Female empowerment is all the rage these days.
Our culture needed a successful “Wonder Woman” film to empower the next generation of girls. Actresses should speak out against salary disparities to shatter Hollywood’s glass ceiling. We must combat fat shaming to ensure teen girls enter the world fully empowered.
Some of this media chatter is justified. Other debates are downright silly. Your daughter can still grow up to be a scientist with or without a Lady Ghostbuster movie.
So why aren’t we hearing feminist wails against “The View”?
On paper, the long-running talk show is precisely what the feminist movement craves. “The View” lets women discuss the latest news with zero mansplaining.
But have you actually watched it? What should be Empowerment TV is more like Cringe Theater.
Try not to roll your eyes as the group grills the issues du jour. They rarely do their homework, talk over each other as if it were their first time on TV and gang up on the group’s sole conservative voice, Jedediah Bila.
And their arguments! Inane doesn’t begin to describe the banter.
This isn’t the case of a conservative critic attacking a show on ideological grounds. MSNBC’s “The Rachel Maddow Show” is as openly progressive as any news program. You won’t feel your brain cells wilting while you watch, though.
That’s how it feels to endure “The View.”
Need examples?
The panel invited former Ferguson, Miss. Police Chief Tom Jackson on the show recently to discuss his new book. The discredited, “Hands up, don’t shoot” lie came up pertaining to the death of Michael Brown by police officer Darren Wilson. Co-host Sonny Hostin argued that even though the Ferguson case didn’t involve Brown making that critical motion police still kill unarmed black men in that position.
Really? Even if so, how is that relevant to the incident in question, which threw the town into chaos and crushed property values in the region?
Enter Whoopi Goldberg. The show’s unofficial queen weighed in with a word salad so incomprehensible it would leave Stephen Hawking stumped.
“Do you know what hands up, don't shoot means to most people?,” she started before attempting to explain her “point.”
“It's what -- at least for me it's what our parents say, hands up, when you put your hands up, you're basically saying 'don't shoot.' So hands up, don't shoot doesn't mean that's necessarily what Michael said. That is the way to let you know as a police officer that's what that means.”
Huh?
That’s just one example. What about the time Goldberg claimed the infamous “Julius Caesar” production where a Trump-like leader got stabbed to death on stage wasn’t connected to Trump.
Multiple news outlets at the time explained that was precisely the case. No ambiguity.
The “Sister Act” alum simply didn’t research the topic. Does her phone lack Google? And she wasn’t alone. The show’s token conservative offered only a slight improvement.
“This is not the story of Donald Trump,” Bila said of the play that specifically targeted Trump in many ways.
In May Goldberg and co. played a tape of President Trump bemoaning the press’s biased attacks against him. A recent Harvard study showed that 93 percent of Trump coverage on CNN and NBC is negative.
Goldberg’s response? President Barack Obama faced worst treatment by the media. Even Michelle Obama might do a spit take over that comment.
Goldberg isn’t the only repeat offender. Co-host Joy Behar often trumps her absurd comments. Earlier this year she attempted a joke against First Lady Melania Trump using illegal immigration as a backdrop.
First, Behar tied today’s illegal immigrants to blacks in the Underground Railroad, a clumsy, offensive comparison. Then she attempted a Trump joke without realizing an inconvenient fact.
“Where’s Melania going to go if we don’t have any sanctuary cities?” she said.
The First Lady is a legal U.S. citizen.
Is Behar clueless, or does she assume the audience will laugh at any joke she offers? Sadly, the quasi-trained seals in the crowd clap without thinking. Or let’s hope they haven’t thought things through.
A recent study found Republicans souring on the idea of a college education. Bila suggested it’s due to the liberal bias found on campuses nationwide, a fact as clear as the sky being blue. The rest of the “View” panel shrieked in protest, as if she said something remotely controversial.
This isn’t a new problem.
Behar asked two years ago if the term “Black Friday,” describing the busiest shopping day of the year, was racist.
Former "View" co-host Sherri Shepherd also famously wondered on-air if the Earth was flat and didn’t know people lived prior to Jesus Christ’s time on earth.
Now, we all make mistakes, particularly broadcasters tackling an array of subjects. The “View” hosts only talk for 40-odd minutes a show minus commercials, though. They clearly know the subjects set for discussion. What’s their excuse?
It’s about time feminists shamed “The View” quartet to take their gigs seriously.
Christian Toto is the editor of HollywoodInToto.com and host of the Hollywood in Toto Podcast