Jack Kevorkian, AKA Dr. Death, has a celebrity in his fan club, "View" co-host Whoopi Goldberg.
Discussing the notorious suicide assisting doctor’s run for Congress on the March 25 edition, Goldberg said she’s a "big fan" of Kevorkian "because he believed that he could help people who were in, in a place where no one was helping them." Joy Behar wondered: "Why is he a bad guy? I don’t understand it...it’s over my head somewhere." [Audio available here.]
Elisabeth Hasselbeck expressed concern about a "gray area" and "lines blurring," if for example the one responsible for a suffering person’s care has financial motives for that person’s death. Sherri Shepherd, besides a few jokes, did not contribute much to the conversation. Transcript follows:
WHOOPI GOLDBERG: Here’s something that I think is kind of interesting. Jack Kevorkian, you know Dr. Death, is running for congress in Michigan.
SHERRI SHEPHERD: Don’t let him near McCain.
[laughter]
JOY BEHAR: Woah!
ELISABETH HASSELBECK: Sherri, that’s not, that’s not nice Sherri.
BEHAR: That was a good one, but a bad one.
HASSELBECK: [playfully] You take that back Sherri.
BEHAR: That was a bad one, but a good one.
SHEPHERD: It was bad. I’m sorry.
BEHAR: No, you know what? It’s a good thing. It’s a good thing he’s running because finally a politician with an exit strategy.
[laughter]
SHEPHERD: There you go girl! You can’t stop it.
BEHAR: I mean, the guy-
HASSELBECK: You guys can’t control yourselves can you?
BEHAR: The thing about Kevorkian is that I don’t consider him a bad guy. He helped a guy who had Lou Gehrig’s disease, take himself out of this world because the guy was in excruciating terror. So why is he a bad guy? I don’t understand it. Maybe I’m, it’s over my head somewhere.
GOLDBERG: Because euthanasia, like race, is one of those things nobody wants to talk about. It makes people very uncomfortable. I think euthanasia is, is an important thing and it should be there for people to make that decision if they chose to. It should be available to them with counseling like a lot of other things. And I’m a big fan of Jack’s because he believed that he could help people who were in, in a place where no one was helping them. And where, where it was too much.
HASSELBECK: But the lines get blurry.
GOLDBERG: It can. It can.
HASSELBECK: The lines get blurry if you’re dealing with someone who’s life is almost in control, in someone else’s hands. You know, there are a lot of things. There are a lot of gray areas in that whole conversation.
BEHAR: But it’s hard to kill yourself. It’s very- it’s not easy to kill yourself.
GOLDBERG: Yeah, it’s very hard. It’s very hard.
BEHAR: So, I mean-
SHEPHERD: Those congresspeople better not go to sleep.
HASSELBECK: Sometimes people who say if someone is almost on their way out, in too much pain, can’t control their words and thoughts. And if they have handed over their care to somebody else, and that person say has a vested interest in their financials, you don’t know. There can be a gray area.
GOLDBERG: Pretty much, you know, you have to have certain things in order to follow through with this.
