On Oct. 13 "The View" hosts reacted to the news that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had ruled out a future run for the presidency. "Hillary Clinton told Anne Curry that she will not be making another run for president of the United States, saying she loves her job as Secretary of State and is looking forward to retirement at some point ... Ya know, that kind of made me sad," Whoopi Goldberg lamented.
Sherri Shepherd called Hillary "victorious" - "an inspiration to women" - and equated the news of her retirement with "being hit in the pit of your stomach" and "deflating a balloon."
"Because - not ever calling Hillary Clinton a quitter, but it's something - even when she pulled out, I felt sad," Shepherd said. "Because as a woman, you just look at Hillary as, ‘You don't quit. You always keep going' ... The fact that she's saying, ‘I think I'm going to stop and retire,' it's just like, no, Hillary!"
While the rest of "The View" tsked and sighed their disappointment, Joy Behar explained why such an "ambitious" lady would throw in the towel. She said, "She doesn't have it in her to do the thing [presidential election] again. She can't do it again."
Goldberg quickly agreed, saying, "That running is really rough. It gets into your personal business. They talk about your legs. They talk about your mama."
"And they got on her when she was real and showed a tear, when they asked her, ‘How do you do it all?'" Shepherd added.
"It's a little bit sad because she is such a great lady, you know, she is such a great lady," Goldberg continued. "People say, ‘Would you ever run for an office?' And I think I wouldn't because it is so brutal .. It would kill me."
Behar empathized with Goldberg, saying she's been there and done that: "Just being in the public eye, I think, you get criticism. There are people who hate me, you know, because of my positions. On the right-wing blogs, they're all over me. And I don't read them, just F.Y.I. But Hillary, she had to endure it. She had to take it in."
If only she could muster the same sympathy for other embattled female politicians. "The View" notoriously ripped apart another 2008 candidate: Sarah Palin.
CMI's Colleen Raezler exposed their obvious contempt for Palin in her article "'Views' from the Left":
Behar questioned Palin's commitment to family values before the election, called her an "airhead" after the election and declared that the "press [is] in love" with Sarah Palin. (Never mind that the press' "love affair" with Palin made Ike and Tina's relationship look like a Disney movie.)
Behar's meager defense was, "It's not personal. It's my country that I'm worried about."
Both Behar and Shepherd applauded Tina Fey's dunce-like impressions of Palin, while Goldberg denied that Fey's impressions "had any real impact on the election." Shepherd said, "They were very funny impressions, but she didn't do anything but shine the light on what was already there." And Behar, who has bluntly called Palin "dumb," concluded that "it's like when you quote President Bush, you know, and you say the crazy things he says, it gets a laugh. You don't even have to write this stuff."
Barbara Walters also attacked Palin, claiming that Palin only went after Letterman's inappropriate remark about her daughter in order to hog more media attention. As CMI pointed out, Walters' obvious left-slant was glaring even to the New York Times. Reporter Jacques Steinberg wrote an article that highlighted Walters distaste toward Palin:
[Walters] pressed Mr. McCain in her first question about whether he actually believed Sarah Palin to be, as he has said, the "greatest" vice-presidential nominee in the nation's history. She wondered aloud whether Ms. Palin could ever be compared to John Adams. (He responded that he should probably be more wary of "hyperbole.") Ms. Walters then asked about Ms. Palin's mandate to be a Washington reformer, asking, "Who is it that Governor Palin is going to reform. You? The Senate?"
Elizabeth Hesselback, the only conservative of the bunch, was the sole defender of Palin on "The View" and was often scolded by her co-hosts, who called her a "talking head" that never admitted when the others had a point.
So, while just a few months ago they happily kicked Palin out of the running with a steel-toed boot, "The View" waved a tearful goodbye to Hillary - an "ambitious" lady that at least will leave when "people still love her."
