Mention of Lewinsky Irritates Walters: "Let's Move On!" (The View)

MRC ^ | 12:05pm EDT, Friday May 30, 2003 | BrentBaker

[fight_truth_decay]

Don't count on seeing Barbara Walters raising with Senator Hillary Clinton any subject which the former First Lady would like to avoid. Though an ABC promo spot for ABC's June 8 special dedicated to publicizing Clinton's new book promises that "nothing's off limits" and on Thursday's The View Walters reported that when she sits down with Mrs. Clinton next week she'll "ask the really tough questions," the instant The View's Joy Behar mentioned Monica Lewinsky, an annoyed Walter raised her hands and made a pained facial expression as she demanded: "Oh, let's drop, let's move on!"

As quoted in the May 29 CyberAlert, a current ABC promo hypes the interview special: "Sunday June 8th: Hillary Rodham Clinton, Barbara Walters. The interview we've all been waiting for and the book that tells all. Sunday June 8th. Nothing's off limits."

On Thursday's The View, the daytime ABC show created by Walters who pops in a couple of times a week to take part in the gab session amongst the four of five women hosts, Walters recounted how on Wednesday she traveled in Illinois to capture video of Hillary Clinton in her home town, a session which followed Walters interviewing Clinton last week while the two walked on Washington's Mall wit the Capitol in the background.

As taken down by MRC analyst Jessica Anderson, on the May 29
The View Walters gushed over Clinton's small town upbringing and then promised she get to the "tough" questions in their next session:

"This was the first part of it [the interview]. We went back to her hometown, which is in Park Ridge, Illinois, near Chicago, on the tree-lined street where she had the most kind of, you know, stable, secure childhood."

Meredith Vieira: "Normal."

Walters: "Normal. Father, a staunch Republican; Hillary, a staunch Republican. And then we sat down -- this is the first part of the interview. It's going to be shown, the whole interview, in an hour, a week from Sunday, June 8th, from seven to eight o'clock. Okay, and then next week we sit down and ask the really tough questions, alright?"

The conversation continued and quickly got into penis size.

Vieira: "So did you get to you-know-who in this one? No?"

Walters: "Well, we got to him, we got to her husband, since we talked about how she met him at Yale and she's either the greatest actress in the whole world or this is really, you know, you understand why the marriage works when you see how she talks about him."

Joy Behar: "Maybe she's both, like the rest of Americans, American women, you know? We're actresses and we're for real at the same time with our husbands [audience laughs and applauds]. Everybody's got a little of both."

Walters: "And you know what attracted her the most -- I'll give one thing away -- when she first met him? His hands."

Star Jones: "You said that, Joy."

Vieira: "Oh, big hands, big hands."

Behar: "Yeah, he's got a big head, too. I love that."

Jones: "Yeah, Joy likes his hands and his head."

Behar: "His hair and his head -- it's huge."

Vieira: "But he doesn't have big feet. I met him, he did not have big feet, but he had big hands. I thought that was interesting."

At this point, Behar raised Lewinsky, which clearly irritated Walters.

Behar, joking: "Wait, let's call Monica and see if–" [Audience laughs and applauds]

Walters pompously reviewed her own work and found it wonderful: "That's so awful! I really protest that! I think it's going to be just a terrific interview."

Vieira: "So you liked her."

Walters: "I did, and she's very, then we had a lot of time to just, sort of, talk privately on the way home. We talked a little bit about Star [Jones], who's a friend, and she's going to come on the show one day, which we'll like, but you know, most of what this interview is about is how she felt about things, and that's, to me, very interesting -- how did you feel about this and how did you feel about that? So I hope you'll all watch it a week from Sunday...."

The discussion steered into how we know much more today than in the past about the private lives of public figures.

Re-joining the conversation, Walters opined: "It's a different time, and Hillary Clinton is probably -- look, today she's a Senator -- is one of the most accomplished and controversial First Ladies in our history."

Vieira soon brought up a newspaper report: "Did you see -- now, I don't know if this is true, it's in the New York Post today, Page Six -- a friend of Ken Starr's is saying that he now wants to have dinner -- you know, Ken Starr's the one who tried to get rid of Clinton, essentially, led the investigation -- he now wants to have dinner with Clinton and his wife, Hillary, according to the friend that's quoted."

The gaggle spent a while debating whether they would be able to "bury the hatchet" themselves in a similar situation when, in Vieira's words, somebody "had so vilified you and gone after you."

Behar made the error of raising a Clinton scandal and got slapped down by Walters: "I mean, on the other hand, it would show that the Clintons are, you know, that they're over the Whitewater and the -- the Whitewater they never really got them on."

Vieira: "That was years and years of litigation."

Walters: "They never got them-"

Behar: "That's not true, that's not true. They got them on the fact that Monica was in the White House."

Walters raised her hands and made a pained facial expression as she sighed in disgust: "Oh, let's drop, let's move on!"

Behar: "No! Wait a second! I'm not defending Ken Starr, but his position was that Clinton lied under oath and that's why he was after him, so they did get him for that. I mean, it's not like they didn't get him on anything. They got him on that."

Walters, channeled a Clintonista talking point: "No, but the investigations that went on for years and years and years and years about every aspect–"

Jones: "Was Whitewater."

Behar: "Well, the Whitewater turned out to be nothing but just a rafting cruise, or something [audience laughs]."

This isn't the first time that Walters has become outraged at the mention of Lewinsky's name. As noted in the September 16, 2002 CyberAlert, Walters scolded a colleague on The View for daring to ask the audience on Friday whether they would let their daughters be an intern in Bill Clinton's office. "So unfair, that's so unfair," Walters chided, urging Joy Behar: "Let it go already."

See: http://www.mediaresearch.org/cyberalerts/2002/cyb20020916.asp#7

So much for "nothing's off limits."

-- Brent Baker

[weegee]

"...she's either the greatest actress in the whole world or this is really, you know, you understand why the marriage works when you see how she talks about him."

Bill Clinton is a professional liar. He lied convincingly, he lied on camera, he lied under oath, he cried on cue. Any reason why we should believe that his wife doesn't have some of the same abilities?

[timestax]

an annoyed Walter raised her hands and made a pained facial expression as she demanded: "Oh, let's drop, let's move on!"

A ha ha haHA HAHA NYUK NYUK NYUK NYUK NYUK

[weegee]

Vieira: "But he doesn't have big feet. I met him, he did not have big feet, but he had big hands. I thought that was interesting."

At this point, Behar raised Lewinsky, which clearly irritated Walters.

At least she didn't bring up the size of Hillary's thighs:

"Don't go there, girl!"

[HardStarboard]

Tough question for Barbara to fire at Hillary:

Does your husbands herpes interfere with your sex life, or do you have one at all?

[weegee]

"...you know, most of what this interview is about is how she felt about things, and that's, to me, very interesting -- how did you feel about this and how did you feel about that?"

I wonder how she felt about getting caught lying about the origin of her name (and her age).

Hillary claimed that she was named after Sir Edmund Hillary. Of course his famous climb of Mount Everest occurred 50 years ago YESTERDAY (May 29th, 1953) and her birthdate was Oct 26, 1947.

[weegee]

Walters: "They never got them-"

A conspiracy of silence, Bahbwha. This is one thing that the Lewinsky scandal made evident: how the Clintons used connections to buy the silence of those who had the details needed to convict them.

[weegee]

The View is just the daytime version of Politically (in)Correct.

[weegee]

Hey, easy on her. At least she knows that it's not spelled "Barbra" (as BS Streisand spells it).

[weegee]

That man has the ugliest hands I believe I have ever seen in my life.

It's probably because he didn't use the White House sink for cleaning his hands.

[weegee]

[weegee]

Walters says nothing's "off-limits" but cries a river when someone brings up Monica, Whitewater, or the impeachment. Nothing says journalistic integrity like refusing to ask the difficult questions.

If these Clinton scandals were really over, there would be concrete answers that could be used to refute the charges. Instead the audience gets glib insults about the topic in general.

[weegee]

The deaths of Web Hubbell and Vince Foster affected her sex life more than Bill Clinton's herpes.

[Doctor Raoul]

Barbara Walters is SO jealous that Monica got more face time with Bill Clinton than she did.

[aristeides]

The people who call for moving on from Monica don't seem very interested in moving on from Election 2000.

[Doctor Raoul]

I was thinking along the same lines. Saying "Move On" to the Gorons and the hate America left anti-war types.

[aristeides]

Or "Get over it."

[DaughterOfAnIwoJimaVet]

I really hate those icky, bony, pale fingers. [Shudder.] And his pasty legs. Gack. He is entirely unattractive, in my opinion.

[DaughterOfAnIwoJimaVet]

Oh man, you had to make me think about him doing that.

Now I'm in hell.

[mystery-ak]

Do I see a live thread coming?...I'll have my crucifix nearby.

[Alissa]

It's impossible to 'move on' when the media still glorifies the Clintons!