The View

So, I have been watching The View every once in a while when I’m home and supposed to be working on papers for school. I am completely and totally fascinated by the interactions between the hosts.

I love that Elizabeth stands up to Rosie and argues with her. I think it is really interesting to hear someone who strongly agrees with Republicans argue their points. I don’t happen to agree with her, but I think Rosie is also a little too far to the left. But what I love is the way they argue.

All of the women on the view know that Rosie is a lighting rod for criticism, and Rosie, I think, enjoys that. You can see the other women just waiting for this season to be over, so that they can get back to what the show used to be. But you can also see that they are annoyed with her, and I think she knows it. Because these debates between Rosie and Elizabeth always include something about how Rosie is portrayed in the media. The most recent debate – from the May 23rd show – has them arguing about President Bush.

Joy Behar starts the conversation with a list of things that Bush has done in his presidency. Al Gore and Jimmy Carter have recently come out saying that Bush is doing a terrible job, and Joy wants to know why he’s still in office. [I have to say that while the way Bush got into the White House is something of a sham, he did win the election in ’04. The democrats screwed up and couldn’t find a candidate who could defeat Bush. We can’t get him out because, though he has screwed up mightily, he hasn’t done anything worthy of impeachment. We shouldn’t have gotten into this war, but we’re in it, and we can’t pull out now. It would be immoral to go into a country, throw it into chaos, and not help get that country back on its feet. ANYWAY] Elizabeth has something to say, of course, and Rosie interrupts.

For Rosie, this whole thing is not about her lefty beliefs versus Elizabeth’s righty beliefs. It’s that she thinks Elizabeth doesn’t like her. Someone on Fox news said that Rosie think that our troops are terrorists. When that was brought up on the show, Elizabeth said “why don’t you take this opportunity to explain what you meant.” Rosie took that as an insult. She thinks Elizabeth should have defended her. Now, what she said was something along the lines of – innocent people are dying in Iraq every day, so who are the terrorists? I think she meant to imply that our government, who sent the troops over there, is treading dangerously close to being just like the terrorists. But, she never clarifies that on the show. I think she could have made a valid point, but instead of explaining herself and discussing what she intended to get across, she focuses on how Elizabeth should have defended her. Elizabeth is trying to say that what Rosie said was a little ambiguous and, while she realizes that Rosie isn’t accusing our troops of terrorism, she can see how people might have misinterpreted it. Rosie can’t believe Elizabeth is siding with the crazy republicans. They’re supposed to be friends, and Elizabeth should have supported her. Personally, I love watching Elizabeth try to talk over Rosie (which I think is impossible) and I love watching Joy attempt to mediate and bring it back to the issue at hand. You can see her thinking “I’m supposed to be the loud-mouthed broad on this show.”

Now I’m off to watch today’s show, which will hopefully have more arguing fun.

You can watch the May 23rd argument on You Tube here.

Edited to add: Just to be clear, I consider "loud-mouthed broad" to be a pretty high compliment. Joy Behar is a great comedian and has performed in the Vagina Monologues (as have I) which makes me like her a lot. She's very smart, and I think adds a lot to The View. I recently discovered that she started out as a High School English teacher, which makes me like her even more.

Also, today's show had no arguments. They cut the intro / chat portion significantly, I guess so they'd have time to do all of the many summer cooking demonstrations. It kind of sucked.