JD Vance gets a word in edgewise on "The View."

It's not easy, but he keeps his cool and maintains a friendly manner even as the women try very hard to put on the pressure: 

Whoopi Goldberg asks JD Vance why the Trump Administration is "stigmatizing" black people.

*JD Vance asks for specific examples*

Whoopi: "Ummmm Uhhhhh Ummmm" pic.twitter.com/mPPon5eprX

— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) June 16, 2026

"So my brain was going, OK, here is one of the most outrageous, funny Black women in the world at that point, and I’m supposed to be roasting her."

"And I’m not a stand-up. I can’t run with the bulls.... Well, if I were Black, I could say all these outrageous things. I’m not. Then, my mind went, well, I will do it in blackface. That will be funny or not, but it’ll, like, be — oh, I have license to. I thought I could pull this off. There’s no one that’s been whiter than me in the world. Poor Whoopi Goldberg has had to defend me over the years, sweetly and gracefully...."

Said Ted Danson, on a podcast recently, quoted in "Ted Danson Apologizes for Blackface Roast of Whoopi Goldberg in 1993" (NYT).

How do you come up with the idea that because you're not a stand-up comedian, you can go even farther over the line? It's the stand-up who has the most reason to think he ought to seize the power of offensiveness.

If the answer to my question is he thought pull it off because "There’s no one that’s been whiter than me in the world," then he's openly embracing white privilege.

"Listen, I didn't like the way they did it. I'm gonna just say it out loud, because nobody says it out loud. I didn't like the way it was done publicly."

"I thought they could have done this in a different way because we didn't need to hear all the inner fight. I didn't like it. I'm saying it to you. You were my ride or die. I was going wherever you go and that's what I would do, so I just wanted to say that because I always felt you were going to probably do four years and then try to figure out where to go with Kamala. Then he just wouldn't go. He was like a a a bug. He just kept being there. He was like a like a bug right there, so you felt that's what was needed, and you did...."

Said Whoopi Goldberg to Joe Biden, on "The View" today.

 

I always like to get a chance to use the old "insect politics" tag, but Whoopi likened Joe to a bug. She said it twice. [ADDED: On rewatch, I can see that Whoopi was characterizing Trump as the bug. Biden slaps the table, smashing the insect. I thought we weren't supposed to speak of human beings as vermin, but that's a rule that becomes conveniently invisible.]

I listened to all of what Joe Biden said — in response to the various super-soft questions — and I extracted 3 highlights:

• On why he didn't follow through on the understanding that he'd be a 1-term President: "When I ran for the first... for my first this last term, I said that I was, I thought, saw myself, as a transition president, yeah, transitioning to a new generation of leadership... but what happened was... I found myself having used more time than I would have ordinarily to you know pass that torch."

• Indicating that those who pushed him to give up the nomination were not so much worried that he couldn't handle it but motivated by the desire of "some folks" to get their hands on the power: "I never fully believed the assertions that somehow there was this overwhelming reluctance [about] my running again. I didn't sense that... but uh what I did was I think there were... some folks who would like to see me step aside so they have a chance to to move on. I get that. That just human nature. But that wasn't the reason that I stepped down. I stepped down because started thinking about it...." ("It," I gather from the extended babbling that followed, was his advanced age.)

• Praising Kamala Harris but also saddling her with the burden of what has gone on in his administration: "She is bright, she is tough, she's honorable... Look, she is smart as hell, number one, yeah, she's tough. She was a first-rate prosecutor. She is a United States Senator of significant consequence, and as Vice President, there wasn't a single thing that I did that she couldn't do, and so I was able to delegate her  responsibility on everything from foreign policy to domestic policy."

"So, I don't know that it's going to jump me back into church, but what it did was it gave me good reason to not abandon... there's something there, and it's there for everybody, whatever your religion, it doesn't matter."

Said Whoopi Goldberg.

Quoted in "The View's Whoopi Goldberg tears up after Pope Francis hails her as 'very important' during Vatican City visit - as she reveals the religious figure is a FAN of Sister Act and requested movie merchandise/Whoopi, 67, traveled to Italy last week to meet Pope Francis in the Vatican City/The actress described head of the Catholic church as 'amazing and progressive'/The View host gifted the 86-year-old with a Sister Act DVD and soundtrack" (Daily Mail).

"'The View' Adds Coasters Under Mugs To Prevent Co-Hosts From Being Accused Of Farting."

 Decider reports.

A recent incident had Sara Haines explaining, “It’s my glass. Every time I turn it like this.”

Joy Behar: “OK, let’s put that rumor to rest …. See that sound that you hear? That’s a cup, OK?” 

Whoopi Goldberg: “Yes, because we get blamed for dropping gas when in fact it is a cup.”

"You know, when you’re a certain age, you use the words that you know from when you were a kid or you remember saying, and that’s what I did today, and I shouldn’t have."

"I should’ve thought about it a little longer before I said it, but I didn’t. And I should’ve said ‘cheated,’ but I used another word, and I’m really, really sorry."

Said Whoopi Goldberg, quoted in "Whoopi Goldberg apologizes for using Romani slur on ABC’s The View/‘I’m really, really sorry,’ the actor said, a year after she was suspended from show for saying the Holocaust ‘isn’t about race’" (The Guardian).

Goldberg was disparaging Trump supporters — "people who still believe that he got gy---d somehow in the election" — when she collaterally disparaged Romani people.

The "g" word — used as a verb like that — is highly processed into the language, but it's carrying forward a stereotype, so it shouldn't get by on that ground that it's become disconnected from the original reference. I don't think it's a big deal for someone to have said it, but going forward, you ought to plan to avoid it.

ADDED: Here's the relevant OED entry:

"Will Smith was never asked to leave the Oscars following Sunday's slap, a new report claims, as Academy Governor Whoopi Goldberg says bosses were too scared..."

"... to physically remove the star over fears he was 'manic' and would cause an on-camera scene.... But according to TMZ, Oscars producer [Will] Packer told Smith he could remain at around 8pm, about 35 minutes after the slap and just five minutes before the actor won his first Academy Award for his role in King Richard....  Goldberg was not present at the Oscars and stressed that she was not speaking on behalf of the Academy's board of directors. 'I can't imagine what was going on back there, but I do know that the only person anybody should be focusing on is Will Smith,' she said."

The Daily Mail reports.

"Jews built Hollywood. So why is their history erased from the Academy’s new museum?"

That was the headline in The Forward, last fall, quoted in "After Criticism, Film Museum Will Highlight Hollywood’s Jewish History/The new Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in Los Angeles, which tried to present an inclusive history of film, overlooked the role Jewish immigrants played in creating the industry" in the NYT. 

“We want to ensure that we are taking an honest, inclusive and diverse look at our history, that we create a safe space for complicated, hard conversations,” the museum’s director, Bill Kramer, said the day after the museum opened as he welcomed guests to a panel discussion titled “Creating a More Inclusive Museum.”

But one group was conspicuously absent in this initial celebration of diversity and inclusivity: the Jewish immigrants — white men all — who were central to founding the Hollywood studio system. Through dozens of exhibits and rooms, there is barely a mention of Harry and Jack Warner, Adolph Zukor, Samuel Goldwyn or Louis B. Mayer, to list just a few of the best-known names from Hollywood’s history....

Some historians said the omission appeared to be the latest example of Hollywood’s strained relationship with its Jewish history. “You have to understand that Hollywood in its very inception was formed out of a fear that its founders — and those who maintained the industry — would be identified as Jews,” said Neal Gabler, the author of “An Empire of Their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood,” a book about the Jewish studio heads. “It’s almost fitting that a museum devoted to the history of Hollywood would incorporate in its very evolution this fear and sensitivity.”

I think the omission was based on a real concern that calling attention to the participation of Jews in the industry would feed anti-Semitism and could very well be perceived as anti-Semitic. The achievement of this group is so strong and so long-standing that it is downplayed, not celebrated. The conventions of present-day inclusiveness were designed to hearten — and appease — groups that have not done well in the past. If you emphasize that Jews were the studio heads, won't you look as though you are blaming Jews for the exclusion you are dedicated to stressing? 

The NYT article doesn't address this obvious problem. I'd say it pushes the insight farther from the reader's view in the third sentence: "But one group was conspicuously absent in this initial celebration of diversity and inclusivity: the Jewish immigrants — white men all — who were central to founding the Hollywood studio system."

White men all! 

ADDED: It was only last month that Whoopi Goldberg got scathed for saying Jews are white.

ALSO: Will the museum's tribute to Jewish studio heads include Harvey Weinstein?

This headline got my attention because I like taking shoes off at the door to a private home, but I had no idea I was in for a racial attack.

I'm reading "I’m putting my foot down – only barbarians wear shoes inside" by Arwa Mahdawi in The Guardian, and it ends like this:

Dear white people reading this, I’m going to say this as delicately as possible but I’m afraid you have something of a reputation when it comes to cleanliness. Last year, for example, there was a heated online debate about white people not washing their legs in the shower. This followed on from a debate, instigated by a white person, about whether swimming counts as bathing. Then there are all the rich white celebrities who love boasting about how they don’t like washing themselves (Jake Gyllenhaal), their kids (Ashton Kutcher), or their clothes (Stella McCartney). When you are a non-white person who has to deal with stereotypes about “dirty foreigners” it can be grating, to say the least, to see privileged white people revel in being disgusting. But, you know what? I’m not going into the racialised aspects of hygiene discourse here. Instead, I would like to ask a member of the white community to come forward and condemn the grotesque actions of some of your wearing-boots-inside brethren. If white people want to be good allies, it’s time to take a stand! But not in your dirty shoes, obviously.

Somehow this reminds me of how Whoopi Goldberg positioned herself with respect to the Holocaust: I stand back and watch when white people fight each other. But Whoopi wasn't saying she wanted that particular fight, Mahdawi is asking for a fight; and berating other people as disgustingly dirty is nowhere near as bad as the Holocaust; but race-based disgust is not a good way to go. And I realize Mahdawi probably believes this is funny. You can say very funny things if you take the liberty to go racial.

"In her 1998 book, 'How Jews Became White Folks,' Karen Brodkin argued that, as America diversified racially, a form of Jewish whiteness emerged..."

"... 'by contrasting Jews as a model minority with African Americans as culturally deficient.'... In this worldview, Jewish success, like immigrant success, is never earned by merit, but won by attaching itself to 'whiteness.'... In a 2018 piece on anti-Semitic attacks in Crown Heights, the Forward’s Ari Feldman noted that 'black people identify Judaism as "a form of almost hyper-whiteness"...'... In California’s proposed mandatory class in critical race theory, for example, one original curriculum question was 'How did the Holocaust shift Jewish Americans’ position in American society?' The correct answer was: 'gained conditional whiteness.' Yes, this is the upshot of the mass murder of millions of Jews, according to CRT: it gave them a leg-up in America!... [A] recent paper in the Journal of the American Psychoanalytical Association [argues that]... Whiteness is a condition one first acquires and then one has — a malignant, parasitic-like condition... [that] renders its hosts’ appetites voracious, insatiable, and perverse...  [T]his kind of demonizing rhetoric could be straight from a Nazi textbook. It identifies a racial group, it attaches evil characteristics to it, it ascribes those characteristics to individuals within that group, and it sees their success as won at the direct expense of others...."

Writes Andrew Sullivan, in "The Anti-Semitism In Anti-Whiteness/Whoopi Goldberg just brought it out into the open" (Substack).

"When [Barbara] Walters asked her where she’d be had she not changed her name to Whoopi Goldberg, she replied 'I would have been a Tupperware lady.'"

"It seems that Caryn Johnson saw value in appearing to be Jewish.... So, is it racist to pretend to be Jewish if one isn’t? Is it ‘cultural appropriation’?... Perhaps Whoopi does have some distant shred of Jewish heritage buried far back in her family tree.... Minorities are often granted licence to joke about their own... If Whoopi had been better connected to her putative Judaism, she might have thought twice about her festive jumper design aimed at Jews, depicting a ‘Jewish’ octopus wearing a kippah. Most Goldbergs I’ve met know that Jewish Octopuses are usually associated with Nazi era antisemitism. Not Whoopi. When it comes to racism, it’s not only Jews Whoopi has angered. When she was dating the comedian Ted Danson in 1993, he nearly ended his career by appearing in blackface in a sketch at the Friars Club comedy event, which was reported to have included jokes about how he got her to clean his parents’ house, contained numerous full occurrences of the “N word” and ended with him eating from a tray of watermelon. The gags didn’t go down well with the 3,000 strong audience.... She’s said to have come out on stage to challenge the audience, saying: 'N*****, n*****, n*****, whitey, whitey, whitey! It takes a lot of courage to come out in blackface in front of 3000 [people]. I don’t care if you don’t like it. I do!'"

Writes Jonathan Sacerdoti in "Will the real Whoopi Goldberg please stand up? Is Caryn Johnson really Jewish? And would it make any difference if she was?" (The Jewish Chronicle).

***

You can see a photo of that "festive jumper" in this 2016 Haaretz article, "Will Jews Buy a Sweater Featuring an Octopus Menorah? Whoopi Goldberg Thinks So Goldberg's 'Christmas sweaters with a twist' seek to include her Jewish friends in the holidays, but use a cute version of an animal often used in anti-Semitic tropes."

Here, at the Holocaust Encyclopedia, you can see the well-known Nazi era cartoon depicting Jews as an octopus that is destroying the entire world. 

***

Goldberg said "I don’t care if you don’t like it. I do!" in 1993, but in recent years she's been entrenched in a long-running group project on network daytime TV that supports and mildly challenges nice American ladies who want to think well of themselves. I'd love to see her quit the show and get back to the woman-alone-on-stage shows that first made her famous. 

Maybe she's too comfortable with "The View," but "The View" wasn't sufficiently comfortable with her. Comfort is overrated, and it deserves a particularly low rating in comedy. It's the enemy of comedy. Goldberg could build a one-woman show around this incident, and that's what I'd like to see. Take the time to look at the problem from multiple angles and bring us somewhere surprising. That's what Dave Chappelle does with his very independent shows.

"Figures on political TV shows say stupid and historically illiterate things every day — including about the Nazis — and nothing much happens to them as a result."

"What, exactly, was different about this one? Is warmed-over critical theory prohibited now? And why does anyone care?... The View is a talk show, and a particularly stupid one to boot.... I simply do not understand the mechanism by which viewers are supposed to be damaged in some way by watching an actress make mistakes on live TV.... In its statement, ABC insisted that 'the culture at ABC News is one that is driven, kind, inclusive, respectful, and transparent.' Okay... [but] Goldberg’s only crime was 'being wrong in public' — an eventuality that is all-but guaranteed to arise when we televise spontaneous political debate. Why have such productions if we intend to police them like this? Bit by bit, and mob by mob, we are destroying our open culture and the organizations that we have constructed to serve it."

Writes Charles C.W. Cooke, in "Whoopi Goldberg’s Suspension from The View Is Illiberal and Irrational" (National Review).

The link on "critical theory" goes to an Andrew Sullivan tweet: "Goldberg's basic point is classic CRT: if it's 'white people' vs 'white people,' i.e. Jews, it cannot be racism." 

The link on "particularly stupid one" goes to Cooke's own article, "Whoopi Goldberg’s Nonsensical Abortion Rant." In response to Justice Alito's statement that "the fetus has an interest in having a life and that doesn’t change... from the point before viability to the point after viability," Goldberg had said: "How dare you talk about what a fetus wants? You have no idea." Sample comment from Cooke: "Is she arguing that, as a rule, unborn children might be suicidal, and that abortion is doing them a favor?"

"The very term anti-Semitism, which casts Jews in racial terms, was popularized by a German anti-Jewish activist who wanted to give his hatred a scientific sheen."

"Race is a social construct, and this is how it was constructed in Nazi Germany and much of Europe.... [W]ell-meaning people... don’t know how to define Jews [because]... Judaism predates Western categories. It’s not quite a religion, because one can be Jewish regardless of observance or specific belief. (Einstein, for example, was proudly Jewish but not religiously observant.) But it’s also not quite a race, because people can convert in! It’s not merely a culture or an ethnicity, because that leaves out all the religious components. And it’s not simply a nationality, because although Jews do have a homeland and many identify as part of a nation, others do not."

Writes Yair Rosenberg in "Are Jews a Race?/Whoopi Goldberg’s Holocaust comments reflect how Jews don’t fit into Western boxes" (The Atlantic).

Another reason why it's "not quite a race" is that race was never good science. From "The Disturbing Resilience of Scientific Racism" (Smithsonian):

The embattled speaker of the week is...

"The embattled speaker of the week is Joe Rogan, the host of the world’s most popular podcast," wrote NYT staff editor Spencer Bokat-Lindell, in "What the Joe Rogan Backlash Reveals About How We Handle Misinformation," published yesterday, which was Tuesday, the second day of the work week.

Oh, no! Embattled Speaker of the Week is a much faster game. Joe Rogan was the embattled speaker of last week. The embattled speaker of this week is Whoopi Goldberg: "In a statement on Tuesday night, Kim Godwin, president of ABC News, said that Ms. Goldberg would be suspended for 'her wrong and hurtful comments.'" 

What did Joe even do? Hard to remember in light of Whoopi's blowing off the Holocaust: "This is white people doing it to white people, so y’all going to fight amongst yourselves."

But both Joe and Whoopi were one-person-show comedians who moved into hosting lengthy, semi-serious conversation shows. They offer lateral perceptions. God help us if we lose the ability to listen and think and continue the conversation.

 

Apparently, Whoopi has some free time. She ought to go on Joe Rogan's show. These 2 human individuals are sublimely valuable. The urge to oust them is all wrong. It is self-harm. 

And bring back Roseanne.

"[A]s a black person I think of race as being something that I can see. People were very angry and they said 'no no we are a race' – and I understand."

"People, you know, decided I was all these other things I’m actually not. I’m incredibly torn up by being told these things about myself. And I get it, folks are angry. I accept that and I did it to myself. This was my thought process and I’ll work hard not to think that way again." 

Said Whoopi Goldberg, quoted in "'I stand corrected': Whoopi Goldberg apologizes for Holocaust comments" (NY Post). 

What she'd said was "The Holocaust isn’t about race. No, it’s not about race. It’s about man’s inhumanity to man... It’s how people treat each other.... It doesn’t matter if you’re black or white because black, white, Jews, Italians, everybody eats each other." 

That became an outrage, perhaps because she was wandering toward race-blindness territory and in danger of allying with those naifs who ask why we can't all love one another.

By the way, is Whoopi Goldberg — nee Caryn Elaine Johnson — Jewish?

In 1998 — the year of "Titanic" — 57 million people watched the Oscars. This year, only 9.85 million watched.

In 1998, The Hill tells us: "The great Billy Crystal served as host of the show," but this year

There was no movie anyone was buzzing about. No household-name stars were nominated unless Anthony Hopkins – who won his last Oscar 30 years ago – counts. There wasn't even a host for the show, because the Academy thought it was a great idea to eliminate the position for reasons unclear when a raw, unfiltered talent such as Ricky Gervais would have been just the person to lift our spirits.

Oh, come on. If they'd picked anybody to host, that person would have been skewered for one thing or another. Billy Crystal is still alive, but I'll bet he wouldn't even want to be invited back. It's better for him to be remembered as the great Oscars host of his time than to be set up as a target. Not only would people say why him and not a person of color, he's vulnerable to cancellation for having boldly and repeatedly performed in blackface:

 

That wasn't at the Oscars, of course. Remember when Whoopi Goldberg hosted the Oscars in whiteface?

  

Those were simpler times. More racist times? 

ADDED: I'm just kidding about "simpler times." I think those were more complex times. We're simpler now. And it's not a compliment.

Trump Jr. on "The View": "We've all done things that we regret. Joy, you have worn blackface. Whoopi, you said... Roman Polanski… it wasn’t 'rape-rape,' when he raped a child."

Yikes. He came ready to spring:

In the span of 10 seconds, @DonaldJTrumpJr called out Joy Behar for wearing blackface

& Whoopi for saying Roman Polanski wasn’t guilty of “rape-rape.”#TheView pic.twitter.com/9R6S8hTiBF

— #ThePersistence (@ScottPresler) November 7, 2019

Did Joy Behar ever wear blackface?!! Yes!

Here's @TheView's Joy Behar admitting on national TV that she in fact wore blackface. Why are they denying it now? https://t.co/B9ReOYrwXY

— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) November 7, 2019

Whoa!

He had a lot of nerve going on that show, and they were all set to bully him. I almost feel like buying the book he was flogging — "Triggered: How the Left Thrives on Hate and Wants to Silence Us" — even though I assume I already know everything in it. All these subtitles that begin with "How"... I already know how the left blah blah blah. But I did not know how to instantly fight off a pouncing double team of Whoopi and Joy. That was quite something. They totally deserved it. And I would have never have noticed that Joy Behar had a blackface incident lurking in her past. So rich!

"You don't have to like it, but we don't go after people because we don't like who they voted for. We don't go after them that way."

"We can talk about issues and stuff, but we don't print out lists.... Think about it. Read about it. Remember what the blacklist actually meant to people and don't encourage anyone — anyone — to do it."

Whoopi Goldberg gets intense, pushing back Debra Messing (who talked about making a list of Hollywood people who attend a Trump fundraiser).

This clip from "The View" begins with a milder statement from Joy Behar who uses the joke that it should be called a "white list" not a "blacklist," but Goldberg — who, unlike Behar, is black — ignores the joke and uses the traditional term "blacklist":



Goldberg's intensity was excellent. I might fault her for 2 things, but the overall impression is so good, I almost don't want to say it. But I will:

1. Goldberg instructs Messing, et al., not to make a list "because the next list that comes out, your name will be on and then people will be coming after you," as if the morality in question is nothing but self-interest, but it's wrong even if you can feel certain that you'll never be on the receiving end.

2. Goldberg says that in the old Hollywood blacklist days "a lot of really good people were accused of stuff" and "nobody cared whether it was true or not." The "stuff" was left-wing politics, and these days it's the left-wingers who are trying to cancel the people they don't agree with. It's not so much that people back then didn't care about what was true or not, but more that those who made the blacklist had too much certainty and rectitude about their own political beliefs and — perversely — thought it was a good idea to frighten, destroy, and silence those who wanted to say something else. (I say perversely, because if you're so sure your ideas are right, you shouldn't be afraid to have them challenged and talked about by people who think something else and also because freedom of speech was part of the traditional values system they purported to defend.)

What was the premise of Behar's "white list" joke — that Trump supporters are white or that Trump supporters are white supremacists? I don't know, but I'm glad Goldberg stomped on it, because "white list" already has a meaning — a useful meaning. It's a list of what is good. Instead of naming the people or businesses you want to exclude, you name the ones you've checked out and approve of and want to reward with your business.

"Blacklist" is a strong word with a precise meaning: "A list of the names of people, groups, etc., who have incurred suspicion, censure, or displeasure, and are typically therefore subject to a ban or other punishment." That's the OED, which has examples going back to the 17th century. "White list," as a play on "blacklist" has been around since at least 1842. From Christian Remembrancer:

In the black list of Ludovicus Vives were ‘Amadis de Gaul’, ‘Torante the White’, ‘Lancelot de Lac’, ‘Paris et Vienne’..cards, dice, and gay dresses. In the white list were Cyprian, Jerome, Augustine, and Ambrose, Plato, Cicero, Seneca's maxims and tragedies..and portions of Horace.

"This is 'The View.' We are 5 best friends with nothing in common."

Says "Whoopi Goldberg"/Leslie Jones in an "SNL" spoof of "The View." The impersonations are pretty good, especially Jones and Kate McKinnon as Joy Behar. They're talking about the border crisis:



I also enjoyed Aidy Bryant as Meghan McCain: “Can I just say something? As the princess of Arizona, there is a crisis at the border, and the border is right up in my Arizona, which was founded on sunburned women selling turquoise jewelry, not rando Mexicans. And that’s not racist, because my makeup artist is gay."

Here's the actual "View" incident that "SNL" is spoofing (I'd skip you to 2:30 to get to the good part but then you'd miss how long McCain talked before Behar got her chance):



Side note: Ana Navarro isn't in the real view clip, but she's in the "SNL" skit, where her annoyingness is well depicted.

"Yes, I came very, very close to leaving the Earth. Good news, I didn’t.... Even people who are not huge fans of mine have actually said nice things about me."

"We all know that’s going to change when I get back, but for right now, it’s brilliant!"

Said Whoopi Goldberg, who nearly died of pneumonia.