“The View”

Ethics Quiz: “The View”

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

The recent visit of Vice-President J.D. Vance to “The View,” one of the rare occasions when the panel of ignorant, Trump-Deranged women deigned to host a non-progressive that they weren’t ready to drool over, brought into sharp focus what is so wrong with the ABC “news” program. Here are “highlights” from that episode on June 16. Note the thoroughly professional and even-handed attitude of the “news commentators”:

[Vice President J.D. Vance was beginning to answer a question from co-host Sara Haines]

ANA NAVARRO: And you actually say in the book – You talk about this. You talk about this struggle in the book.

VP J.D. VANCE: I do. Of course.

NAVARRO: You talk about moral tradeoffs that result in favoring a strict migration policy without dehumanizing anyone. But listen, over 50 people have died in ICE custody. There are thousands of children, 6,200, that are being held in places like Dilly Detention Center that people that have visited — I don’t know if you have — talk about the subhuman, infrahuman conditions, the lack of clean water, the lack of medical attention, lack of education. I would urge you as a Christian and as a father to visit those detention centers where the children are being held, and make sure that the conditions are up to the values that we hold in this country.

JOY BEHAR: Let him answer.

[Applause]

VANCE: You have thrown a lot at me and I see we have 30 seconds left here, but let me say –

NAVARRO: You are the vice president. You can go long.

VANCE: I’d like to pick up on this theme because I think it’s really important. We do have to strike a balance, of course, between enforcing our laws. We don’t want to dehumanize people. That is the balance. Look, law enforcement – What I’d say about this: law enforcement is always inherently not a very pretty process. Especially when you dealing sometimes with violent people, with people who are resisting arrest. Some of the people that I have been told by the media were completely peaceful, have never violated any laws, you look actually look into the record and find out that those people were actually being violent or they did have a criminal record. They had a sex traffic conviction.

SUNNY HOSTIN: The majority people don’t have criminal records, the majority of people that ICE is rounding up and taking out of their homes from their families, they are separating families, they’re using children as bait, the majority are not criminals!

[Applause]

VANCE: But can I respond to that? Guys, let me just say this. Okay. So, you talk about the children. Here’s what I’d say: do we know that during the last administration we had tens of thousands of children who were sex trafficked by the cartels, who were brought into our country in profoundly dangerous and predatory conditions —

HOSTIN: Talk about this administration!

VANCE: But here’s the point, unless you enforce the border, you invite that conduct. You think that our immigration policies are inhuman based on the reporting of one person with a political bias. What I’m telling you is that it’s inhumane –

NAVARRO (interrupting): It’s not one person.

VANCE: – to allow cartels to sex traffic people across our border.

[Crosstalk]

NAVARRO: And you guys have done a great job of closing the border.

WHOOPI GOLDBERG: Please hold on.

VANCE: I appreciate that.

(…)

[Loud crosstalk as Vance finishes an answer to a question from Goldberg]

GOLDBERG: No, no! Let me do my follow-up! Let me do my follow-up! Because you were talking about people. What did black people do to this administration that has allowed it to really stigmatize folks of color? And you know how hard it is. You have folks of color in your family.

VANCE: Sure.

GOLDBERG: So, when you see things — the Emmitt Till stuff coming down or them doing all kinds of removal of information of black heroes, how do you — how does that sit with you?

VANCE: What exactly are you talking about, Whoopi because you just –

GOLDBERG: I’m talking about –

[Audience reacts negatively]

VANCE: Emmitt Till was the kid –

GOLDBERG: I can tell you —

VANCE: No, no. I want to know what she’s — I want to respond to your actual point.

GOLDBERG: In a lot of the – um

HOSTIN: Museums?

GOLDBERG: Museums –

[Crosstalk]

GOLDBERG: There’s so many. You know, where they’re taking down the actual history that happened in this country. Slavery happened. All kinds of stuff happened. And it seems that it has been very easy for this administration to remove that and also to denigrate black folks who have worked their behinds off to get this American dream. How – I mean, you know better!

[Applause]

VANCE: Let me – So, Sunny, that was actually very helpful intervention because I think the story you are talking about is where allegedly the administration is holding back the appointments of people based on skin color.

HOSTIN: I’m talking about a host of things. I’m talking about black history getting erased from public spaces. Black voter districts are being dismantled. Black leaders are being sidelined from our ranks. Where do Americans of color fit in this vision?! Because it doesn’t seem like we fit!

VANCE: I think, Sunny, my view –

[Applause]

NAVARRO: And if I may, since October of last year there’s been something like 6,668 refugees allowed in the country. All but three were white South Africans.

HOSTIN: South Africans.

VANCE: So, first of all, I’m very skeptical of that number because we have a lot of different immigration pathways in the United States of America. But let me just address Whoopi’s point. Look, first of all, you asked the question; and maybe you don’t believe this coming from me, but I think everybody is welcome in our political coalition. Frankly, even if you didn’t vote for us, everybody is welcome in our country so long as you are an American citizen, with the duties and the legal obligation and rights to be here.

GOLDBERG: Right.

VANCE: But let me just give you an example. Okay, so you say we’re anti-minority or anti-black —

GOLDBERG: NO, I didn’t say that! I asked. See.

VANCE: Okay, fine. Fair. Fair.

GOLDBERG: Don’t start any stuff with me man. Don’t get me in trouble.

[Applause]

Don’t start that stuff with me.

VANCE: I misinterpreted your question.

GOLDBERG: That’s all right.

VANCE: But let me answer your actual question there. What I’m saying, I think — Okay, look at Washington, D.C. One of the most Democratic and one of the blackest – by share of population – blackest cities in the United States of America, has seen a radical decrease in violent crimes and sexual assaults and murders. We have tried to take the crime issue seriously in part because we believe everybody, whether you are black or white or rich or poor, deserves to live in a safe neighborhood.

GOLDBERG: But why was – why does the crime – where does the crime step in? This is not about crime. This is about —

HOSTIN: 300,000 black women lost their jobs!

[Crosstalk]

GOLDBERG: This is about human rights, sir.

VANCE: What you are saying is, we have to do more on the economy.

HOSTIN: And black history has been erased from public spaces!

VANCE: Black history is not erased from public spaces.

HOSTIN: That is true.

VANCE: That is not right.

[Crosstalk]

VANCE: I’m telling you, we celebrate black history. We celebrate all American history in this administration. You guys might be skeptical of this, but I promise you it’s true.

NAVARRO: Can I ask you about a specific piece of black history?

GOLDBERG: He’s gotta – I gotta –

NAVARRO: Do you think the attack on Michelle Obama –

GOLDBERG: I have to go to break! [Claps her hands] ANA, GOD PLEASE!

NAVARRO: – should have been condemned by the White House?

GOLDBERG: We have more with Vice President J.D. Vance when we come back.

Don’t do that!

(…)

VANCE: I do think — in a subtle sometimes, sometimes in a more profound way, I think our country has become more anti-family and more anti-child. It’s harder to travel. It’s harder to go to restaurants.

[Crosstalk]

BEHAR: All right, we only have 10 seconds, do you want –

ALYSSA FARAH GRIFFIN: Mr. Vice President, we know you grandchild is – or your CHILD is arriving.

VANCE: No grand babies yet.

FARAH GRIFFIN: Not yet. We’re very excited for you and Usha, and we wanted to give you a View onesie!

VANCE: Thank you. I appreciate that. We will put this on. We’ll send you guys the photo.

GOLDBERG: His new book Communion: Finding My Way Back to Faith is available now. Scan the QR code on your screen to purchase a copy. And we will be right back.

VANCE: Thank you, guys.

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Once Again, “The View” Raises the Issue of Whether There Needs to Be a “Stupidity Rule” For Professions

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Back in 2024, I posited, only half in jest, that “The View’s” resident lawyer on the all-female idiot panel, Sunny Hostin, had made such a stupid assertion on the program that it should trigger legal ethics Rule 8.3, which mandates that a lawyer who has knowledge of another lawyer’s conduct that substantially calls into question that individual’s fitness to practice law must—must—report that unfit lawyer to bar authorities for professional discipline. Hostin had surmised that “climate change” causes earthquakes and eclipses, and stated this cretinous conclusion on national television, on an ABC News program, which is what “The View” purports to be.

I wrote in part (and in disgust):

“[S]ome people with law licenses are demonstrably too stupid to be trusted by clients. Hostin is screaming proof of the validity of this conclusion, yet there is nothing in the disciplinary rules governing the minimal ethics requirements of lawyers that mentions basic, personal intellectual competence as a mandatory component of professional, legal competence.

There should be. One would think that the challenge of graduating from law school and passing the bar exam would be sufficient to ensure that a lawyer is at least smart enough to come in out of the rain, but in extreme cases like Sunny, one would be wrong….believing that climate change causes solar eclipses is signature significance. You can’t come to such an idiotic conclusion and not be an idiot. This delusion [shows] a crippling deficit in critical thinking skills. One cannot be a trustworthy lawyer without minimal critical thinking skills. When a lawyer demonstrates such a deficit beyond a shadow of a doubt, that ought to be considered a legitimate reason for disbarment.”

Remember, professionals are special members of society whose important roles require that they be trustworthy. True professionals include the clergy, doctors, lawyers, judges, law enforcement officials, military leaders, public servants, accountants, psychiatrists, and teachers, and though it sounds absurd today, journalists. Really, really stupid people are not trustworthy, in fact it is dangerous to trust them. If they are sufficiently stupid, they should not hold any of those societal roles and positions.

Ethics Alarms, as those of you who have read the commenting rules here know, has among its provisions that the moderator, that’s me, may at his discretion ban a commenter who has demonstrated to my dissatisfaction that said commenter is too intellectually deficient to contribute substantively to the discussions. I believe that I have only had to invoke it twice.

Which brings me back to “The View”…

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I Can’t Let This Pass…

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

As long as ABC News persists in making Americans dumber by presenting the biased, silly, incompetent panel of women on “The View” as a news program, that network has to rank third from the bottom of the journalism barrel, slightly above MSNOW and CNN. Its commentary on the SOTU speech, however deserves some kind of prize for being the most ludicrous of all. If you’ve been paying attention, that’s quite an achievement.

Co-host Amanda Carpenter got the gold by complaining that Trump had an “unfair dynamic” while delivering the speech:

CARPENTER: He got that split screen. And when he was talking about Minnesota and saying we’re not going to go easy on them. Who thinks he’s been easy on them? And so, she was shouting back, ‘you’ve killed Americans’ but you couldn’t see what she said!

WHOOPI GOLDBERG: No.

CARPENTER: And so, it’s such an unfair dynamic that I just – We got to find ways not to participate in that and give him that kind of advantage. I just can’t believe we haven’t learned this lesson after ten-plus years.

Uh, see, it’s the President’s speech, see, and the members of Congress are there to sit, listen, show respect for the Presidency, and maybe applaud. This is like saying that an actor playing “Hamlet” has an “unfair dynamic” if members of the audience aren’t welcome to run up on stage and dance.

The Trump Deranged think the fact that Trump exists and is the President is an “unfair dynamic.”

These people are crazy.

Open Forum! [And One More Complaint About “The View”…]

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

I woke up today with so much already happening on the ethics front that I immediately knew I had no chance of making a dent in it, especially since I am facing deadlines and crises on other fronts. Let me get one minor matter out of the way before I turn it over to you, dear EA contributers.

There were two items in yesterday’s potpourri post relating to the persistent insanity on “The View.” I wonder if I should just ignore that idiot program from now on, applying the Julie Principle. Occasionally the thing makes news, but it is a blight on the culture and social discourse. Barbara Walters, who started it, needs to be marked down in critical assessments of her career because her creation inflicted Joy Behar, Whoopie and Sunny Hostin and the rest on our social and political discourse.

Here is one last “View”-related ethics ugliness. Speaking on the “Behind the Table” podcast this week (who listens to these things?), Hostin, arguably the worst of the worst on the current panel, discussed the moment when Kamala Harris declared on the show that she wouldn’t change a thing her alleged boss, Joe Biden, had done during his Presidency. Harris’s fatuous response—did she ever say anything that wasn’t fatuous?—came after Hostin tossed the Democrats’ DEI nominee the softest of softball questions: what would she do differently from Biden? “There is not a thing that comes to mind,” said Kamala.

Many believe that Harris lost the 2024 election in that moment, which is scary to think given how many other reasons she gave the voters to vote Republican. Hostin, in the podcast, said, “I knew it instantly when she answered it. Which is why I asked the follow-up question, ‘is there one thing?’  Because I knew, I could see the soundbite and I knew what was going to happen, but I thought it was a really fair question and I thought it was a question that she would expect… I feel terrible.” 

Bob Hoge writes at Redstate, “Such are the depths to which our mainstream media has sunk, that a professional pundit doesn’t have regrets about trying to push an incompetent candidate on the country; no, her real regret is that Kamala was exposed.”

Sad but true.

Your turn!

Regarding Those “Adults in the Room”

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

Boy, THAT quote didn’t age well…

House Democratic Whip Rep. Katherine Clark (MA) joined Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Democratic Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar (CA), and Democratic Caucus Vice Chair Ted Lieu (CA) for a press conference in May of 2023 that began with Clark declaring, “It is Democrats who’ve been the adults in the room. It is Democrats who’ve prioritized Americans over political gamesmanship.”

Last night I rewatched “All the President’s Men.” I was struck by how similar Nixon’s attempts to cripple potential Democratic Party challengers resembled the various unethical measures taken by President Obama’s minions and President Biden’s puppeteers to bury Donald Trump, but that’s a different topic. What I was immediately impressed with was how an archival film of Nixon’s State of the Union Address in 1972 showed the entire audience consisting of both parties of both houses of Congress rising and applauding the President as he entered the chamber. They did this because Nixon, as divisive and loathed as he was by the American Left, was the goddamn President of the United States, had been elected by the American people, and it was every member of Congress’s duty to show the office due respect.

And it still is. Today’s Democrats (and, tragically, their Trump Deranged supporters), however, choose to behave like spit-ball shooting grade-schoolers, debasing the nation and its institutions in the process. Jonathan Turley said yesterday that when he was a House leadership page, every member of the House of Representatives would have voted to censure a Congressman who behaved like Al Green, because, quite simply, his disgusting conduct deserved condemnation and it was crucial for Congress to insist of standards of decorum. Today’s Democratic House members saluted Green as a martyr, and behaved like the student protesters of the Sixties. You know, adults.

Here are a few other notable examples of Democrats and their anti-Trump cult followers behaving like adults in the past few days:

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Whoa! “The View” Has Had To Issue 36 “Legal Notes” So Far This Year

/ Jack Marshall / 3 Comments

The imposition of “legal notes” on “The View’s” panel of bigots, incompetents, liars and fools received a lot of attention last week because there were four of them, as ABC’s lawyers were quick to force clarifications on potentially defamatory statements by Sunny Hostin and the rest of the coven. Because I don’t watch the show ( because anyone who does is risking permanent brain damage or a stroke), I assumed this was a new development. The indispensable Axis media watchdog Media Research Center, which monitors this leftist clown act so I don’t have to, reports that in fact Whoopi’s gang has had to read 36 such disclaimers so far in 2024.

The ladies of “The View” seem to think this is funny. It’s not. The fact that so much of what they bleat on this daily show, which is, incredibly, categorized as a news program on ABC, has to be corrected in real time lest the network be subject to law suits is indisputable evidence that the cast is incompetent, lazy and vicious, and that ABC is irresponsible to allow them to remain on the air.

Condign justice may be coming Disney’s way: ABC News is being sued by Trump over on-air comments made on “Good Morning America” by co-host (and Clinton-allied hack) George Stephanopoulos when he kept asking Rep. Nancy Mace to comment on how Trump had been “found liable for rape.” Trump was not found liable for rape in the lawsuit brought by E. Jean Carroll even after New York stacked the legal deck against him as part of the Democrats’ lawfare strategy. ABC’s lawyers have so far failed to get the lawsuit dismissed and it is entering the deposition phase.

Asks PJ Media columnist Rick Moran regarding “The View” panel, “Is it that they feel so entitled that the truth shouldn’t matter, or are they so stupid they think that just because they believe something, it must be so?”

I’m pretty sure the answer is “Both.”

“Platforming Ignorance!” What a Useful and Descriptive Term….

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

The term, which I had never heard before or at least had never focused on, is featured in an essay by Jonathan Tobin at the Jewish News Syndicate (JNS) titled, “Candace Owens is a cautionary tale about platforming ignorance.” Indeed she is: I had written about how Owens has embarrassed conservatives by, as I put it last November, “being revealed as an ignoramus” by her embrace of Palestinina propganda after the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel. More recently I listed her as one of the political performance artists (Tucker Carlson, Ben Shapiro, Bill Maher, James Carville, Ann Coulter, yada yada) who cannot be trusted to provide genuine opinions because they calibrate what they say and write according to what they think will get them the most clicks, eyeballs, gigs, and cash. Clearly, I was giving Candace far too much credit.

She is a genuine, bona fide idiot, whose recent self-outing as a virulent anti-Semite ( the inspiration for the JNS piece) is just the tip of a really stupid iceberg. As conservative collective AG noted on “X,” Owens has recently declared that…

  • Israel was involved with 9/11
  • The earth may be flat
  • It’s absurd to believe dinosaurs roamed the earth and were killed by an asteroid
  • Macron’s wife is secretly a man
  • Jews were behind the Bolshevik revolution and it was secretly a genocide targeting Christians that was worse than the Holocaust
  • The Holocaust is either fake or severely exaggerated
  • The crimes of the allies in WWII and post-WWII were worse than anything the Nazis did
  • The deportation of ethnic Germans from the rest of Europe post-WWII was worse than The Holocaust
  • US dropped the bomb on Nagasaki to target Christians
  • Israel/AIPAC/Jews were secretly behind the JFK assassination
  • A secret cabal of Hollywood Jews were behind the death of Michael Jackson and people around him.

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