Joy Behar used her final appearance as co-host of ABC’s The View Friday to actually drop an F-bomb.
Such was directed at the late ABC News anchor Harry Reasoner and for the benefit of co-host Barbara Walters (video follows with transcript and commentary):
JOY BEHAR: Barbara, what can I say Barbara? Thank you for asking me to join you at the table all these years ago. My life hasn’t been the same since. Really it hasn’t. You’re such a legend and a friend of mine. And you’re an icon. And also, if you will allow me, there’s something that I have been meaning to say on your behalf for sixteen years: f--k Harry Reasoner.
This was met with cheers and applause from the members of the studio audience.
After regaining her composure, an obviously shocked Walters said, “Nobody understands that.”
“We get it,” said Behar. “We get it.”
And that’s how Behar signed off her final appearance as co-host.
Of course, Walters was likely right, and probably few in the audience that weren’t members of the media brought in for the event had any idea what Behar was talking about.
For readers that don’t know the story, here’s what Entertainment Weekly reported in 1992 shortly after Reasoner’s death:
For five years, most of them with Howard K. Smith at his side, Harry Reasoner sat in his anchor chair at ABC handing down good news and bad with the self- assurance of Mount Rushmore. But on April 20, 1976, Rushmore registered a 6.0 on the Richter scale when ABC wooed Barbara Walters away from NBC's Today and signed her as an anchor with a record $1-million-a-year contract. That fall, as she took her seat next to Reasoner (Howard K. Smith had already assumed the role of commentator), she became the first woman ever to deliver the evening news from the main desk. Rushmore was rattled.
Although Reasoner publicly maintained that he didn't mind Walters ''as a person and as a woman,'' he privately voiced his displeasure with her to the ABC brass. The network boosted his salary from $200,000 to $500,000 — the same amount Walters was receiving for her anchor duties (the other $500,000 was for her work on specials). But the tensions wouldn't go away. ''You know, Harry,'' she quipped in one especially embarrassing exchange, ''Kissinger didn't do too badly as a sex symbol in Washington.'' Her counterpart just glared: ''Well, you would know more about that than I would.''
Regardless of how Walters was treated by Reasoner, Behar could have voiced her displeasure without the vulgarity.
(HT TVNewser)
