Barbara Walters Hails 'Fearless', Intelligent 'View' Co-host Joy Behar

"She is fearless. There's an intelligence there as well as the humor," insists Barbara Walters about none other than, wait for it, "The View" co-host Joy Behar.

Washington Post's Howard Kurtz relayed that gem in his Style section front-pager, "Oh, Joy! Gift of Gab Gives Host New Gig," about Behar's new primetime gig on HLN (formerly known as CNN Headline News).

Yes, this is the same Joy Behar who:

• wondered if Sen. Tim Johnson's (D-S.D.) stroke was a Republican conspiracy
• equated immersion baptism with waterboarding 
• dismissed homeschooled children as "demented"
• lectured Bill O'Reilly to stop "namecalling" although she herself had proudly called Rush Limbaugh a "terrorist"
• mocked Joe "The Plumber" Wurzelbacher's dream of owning his own plumbing company as a "fantasy"

For a comprehensive archive of Behar nuttiness, click here.

To his credit, Kurtz did detail Behar's liberal views -- she complains President Obama is sometimes not liberal enough -- and noted how the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights has complained about her anti-Catholic bigotry, something NewsBusters Publisher and Media Research Center President Brent Bozell has also addressed.