Punishing Goldberg
In high dudgeon, ABC News has suspended Whoopi Goldberg from The View for her on-air remarks about the Holocaust, and the media world—social and otherwise—is all aflutter. We’ll stipulate that those utterances betray what could be generously characterized as a historical obtuseness and a common, if callously ignorant, insistence that virtually every issue be contorted to fit au courant views on race relations in twenty-first century America. Nevertheless, ABC News has seen fit to create and broadcast a show called The View, in which its hosts, Goldberg among them, are supposed to air their, well, views, on contentious issues of public concern. It is absurd and hypocritical of ABC News to suspend Goldberg for stating her opinions. ABC News promises its audience a discussion show in which topics are debated in a robust and honest manner. If ABC News then holds that open debate is to be confined to only certain approved views, then it, not Goldberg, has betrayed the public trust.