In Defense of Whoopi Goldberg

Poor Whoopi Goldberg. One day she’s a popular contributor to ABC’s talk show “The View.” The next day she gets so publicly rebuked for voicing what some viewers believed were ignorant, Anti-Semitic comments that she gets suspended by the President of ABC News for her “wrong and hurtful comments.”

So in less than 48 hours, she gave an opinion that reflected her personal viewpoint as a black woman, then got punished for talking about it on a talk show that had been especially created for women to share their personal viewpoints.

What a way to kick off Black History Month!

What’s completely missing in this narrative, however, is the failed responsibility of the show’s producers and ABC TV and the Disney Corporation that owns them. Why this mega- corporation would keep airing this talk show but keep on muzzling Whoopi and the others remains a mystery.

Even more perplexing is the way these women are continually prevented from clarifying, even explaining, their viewpoints about complex topics — especially controversial ones. Needless to say, the touchier the topic, the longer the conversation should continue in order to prevent misunderstandings. Without necessary time and attention given to their discussions, of course misunderstandings will inevitably ensue.

And that’s exactly what happened during a discussion that began with the banning of Maus, then abruptly ended after the talk turned to the Holocaust.

If you watch “The View” on a regular basis, you’re already familiar with the way discussions are killed. You already know Whoopi gets interrupted on a regular basis. During the past few years, I’ve seen her become repeatedly exasperated when she’s told to go to commercial in the middle of meaningful discussions. Her orders come either through her personal ear piece or with background music that gets increasingly louder and louder. Very disruptive, very annoying. Whether she’s in the middle of a poignant exchange with a guest or involved in a panel discussion that’s progressing in an interesting way, she has to stop. She has to bring all conversations to a screeching halt with a terse “we’ll be right back,” then go to commercial break. Then after the barrage of TV ads, the show often resumes with a new topic — as if the former unresolved discussion had never taken place!

I’m not exaggerating when I say these commercial interruptions can come every 7-8 minutes, either.

Unfortunately, these problematic time constraints were completely overlooked in the reporting of this “incident.” Such vital information that would have explained what actually happened that day got lost in angry, emotional rhetoric. Maybe the critics haven’t been actually watching “The View.” In reality, Whoopi and others on the show were prevented from agreeing to a definition of the word “race.” And that pressure to beat the clock, which resulted in an inability to find common ground on what this word meant, led to far reaching consequences — and blame — for Whoopi Goldberg.

What’s so ironic is that this major misunderstanding began about book banning — something all the women objected to and agreed was wrong.

In this case, the book removed from the school curriculum in Tennessee was Maus. What was so significant at this particular work? Well, there wasn’t enough time(again) for “The View” to delve into what made this book so remarkable. There was just a description that it was a graphic novel about the Holocaust. I’ve only read excerpts of it, so I can’t properly and ethically review it for you, dear readers. By all accounts that I’ve heard and read, though, all signs point to it being a remarkable achievement.

Maus remains the first — and, to this day, the ONLY — graphic novel to be awarded The Pulitzer Prize. But it’s nothing like a typical comic book. It’s both accurate documentation and creative depiction from artist/author Art Spiegelman as he interviews his father, a Polish Jew and Holocaust Survivor. It retells his family’s story using mice as Jews and cats as Nazis. That might sound strange, but it works amazingly well as a learning tool — so appropriate for educational, historical purposes.

No one paragraph here can really do it literary or artistic justice. So if you want to know more about it, dear readers, go online and check out Wikipedia and Sam Leith’s article posted from The Spectator. Now think about this: it took me time to write the preceding paragraph, as well as this one. Then it took you time to read it. We made time to understand it. But ABC and The Mouse Factory and their shareholders couldn’t allot enough time for this discussion to naturally progress in a way that would provided needed definition and ensured clarity.

What ignited the misunderstanding was a quip about why Maus had been banned in the first place. Someone said the school objected to profanity used and a naked body in the book. Another speaker(I think it was Joy Behar) said something like all those millions of people who died and they didn’t like the book because of some bad words and a naked body? Then a remark was made about race, to which Whoopi said, “It wasn’t about race.”

There was a dramatic pause of audible silence. Then everyone began talking at once. Some murmurs about “race” and “master race” could be faintly heard, but it was difficult to tell who was speaking.

Then Joy Behar’s voice cut through the others to ask Whoopi, “What was it about then?”

“It was about man’s inhumanity to man,” Whoopi replied.

And she wasn’t wrong. Her statement was an accurate one. Every war, regardless of the reasons for fighting, always ends up being about man’t inhumanity to man. People should never be torturing, dehumanizing, and/or killing each other on the grand scale of war. It simply should never happen. But it does, and such cruelty defies what it means to be human. Whenever war takes place, it’s always tragically inhumane.

But as often is the case when people engage in animated discussion, a single talking point — in this case, race — persisted. So Whoopi countered with an observation about the visual identification of race. Her point was that if you looked at HER and HER black skin, you would immediately see and know what her race was. Her race would be obvious. But you wouldn’t be able to so easily see and know what someone’s religious beliefs were. So Whoopi gave an analogy to illustrate her viewpoint and then started to further clarify her perspective.

Then she got interrupted — AS USUAL — before she could completely finish and and clarify her position. The music came on and got louder and louder. So she had to stop talking and go to a commercial break — again. After the requisite ads aired, “The View” returned. Whoopi gave a brief recap of what she’d said earlier. Her words were more hurried than they should have been, however, not because she was being flippant but because she had no time to elaborate on her position. She had to talk faster — which made her attempted apology sound insincere. So she apologized even more.

She apologized on “The Late Show” that night and on “The View” — again — the next morning. But these regrets came too late: her vilification had already begun after her “man’s inhumanity to man” remark.

Oddly enough, the “it” in “What was it about then?” was never made specific. Did “it” refer to World War II or the Holocaust itself? Did “it” refer to why the war started? Or to the reasons behind the fighting in the first place? Who knows…Many historians believe that the lunatic Adolf Hitler, with his warped obsession to conquer the world, was the root of everything evil here.

Maybe what “The View” really needed was an appointed “clarifier” who could have made sure TV viewers understood what the intended meanings really were. But that would take more time away from the all-important commercials.

Then again, I must emphasize that no real definition of race was clearly given or agreed upon by everyone on the show’s panel. You’d be surprised at the number of definitions that could have been appropriately used in “The View’s” discussion. My American Heritage Dictionary lists several:

A local geographic or global human population distinguished as a more or less distinct group by genetically transmitted physical characteristics;

Mankind as a whole;

Any group of people united or classified together on the basis of common history, nationality, or geographical distribution;

A genealogical line; lineage, family;

Any group of people more or less distinct from all others: the race of statesmen.

So which of these 5 definitions should have been chosen for the discussion in question? Depending on your own particular viewpoint, you could have chosen any one of these definitions and still have been correct. Apparently, Whoopi’s choice wasn’t the same one the Anti-Defamation League would have chosen. Does that mean she’s insensitive, ignorant, or uncaring?

Or does Whoopi Goldberg have to be a practicing Jew in order to voice opinions about anything that involves Judaism?

I don’t pretend to know all the answers to anything about Hitler and the Holocaust. What I do know for sure is that my definition of race, along with Whoopi’s, was greatly influenced by the messages that Jews themselves have said about their own identity.

As I was growing up(even later on, as an aging adult) I kept hearing that defining Jews as a race was a big misconception. The messages I got claimed Judaism was a religion, not a racial identity. Over and over, I heard(and learned) that the terms Master Race, Aryan Race, Jewish Race, as well as inferior or superior race were full-blown fallacies from a fascist madman. No race is superior or inferior because we’re all riders on the planet Earth(okay, it was the Sixties).

In fact, I was told that using the term “Jewish Race” was incorrect AND offensive because Judaism is a religion that people — all people — can choose to believe and practice. Calling the Jews a race, in other words, would be like calling the Mormons or the Methodists or the Muslims or The Greatest Generation Who Fought in WWII a race.

So to say “it” — whether “it” is The Holocaust or World War II or the reasons for fighting the war — is about race would be to validate Hitler’s racism about different races. It would validate and seem to agree with his BS propaganda and his diabolical and arbitrary scapegoating of the Jewish people. Out of respect for Jews and their personal history I’m not going to do that. I’m going to go along with what I’ve been going along with most of my life. If Jews want to be remembered and respected as believers of their religion, all right. I’m on your side. If, however, you change your collective mind and want to be respected as a race or tribe, okay, I understand. I’m still on your side.

I even understand why an oppressed religious group that’s been persecuted for centuries would immediately assume that a black woman who had a different personal opinion about race might seem ignorant or insensitive. I can even see why you might think her rhetoric sounds anti-Semitic. What I don’t understand here is how quickly Whoopi got vilified and why so many people in the media immediately attacked her. I must take exception to the way her opinion has gotten linked to the increase in anti-Semitic incidents. Whoopi was in no way demeaning or belittling the tragedy of The Holocaust. Her comments were not intended to incite attacks against Jews, either. To say they “weren’t anti-Semitic in intent but still could bring about anti-Semitic effect” isn’t just unfair, it’s short-sighted.

Let’s not forget that this woman epitomizes the word humanitarian. For years, Whoopi Goldberg has freely given her time and support to countless benefits and causes. She’s contributed money to various charities that are too numerous to list here. She’s even taken the stage name of Goldberg to honor the Jewish connections in her life. Moreover, she has a history of working well with people from all walks of life. She’s really a good person. And yet, because her background as a black woman has given her a perspective of race and racism that differs from a small religious group, she’s denounced for being anti-Semitic?

Oh, not intentionally anti-Semitic, her detractors are quick to point out. And yet, they still insist her speech had the effect of anti-Semitism. NEWSFLASH: raging anti-Semites aren’t going to be influenced by a woman named Goldberg. In fact, they’re not going to pay any attention at all to anything a black woman named Goldberg says. These people have long been intolerant of Judaism, long before Whoopi Goldberg ever appeared on “The View.”

For anyone in the public eye, though, even the insinuation of being anti-Semitic is the kiss of death. Now Whoopi has this indelible mark of accusation on her character that will be hard to erase, harder to forget. If America really did have such a serious problem with accepting Jews — another broad sweeping generalization I keep hearing these days — Jews and Gentiles alike wouldn’t be piling on Whoopi Goldberg and rebuking her in the way they’re been doing. Furthermore, an anti-Semitic America wouldn’t have helped create the state of Israel and wouldn’t have given such tremendous support to this nation state for the past 74 years, either.

So not ALL Americans hate the Jews. Many, many Americans really do care about these charges of anti-Semitism. They care so much they’ve been willing to publicly denounce Whoopi, even suspend her from her job.

This brings me to the final observation on ABC TV. Until the network’s news department — which has taken over operation and management of “The View” from the entertainment division — stops using “The View” to promote its news specials and streaming services and starts giving its panel the freedom to speak, Whoopi will continue to experience difficulty in giving any view.