Posted on 05/16/2014 4:23:42 AM PDT by Kaslin
You can always tell when a network legend is retiring. His/her network blocks out most of a Friday night so they can remember all of the legend's glory days. At 84, ABC's Barbara Walters is taking a bow, and she's certainly as synonymous with television as Johnny Carson or Walter Cronkite.
Walters was a pioneer for female journalists on TV. She's also an archetype for our liberal feminist media. In recent years, she's competitively elbowed out other contenders in providing leading Democrats with the most comfortable of softball interviews.
A holiday tradition at the Obama White House is a visit from Walters, who stays as sweet as pumpkin pie.
From 2012: "Mr. President, Mrs. Obama. There is a photograph of you (hugging) that went viral, became the most shared photograph in the history of Twitter. How do you keep the fire going?"
From 2011: "I know that you answer people's letters all the time. And what we thought that we might do. We asked middle school and high school students to throw a few questions. I'd like to read their questions. 'If you were a superhero and you could have one superpower, what would it be?'"
Walters promised these "news" revelations in 2010: "When we come back, we'll hear about family life in the White House, just who slept through the midterm elections, the importance of SpongeBob SquarePants and the night the Tooth Fairy didn't show up. Stay with us."
Soon after the 2008 election, in her first Barack Obama special, Walters explicitly compared the Obamas to the Camelot swoon over Jack and Jackie Kennedy, and their "youthful embodiment of style, substance and hope." She went all over ABC praising them.
On "Nightline," she said "When you see him with his wife Michelle, he is so relaxed, he is funny. I have rarely seen a couple as devoted, as together, whether they're talking about their children or the kind of dog they're going to get ... They tease each other, but the respect that they have for each other is enormous."
The disastrous rollout of Obamacare eventually caused Walters to lament on CNN: "We thought that he was going to be -- I shouldn't say this at Christmastime, but -- the next Messiah."
Another legendary softball-fest was the two-hour Sunday night primetime special promoting Hillary Clinton's first memoir "Living History" in 2003. Walters wondered how she could work with Republicans after that impeachment thing: "I mean, no hard feelings, no remnants? Are you a saint?" She sighed, "I can barely remember a week went by when one of you wasn't being criticized and investigated." St. Hillary also drew this softball about the Monica Lewinsky mess: "I don't think people realize how strong your faith is. It goes all through the book. It must have helped you then."
Walters is so smitten by the Clintons she used their marriage as encouragement to Anthony Weiner: "And we had a president named Bill Clinton who went through a great deal of trouble, weathered the storm and is now not only respected, but he's beloved by many people, with a very good marriage."
This treatment is extended to liberals alone. Sarah Palin? Walters told her in 2010 people find her "a little scary," suggesting "You hear, 'She's very charming, but she's uninformed.' What are they afraid of?" Walters hounded the Bushes in 2001 that incoming Attorney General John Ashcroft was a lighting rod: "He openly opposes abortion. But he's going to have to be the one to protect the abortion clinics. He's not considered a friend to civil rights. He's been against court-ordered desegregation."
Walters is an icon to her peers, perhaps because she's advocated for leftist ideologues more aggressively than anyone else.
Well she certainly had a long career. Good for her for retiring and not do what congressman do and die in office.
Walters main claim to fame is her Affair with a Negro U.S. Senator from Taxachusetts!
Things simply changed.
Mr. Booth, how is the ankle?
She is a personality interviewer. She stopped being a journalist years ago.
I don’t wish her ill. But I won’t miss her either.
“Are you a Saint? How do you work with those schweinehund?”
BowWow Wawa
Barbara Walters was both the sexually liberated woman and the professionally liberated woman.
Her reputation in earlier times on “Today” and the “ABC Evening News” was that of an aggressive competitive reporter trying to get the big story and beat the competition. Her competitors and those fellow employees who she harangued in her aggressiveness to get stories called Walters a “B**ch”
Uncle Walter Cronkite told the story of how Barbara ran down the tarmac like a substitute player in a football game to get onto the plane where he had expected an exclusive interview with Egyptian President Anwar Sadat as he was going to Israel for an historic visit.
One time a CBS reporter named David Dick beat her out for an interview with Governor George Wallace’s wife after he was shot during the 1972 presidential campaign.
Roger Mudd wrote in his autobiography that a female staffer said to the reporter who got the scoop “It isn’t every day you get to sc**w Barbara Walters”.
God loves all His children and has blessed her with 80 plus years of life.
The softballs end when a conservative shows up!!!
No surprise that The View was considering Monica Lewinski as a replacement for Barbara Walters. Walters, too, was an adulteress to a politician, Senator Brooke of Massachusetts in the 70s. That would have been the perfect segue.
I believe he was a journalist!!
She was an awful suckup interviewer who would ask a few trolling questions to draw attention. Such as asking Vlad whether he ever killed someone. Female viewers probably liked her style
I am wrong I just realized it was someone else I was thinking about!!
Barbara Walters....... Liberal enabler and rear coverer for the left for over 50 years. Good riddance.
I do not think I have ever watched BaWa...at least not a whole interview...had better things to do
Yeah, well those were the only balls she was juggling. She was playing with a married US Senator’s as well.
On those rare occasions, she would become grave, pensive, even somber: “You aren’t one of us. How sad for you.”
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