Ever the classy bunch, the ladies of "The View" spent a few minutes Monday mocking incoming Speaker of the House John Boehner for tearing up during an interview with CBS's Lesley Stahl.
The usual suspects, apparently no longer bothered by dramatic showings of disrespect towards national leaders, hit Boehner with characteristically immature and uninformed attacks.
The bigger surprise, though, was self-proclaimed "objective" reporter Barbara Walters, who claimed that Boehner "has an emotional problem," since "every time he talks about something that's not 'raise taxes,' he cries."
Elizabeth Hasselbeck was the only panelist to defend Boehner. And though her political leanings, as well as Joy Behar's and Whoopi Goldberg's, are a bit more apparent, Walters is supposedly the "objective" one of the bunch - or at least so she claims. The following exchange took place in a 2008 episode of "The View":
GOLDBERG: You know, Tim Russert just passed away because we were talking about him yesterday. And it got us really talking about journalists, you know and because people were saying, "well, he’s such a great journalist but he didn’t ask the hard questions." Or "he was a great journalist and he did ask the hard questions." I mean, what makes a journalist now? I mean, because now we see commentators and everyone seems to have an opinion, but it, it didn’t use to be that way. Barbara, you should talk to that, yeah?
BARBARA WALTERS: Supposedly, supposedly a network, like ABC, has certain rules. The rules are, for example, we don’t go to fund raisers. We’re not allowed to go to fund raisers because we’re not supposed to show preference for one candidate over another. And you do not give your personal opinions. Now, obviously, if you’re doing an interview, and I’ve interviewed, you know, dozens of presidents and heads of state. And so, you can ask certain questions to draw them out and let them hang themselves or let them praise themselves. But you are not supposed to give your opinions. That was the way we were trained. And that’s what Tim Russert did. But, what he would do very often is to take their quotations. What they said ten years ago, two years ago and what they did now. But now we find in order to get very high ratings and especially on the cable programs, you got to have opinions. Bill O’Reilly, why is he so popular? Well, he’s smart, but he’s got opinions…
HASSELBECK: People now, people now when they listen to the news, or now, it’s so much more, almost dine as you please, as it is with the radio. People now go to the internet and will only look up sources that will give them the information they want. When they listen to a news report, they’re more wondering, I think, what their journalist, what their position is and there are so many like you, Barbara.
WALTERS: Do you know my political- we’re together almost every day. Do you know my political opin- I know yours- do you know mine, or what my political opinions are?
BEHAR: I sort of get it, but not really.
HASSELBECK: I may guess, but you’ve been objective.
WALTERS: This was the way I was trained, but you know, it’s more exciting, obviously, to give your opinions.
Like, say, the opinion that John Boehner "has an emotional problem"? Unless Walters has a psychology degree that we're unaware of, that certainly is an opinion, and, given her subsequent comment about the issue of tax hikes, a politically loaded one at that.
Walters can drop the "objective mediator" act.
(Video via Greg Hengler at Townhall.)
