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‘The View’ Host Joy Behar Addresses Whoopi Goldberg’s Suspension

Joy Behar served as temporary moderator on The View, Wednesday. She shifted responsibilities after ABC suspended Whoopi Goldberg for comments she made on the show regarding the Holocaust.

Here’s how Behar addressed the Goldberg situation as The View opened for its first hot topic segment.

“You all saw the news,” Behar said. “Whoopi will be back in two weeks.”

ABC made the decision to suspend Goldberg late Tuesday afternoon, hours after the show taped. But the women didn’t address it til Wednesday. And, collectively, they said nothing other than Behar’s 12-word statement.

Meanwhile, Ana Navarro, who is a part-time panelist on The View, said on CNN that Goldberg’s colleagues on the show “know what’s in her heart,” adding that she’s “not an anti-Semite.

“When you have five women, discussing complex topics, in five-minute segments on unscripted, live TV, sometimes things come out the wrong way,” said Navarro, who works as a political analyst for CNN. “We are human and make mistakes. The difference between us and others is, we acknowledge it and try to correct it. Whoopi clarified and apologized without caveats.”

The controversy started Monday, when The View panelists were discussing Maus, a children’s book written about the Holocaust. A school district in Tennessee removed the book from its curriculum. Goldberg made the comment that the Holocaust wasn’t about race. Rather, she said it was about “man’s inhumanity to man.”

The comments quickly went viral. Goldberg issued a statement and apologized on air, on The View, Tuesday.

“I said something that I feel a responsibility for not leaving unexamined because my words upset so many people, which was never my intention,” Goldberg said. “And I understand why now, and for that I am deeply, deeply grateful because the information I got was really helpful and it helped me understand some different things.

“While discussing how a Tennessee school board unanimously voted to remove a graphic novel about the Holocaust, I said that the Holocaust wasn’t about race,” she said. “And it was instead about man’s inhumanity to man. But it was indeed about race because Hitler and the Nazis considered Jews to be an inferior race.”

https://twitter.com/WhoopiGoldberg/status/1488320164517101574

On Tuesday, The View also brought on Jonathan Greenblatt, the head of the Anti-Defamation League. He was there to answer questions and to discuss why Goldberg was wrong to say what she said. But later Tuesday Greenblatt said that Goldberg should not be “canceled.”

“We sometimes have people in public places who can say clumsy things about race or faith or gender,” Greenblatt said during an interview on CNN. I don’t believe in cancel culture. I like the phrase that my friend Nick Cannon uses. We need ‘counsel culture.

“In the Jewish faith … we have a concept called ‘teshuva,’ and ‘teshuva’ means redemption. It means all of us have the power to admit when we do wrong and to commit to doing better,” he said.  

“I heard Whoopi say that she’s committed to doing better. I accept that apology with the sincerity with which she delivered it,” he added.