On Friday’s edition of The View, co-host Joy Behar seemed to lash out at NewsBusters and other critics for calling them out on Thursday for the bigotry they showed towards Justices Clarence Thomas and Amy Coney Barrett, suggesting they were not a real “black man” or “a woman,” respectively, by use of air quotes. And she seemed to cry sexism by saying the “baloney attacks” were directed at “these women.”
“You know what bothers me? It's been bothering me this week. I want to bring it up. They attacked us about the Supreme Court,” she said to the rest of the cast in the middle of a conversation about the reaction to their show from the week.
She then proceeded to mischaracterize the criticism and seemed to cry sexism as the source of the backlash. “‘What do these women know about the Supreme Court?’ ‘How dare they talk about…’” she claimed before trailing off in a huff.
With a possible sarcastic question of “really” from co-host Sunny Hostin, as if she didn’t notice too, Behar ignored the core of the criticism and argued that most of the cast (excluding Hostin since she’s a lawyer) were laypeople and should be given some slack when discussion complex matters such as the Supreme Court:
BEHAR: Look. I would just like to make a point. I am -- for 25 years, an informed American citizen. I am not a pundit. I am not a lawyer. I am not an expert. I'm a comedian originally. And I read the paper and I make an informed decision of what I think about it.
HOSTIN: Well, I’m a member of the Supreme Court Bar.
BEHAR: So, for them too -- You're the only one on this panel – maybe you too because you're a lawyer. But we're not lawyers and we're not Supreme Court aficionados.
“So, cut it out out there with your baloney attacks. We don't want to hear it,” she decried.
On Thursday, NewsBusters was the first to report how Behar had used air quotes/finger quotes to cast doubt on Thomas’s blackness and the fact that Coney Barrett was a woman:
Who they say, well, she’ll go against abortion rights and she's a “woman.” So that was deliberate, I think. Clarence Thomas, “a black guy, a black man,” a justice, okay, I'll give it to him. He's a smart guy, but he is to the right of Attila the Hun, this guy. And they put him in there saying, oh, a black man will go against voting rights, which is what he does.
Hostin had her own bigoted line suggesting Thomas “doesn't really represent the black community.”
Justices aren’t supposed to represent communities, but since Hostin thinks they should that means he’s not really black.
Behar also went on a rant spreading misinformation that the entire judiciary was a “dictatorial branch of the government.” “I always feel like that particular branch of government is so anti-democracy,” she said at the time. “To call that a democratic institution seems an oxymoron.”
This dismissal of the outrage at The View’s bigotry was made possible because of lucrative sponsorships from Dawn and Carvana. Their contact information is linked.
The transcript is below, click "expand" to read:
ABC’s The View
January 28, 2022
11:17:57 a.m. Eastern(…)
JOY BEHAR: You know what bothers me? It's been bothering me this week. I want to bring it up. They attacked us about the Supreme Court. ‘What do these women know about the Supreme Court?’ ‘How dare they talk about…’
SUNNY HOSTIN: Really?
BEHAR: Look. I would just like to make a point. I am -- for 25 years, an informed American citizen. I am not a pundit. I am not a lawyer. I am not an expert. I'm a comedian originally. And I read the paper and I make an informed decision of what I think about it.
HOSTIN: Well, I’m a member of the Supreme Court Bar.
BEHAR: So, for them too -- You're the only one on this panel – maybe you too because you're a lawyer. But we're not lawyers and we're not Supreme Court aficionados. So, cut it out out there with your baloney attacks. We don't want to hear it.
[Laughter]
ANA NAVARRO: You cannot -- frankly you can't be on social media and care about the hatred -- oh, you're getting a call now.
BEHAR: I don't want to talk about it. I don't know who that was, but --
NAVARRO: You can't be on social media and care about the hatred that you’re getting back.
HOSTIN: Right.
NAVARRO: If you are sensitive to it -- first of all, you let them know that they're getting to you. So, to me, the best route is to just ignore them. And if it really affects you that much, then don't be on social media.
(…)
