The View walk off probably wasn’t hard to forsee. Those involved in The View walk off are notoriously controversial figures, with loud opinions on everything under the sun. Putting Bill O’Reilly against the mostly liberal panel of The View was obviously designed to set off fireworks. When they turned to discussing the New York City mosque, their differences over it were even more obvious. Yet Joy Behar and Whoopi Goldberg’s walk-off from The View may have been the most heated display since the Rosie O’Donnell days.
O’Reilly came onto enemy territory to plug his new book, and to discuss the issues of the day. As they discussed President Obama, the topic soon turned to the “Ground Zero Mosque,” and his lack of a clear position on it. But soon enough, the topic went back to the mosque itself, and why O’Reilly opposed it.
The walk off finally came when O’Reilly argued that “Muslims killed us on 9/11.” Because Behar and Goldberg believed he was blaming all Muslims, instead of just the Al-Qaeda extremists, they stormed off the stage in protest.
However, Barbra Walters did not quite have their backs, saying that the discussion should not have ended like that. O’Reilly finally apologized for appearing to smear all Muslims, which got Behar and Goldberg to come back. But the firestorm had already been set – and since O’Reilly and Behar have other shows, they had more to say about it later in the day.
On her HLN show, Behar called O’Reilly’s comments a “pinhead moment,” to borrow from one of his phrases. She said that the walk off was brought on by “hate speech,” to which guest Jesse Ventura agreed with.
Meanwhile, on The O’Reilly Factor, O’Reilly again claimed he wasn’t trying to insult all Muslims, and admitted that he is often offensive. However, he also argued against the “political correctness” around 9/11.
The heated argument actually brought more headlines to the mosque than it has seen in weeks. Before The View , the “Ground Zero mosque” argument was fading away as the midterms approached. Most of the political arguments in recent days were about Christine O’Donnell, and whether the Republicans are about to retake Congress.
But as O’Reilly, Behar and Goldberg often do, they put an issue back in the headlines with their loud arguments. It was reminiscent of their old days, back when O’Reilly was FOX News’s most controversial pundit, and The View was regularly subjected to Rosie O’Donnell and Elisabeth Hasselbeck’s spats.
Thanks to The View walk off, the controversial pundits and mosque are dominating the political conversation again, after taking a break for a while. But at the least, they actually found a new way to do it this time.
Sources
Huffington Post- “Joy Behar: Bill O’Reilly’s ‘Hate Speech’ Why I Walked Off The View”
Entertainment Weekly- “Bill O’Reilly on ‘my explosive appearance on The View’: ‘I am often offensive, everyone knows that'”
