumanity to man” was the real issue.
Her remarks prompted an immediate response from her cohosts — Joy Behar pointed out the fact that the Nazis had also gone after black people and had considered the Jews to be a different race, and Ana Navarro argued that the Nazis had been white supremacists who also rounded up gypsies and other groups in addition to the Jews.
Goldberg made an appearance with late night host Stephen Colbert, where she seemed to only dig the hole deeper.
“People were very angry, and said no, we are a race. And I understand. I felt differently. I respect everything everyone is saying to me. I don’t want to fake apologize,” she added. “I am very upset that people misunderstood what I was saying. And because of it they are saying I am anti-Semitic, and denying the Holocaust, and all these other things that would never occur to me to do.
“Have you come to understand that the Nazis saw it as race?” Colbert asked. “Asking the Nazis, they would say, ‘Yes, it’s a racial issue.’”
“This is what’s interesting to me because the Nazis lied. It wasn’t,” Goldberg said, and then attempted to split hairs by suggesting it was an ethnic issue rather than a racial one. “They — they had issues with ethnicity, not with race, because most of the Nazis were white people and most of the people they were attacking were white people. So to me, I’m thinking, how can you say it’s about race if you are fighting each other?”
Even after Goldberg’s troubling comments, some of her fellow liberal co-hosts on the show were reportedly furious that the network decided to suspend her.
The Daily Beast reported Tuesday night, “Multiple sources said that Goldberg’s co-hosts Sunny Hostin, Joy Behar, and Ana Navarro are furious with the network’s decision.”
Navarro, who intermittently guest-hosts on the program and was appearing on the show when Goldberg made her comments on Monday, told The Daily Beast, “I love Whoopi Goldberg. I love The View…This was an incredibly unfortunate incident. Whoopi is a lifelong ally to the Jewish community. She is not an antisemite. Period. I am sad. And I have nothing else to say.”
Author: Mitchell Hyatt
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