Posted on 07/16/2004 2:45:01 AM PDT by kattracks
WASHINGTON - Whoopi Goldberg lashed out at Republicans again yesterday, branding them hypocrites for trying to "punish" her for joking about the President.Fired from her gig as SlimFast spokeswoman, the salty entertainer hit back at Republicans who threatened a SlimFast boycott over sexual puns she made about President Bush's name at a Democratic fund-raiser.
"America's heart and soul is freedom of expression without fear of reprisal," she said in a statement.
"I find all this feigned indignation about 'Bush bashing' quite disingenuous," she said, noting the Bush administration has savagely gone after critics like former Sen. Max Cleland, Iraq whistleblower Joseph Wilson and ex-terrorism chief Richard Clarke.
"For the Republican Party to pretend this is new to them seems a little fake," she said.
"The fact that I am no longer the spokesman for SlimFast makes me sad, but not as sad as someone trying to punish me for exercising my right as an American to speak my mind."
The Bush-Cheney campaign has been making a lot of hay out of Goldberg's set at last week's celebrity gala at Radio City Music Hall, professing shock at her blue jokes.
Bush campaign manager Ken Mehlman called the event a "hatefest" that proves John Kerry doesn't "share the same values" as the rest of America.
Kerry, who is trying to woo swing voters, did not stand by his celeb supporters. On the defensive, he distanced himself from Goldberg and said through spokesmen that he thought her comments were inappropriate.
Running mate John Edwards was asked about the flap yesterday by Fox News. "They weren't speaking for me, and they weren't speaking for John Kerry," he said, adding the ticket is "focused on our positive, optimistic vision of hope."
Mehlman has repeatedly demanded that Kerry's camp release a video of the event, even going so far as to promise not to use the footage in ads.
Kerry campaign manager Mary Beth Cahill said tartly that he could have the video after Bush releases his military records and details of Vice President Cheney's secret energy task force.
Diversity promoter Asa Khalif, who has made headlines for accusing celebrities of insensitivity, cried foul in the Goldberg firing. "I smell racism from beginning to end," said Khalif, head of Racial Unity USA in Pennsylvania. "SlimFast must realize that black women have every right to voice their views."
Originally published on July 16, 2004
Okay, I think I've got it figured out now. It's okay, a noble exercise in Constitutional Courage even, for Whoopi to criticize the President in the most vulgar manner possible with the aim of trying to make him lose his job this November, but it's Naziesque censorship if anyone criticizes Whoopi and caues her to lose her job.
That's not what we smelled.
""America's heart and soul is freedom of expression without fear of reprisal," she said in a statement."
well, whoopi, I see you are just as intelligent as you are beautiful.
What is she talking about? We did not try to punish her. Slim-Fast did it. My understanding is that Slim-Fast is a Dem operation.
But I'll bet she'd get her panties in bunch if someone used the "N" word to describe her. She'd be screaming for reprisal, too!
Exactly, which is why she would bever rant against them for firing her.
Then she wraps herself idignantly in her right to freedom of expression when the people who were offended by her comments decided not to purchase the product she sponsors.
Since when does the right to express yourself exempt you from the consequences of what you say? And so when people get upset and express it, that is sad??? Well, ain't consequences a bitch.
Then this:
" Diversity promoter Asa Khalif, who has made headlines for accusing celebrities of insensitivity, cried foul in the Goldberg firing. "I smell racism from beginning to end," said Khalif, head of Racial Unity USA in Pennsylvania. "SlimFast must realize that black women have every right to voice their views.""
I'll tell you what sad is. Sad is trying to turn this into a race issue. So Asa, what do you say to a black woman who was offended by Whoopi's comments? Is she a racist too? Or maybe she's an Auntee Tom? Or better yet, maybe she should just learn her place and shut up and take it with a smile like the white people are supposed to do.
Funny I thought he said they all spoke for the heart and soul of America.
And I doubt that only republicans were unimpressed with her vulgar 'show'. I know lots of democrats and most of them also have morals.
Scream Whoopie......make Kerry release the tape.
Of course, during the civil rights era, the Montgomery bus boycott was just about the same thing. It worked then and it still works today Whoopi. Grow up
Nobody "bashed" Cleland, Wilson, or Clarke. The whole truth was revealed about each of them. But Whoopi is probably too ignorant to know the difference between explaining a Democrat's anti-military voting record or countering book-hawking malcontents' self-serving criticism of Bush's foreign policy and likening the President of the United States of America to her vagina.
America's heart and soul is freedom of expression without fear of reprisal," she said in a statement.
Talk about 'disingenuous'! Whoopi knew good and well that she was going to be watched carefully when the Dems wanted to review her material, which she says she answered with a photocopy of her posterior.
If she didn't 'fear reprisal,' she should have, as someone who has been slammed for going too far before. Remember when Whoopi was dating married Ted Danson in 1993 (yeah, I know, set it aside for the moment), and he appeared in blackface and told scatalogical and racist jokes at a 'roast' for her at N.Y.'s Friars Club? She wrote all those jokes (including one suggesting that 'if Whoopi had septuplets, how could differentiate the babies from diarrhea?'). That scandal haunts Danson to this day, as a web search of "Ted Danson" reveals.
To paraphrase Santayana, she forgot the past, and she repeated it. Too bad. Back to showbiz purgatory, you little witch.
Isn't it interesting how these kinds all try to redefine what "America" is.
Exactly!!!! Wouldn't it be nice to see the company stand by it's "values" and keep her on as a spokesperson??? After all, making money couldn't be as important as a black woman's right to exercise her right to free speech!! I think the ACLU should step in.
Cry me a river.
The Dems boycott everything from radio stations to products to entire states.
News said it cost her a cool $1 Million bucks.
I saw it....you nailed that one
Ugly is as ugly does!
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