MelP

Me too. What's frustrating is then Whoopi comes in and does the whole parental "be quiet everyone" type thing as though Joy is just as guilty as Meghan of carrying on, and then throws to Sara so Joy is therefore unable to even get started on what she was saying. I wanted to hear her! This used to happen in the Barbara days too, where Barbara would act like she was the parent settling a dispute between two children even though it was only Elisabeth who was acting like a pill. A good moderator, like Rosie O was able to watch the conversation and make sure someone who hadn't spoken had their chance. These harpies don't really care how they look as long as they prevent someone like Joy saying her piece or getting the facts out. I wonder if it ever gets to Joy that she gets characterised as the equivalent to these awful women (just on the other "team"). I guess if it did she wouldn't come back to the show, so she must be pretty good at letting it slide off her back, but it irritates me watching it, so I can't imagine what it'd be like to be treated like that on television.

Don't lose all hope just yet; remember that Jed also signed on for another season before she was booted for Meghan. So fingers crossed... The Twitter spat with Soledad O'Brien is quite funny. Under Meghan's "grow up" response, every one is really giving it to her about how spoilt and entitled she (Meghan) is. On The View a few weeks back they were talking about how Twitter has changed its algorithm to hide the more critical and the nasty responses. The fact that they are all still front and centre on Meghan's post says a lot if so. She is of course furiously re-tweeting the few people who are supporting her.

Meghan has replied to it on Twitter:

Well, it's not like we didn't all know it already, but if there were any lingering doubts it should be clear now that Meghan is a pretty terrible "political commentator" and a "pundint" as she has said, if she doesn't understand (willfully or not) the difference between "democratic socialism", "socialism" and "communism". And Whoopi "Here's The Thing" Goldberg, starting off the conversation acting like she's got concerns over something she clearly doesn't understand was kinda hilarious. My absolute favourite part was Joy sitting there calmly calling out: "Sweden! Denmark! Norway! Finland! Iceland!". Meghan's always banging on about things being "dystopian". I'm sure she would hold up 1984 and Animal Farm as warnings. Someone please let her know Orwell was a Democratic Socialist so we can watch her head explode.

Did anyone catch the really weird camera shot on Meghan while Whoopi was talking about the stories from WW2 disappearing? I burst out laughing, she was curling her lip and grimacing while looking like she was mumbling to herself; I thought she'd been possessed for a moment. In other news, both Whoopi and Meghan need to stop constantly pointing out the technical problems on the show to the audience and be professional enough to sail through it. It just makes the show look even more of a joke than it already is.

I wonder if after today Sara may have finally learned there's no point trying to placate Meghan. The way Meghan screamed at her, things like "Wait a minute!" and "Let me finish!", was so bizarre as Meghan wasn't talking and getting interrupted by Sara, she was the one interrupting and then claiming she was being spoken over. Meghan is so weird. It frightens me when people like her basically say: "the end justifies the means". It's what I appreciated about Tara's comments when she said even if she agrees with what's happening with the Supreme Court, it's not worth the undermining of institutions. The fact that Meghan thinks otherwise is chilling.

You've all spoken about Whoopi's incoherency beautifully. I have nothing much more to add except that I just have to find it funny now. She gets so worked up and focused on being "right" and "winning" the argument that she talks herself in circles, argues against herself and has to resort to beginning sentences like: "Here's the thing..." to try and gain some kind of standing above everyone else. You can tell during her lifetime people have told her she is "wise old Whoopi" or something and she truly believes it. But she's just hilariously incoherent most of the time. Even when I agree with her, I'm thinking: "Can't we have someone more lucid making these points?" When she got to the point she was arguing Kylie Jenner was self-made but she, Whoopi, was not, I just burst out laughing. Anything to try and seem like the smartest one at the table. It's quite sad really. I've noticed many people in positions of privilege tend to love to play the victim, whatever position of privilege that is. They'd fall apart if they had to walk in the shoes of someone else. Salman Rushdie once put it really well when talking about the religious bigot: "while they’re denying people their rights, they claim that their rights are being denied. While they are persecuting people, they claim to be persecuted. While they are behaving colossally offensively, they claim to be the offended party. It's upside-down world."

I agree with and was very interested and disheartened to hear what DL Hughley was talking about. There was just one issue that slightly marred it for me and it was his including trans people in the beginning in a kind of: "if everyone accepts them why do we still have problems". That just left a bit of a bad taste in my mouth. It's also not true that everyone accepts trans people now, there's a hell of a lot of problems still to be fixed for those in that community too, and the stories you will hear from trans people about what they go through will horrify you as much as what the black community goes through. Not every trans person has the privilege of Caitlyn Jenner. This isn't to take anything away from his stories or message though. I am glad people are pointing out these problems with the police and I enjoyed his comeback to Sunny when she pointed out: "not all police are bad though". I agree with him, we don't need to say that. Sunny wasn't doing it for this reason, I'm sure, but a lot of times people say stuff like that and the conversation gets so caught up in everyone trying to cover themselves in not saying all police are bad that the real issues are lost. It happens the same when people talk about foreign policy or similar and then get all caught up in trying to one up each other about how much they love the military. I just don't like it when one marginalised group uses another to make a point like the way he did in the beginning and it smacked a little bit of saying how weird trans people are so if they can be treated well, of course black people should. Loved listening to Joy's book recommendations. She speaks so naturally and passionately about the books she chose. I'm not even interested in The Catcher in the Rye or The Bonfire of the Vanities but I can listen to her rave about them all day. She would've been a great teacher, you can tell. The Plot Against America sounds really interesting though.

I’ve complained a bit this week about Whoopi and Sara but today? I was cheering them on! They really did a great job. Loved Sara’s succinct point on pro-life attitudes and it cracked me up that Meghan was about to snap back at her but got cut off because of the commercials. And Whoopi was not having it at all! What more can I say? Meghan is noxious.

I guess it's no different than any other day, but Whoopi was truly insufferable today. It was rich of her to pull Joy up because she thought Joy wasn't discussing the same topic the rest of them were. Whoopi frequently can't follow the actual topic discussed and starts badly pontificating on something else. At least Joy has a logical thought process. Plus when she overrode Sunny's report on what an actual Democrat told her about fracture in the party with her own opinion as though her opinion supersedes everyone elses... ugh! Sunny is the saving grace of this show at the moment. And I'll always be fond of Joy, even when I disagree with her. The other three drive me bonkers, haha.

I'd love someone to point out to Sara that if the suffragettes and later women's movements had taken her advice she may not be sitting were she is now. She tends to start lecturing people about the best way to behave a lot, and it irks me, I have to say (and Twitter too, judging by their tweets at her. I thought her "I'm not a Pollyanna" today was a bit defensive and this may explain why). Especially as her obsession with being neutral has a habit of favouring those in power/those who are doing the bullying, even if she doesn't realise it. I'd have rather had Ana talking on the Red Hen topic, she's been on fire about it elsewhere. I don't tend to watch this show past the first few topics as I have zero interest in such non-topics as "do you get angry if your girl friend wears sexy clothes in front of your husband", but I stayed for the interviews and enjoyed Jon Meacham a lot and wanted to hear more of what he had to say. They didn't even really get to his book in any substantive way. I really like Jessica Chastain as an actress but would much rather they switched the interview spots and gave longer to Meacham. I especially liked how he said a lot of things that would've had Meghan screaming if it had been one of the ladies, but she was too scared to come back at him.

And who knows how out of context it was taken anyway? All Meghan said was the woman said she hoped the US would be like Europe. Was she being idealistic - just a wish for a brighter future where there's more parity between countries and therefore travel between countries could be visa-less? Was she demanding it right this second? For which countries? Meghan has hardly shown herself to be the trustworthy one when it comes to explaining what's happened, and any guest on a Fox show is going to have their words twisted if it's against the Fox narrative anyway. And yeah, it's one person! I'm glad Sunny is standing up against Meghan in the way she is: "Who's advocating for open borders?", "Who's saying they're equivalent?" etc. And I so agree with Sunny's point about not ranking atrocities. Meghan who never has to face any of these issues, she can just look at them from outside and decide what she thinks is worse. But on an individual level a child at the border isn't going to be thinking: "oh well, this is pretty terrible, but at least I'm not a gay man in Saudi Arabia, so I can get through this", nor is a gay man in Saudi Arabia going to be thinking: "oh well, this torture is pretty painful but I should count my blessings I'm not a child on the border of the US". I'm so glad Sunny stood strong against the whataboutism. And the guy who brought it up to her originally on Twitter wrote back later thanking people for opening his mind to the issues more. Something Meghan would never have the grace to do. I would laugh so much if someone would just once remind her that her beloved home state was once stolen from Mexico, and then to watch her head explode.

What on earth was with Meghan's "American exceptionalism" rubbish? She's trying to do some kind of argument against Sunny by pointing to Sara and saying: "You just described, point blank, a very conservative ideal of American exceptionalism, which I in my whole heart believe with..." Sara's WTF-face was in full gear. She's thinking: "But all I said was I realised how privileged I was to have been born somewhere that wasn't war-torn". I don't know if Meghan knows it but there are many places in the world where people grow up feeling that privilege too, not just the US. Some people may even argue they are better off than in the US even because of the lack of gun violence in their own countries. "American exceptionalism" has always seemed to me to be a concept for highly insecure people to wrap themselves in, so suits Meghan to a T! Exactly!

Before that food had even hit the table this morning, I was irrationally angry at Rachael Ray, heh. Because I knew that the presence of food meant an episode of listening to Whoopi chew, and I wasn't disappointed! Worse, it wasn't only during lead-ins to the topics; whenever I was trying to listen to Sunny speak I could hear crunch... crunch... crunch... I think when Whoopi says she never eats, she means she doesn't eat regular meals, and can go hours without anything, but I'm sure when she does decide to eat something, it's never the healthy choice.

I was glad to hear Joy and Ana bring up that in other parts of the world we're not so hung up on "cunt". I've lived in two of the countries they mentioned and yeah, you wouldn't use it in formal situations, but it's pretty common casually and in the UK I found a lot of people use it almost endearingly. Like all words, context and audience is everything. Use it from a position of power to berate a woman and it's awful. In a joke, not so much. But you can do this with all language. People can be much more offensive without using any words considered curse-words or racial epithets. Roseanne used no offensive words in and of themselves but what she said was horrible because of her intent. I hope I'm making sense? Paula looks dead behind the eyes.

In fact if you look at Dr Lawrence Britt's 14 defining characteristics of fascism you'd see a few interesting things relating to Meghan, including: 1. Powerful and Continuing Nationalism - Fascist regimes tend to make constant use of patriotic mottos, slogans, symbols, songs, and other paraphernalia. Flags are seen everywhere, as are flag symbols on clothing and in public displays. and, 4. Supremacy of the Military - Even when there are widespread domestic problems, the military is given a disproportionate amount of government funding, and the domestic agenda is neglected. Soldiers and military service are glamorized. Only watched a couple of segments today. I'm from a country with strong gun laws and it works extremely well. It seems disingenuous of people to be clutching their pearls wondering what to do and talking about how complicated the issue is. It's like these conversations are part of a muddying of the waters so that nothing really will get done. Can't stand the deification of John McCain, or anyone really. Didn't Meghan say the other week: "Eh, we're all dying"?

It drives me crazy how Whoopi feels she has to constantly jump all over the things Sunny says and tell her, incoherently usually, how it "really" is. I highly doubt these incidences coincidentally popped up at the same time people started recording them; they've always been happening. I also feel that the noxious atmosphere created by those in the White House is encouraging stuff like this too. Both points are right in my opinion. It's just as we have all seen time and again, Whoopi is very threatened by Sunny. Does anyone else get a bit skeeved out whenever Sara mentions her husband, Max? It seems like every time he's talking to her it's him telling her to modify her behaviour. I dunno, out of context or once off it may not seem much but when you think of all the statements she has made on things he has said to her I get a picture of a pretty unpleasant fellow.

For anyone interested:

Hi everyone! I've decided to briefly leave "lurkdom" to get some things off my chest in relation to this highly annoying TV show! Today really solidified in my mind what an awful person Meghan is. What she did to Sunny in that segment, insisting that Sunny had been threatening Trump, was so low. I did like Sunny's clarification though, she treated it like it was as ridiculous as it was, which I think was the best way. We'll see what happens next there, if anything. Meghan seems to really have it out for Sunny, especially since the "That's not what I learned in law school" discussion from the other day. I don't know if others saw it, but it spilled over into Twitter where a user asked them both to explain more on what they were getting at re: the 2nd amendment. Sunny very politely answered, Meghan then told Sunny she was wrong and cited something which Sunny then politely responded to, showing how Meghan misunderstood the very thing she was trying to use as a "gotcha". I feel like Meghan is really threatened by Sunny's intelligence. Since Joy's apology the other day, it seems Meghan is bringing up a lot more: "Joy and I agree on this" type points, almost as if she feels people like Joy and Sunny need to be brought down a peg or two, and then she'll deign to be less combative on occasion (not by a whole lot though, obviously). I could be just reaching there though. I agree with the frustration re: Sara's opinions. She makes me think she's kind of the embodiment of that old quote of Archbishop Tutu's: "When you stay neutral in situations of injustice, you've chosen the side of the oppressor." I will say I do think she's got a level of professionalism about her others on that show could learn from, and as shallow as it sounds (I'm sorry!), she does have a wonderful smile/laugh that is so endearing. But, and this is probably me projecting a bit, I can't help feel she comes across like a couple of friends I had back in University. When I was involved in a couple of situations where I was on the end of some nasty bigotry from others, these friends made a big show of lecturing me if I brought it up: "What you have to understand is..." followed by some rotten excuse like: "they're from the country" etc. You always felt with friends like that they didn't fully have your back, and Sara makes me think of that often based on the way she expresses her opinions. It's just a feeling I have though, and may not be accurate, I fully admit that. I obviously don't know her. I know she's not popular among many people, but since Meghan arrived, I really miss Jed. I rarely agreed with her, but she was a much better fit for the panel. In fact when they were rotating panelists, I remember wishing they would get rid of Candace, Raven and Paula and keep the other five, and so was really happy when they pretty much did. Jed could be frustrating, but her annoying points like the fast talking and "I'm a Republican, no, Conservative, no, Libertarian, no Independent" were no worse to me than, say, Sunny's pearl-clutching on any issues relating to personal relationships, or Sara's wishy-washiness, and certainly no more annoying than Whoopi's attempts at drawing the line under every discussion with ill-formed thoughts. When they were off the political stuff too, you could imagine that Sara, Jed and Sunny really might have hung out together outside the show. Plus, I miss watching her dancing out and waving to the audience each day like she was coming out to a show called The View with Jedediah Bila. It was hilarious, but also kind of endearing. Sorry for the rant. I'll duck back into "lurkdom" now. I also hope my points makes sense to the rest of you. I'm not from the US, and it's really late here and I'm tired. Just had to have a bit of a moan!