The View/Weekdays at 11:00 EST on ABC
Maybe I’m not supposed to venture into daytime television with my li’l column here but, dagnabbit, I just can’t help it. The unthinkable has happened. I may actually miss Joy Behar.
Thanks to my early morning gig of being a radio show host I have watched The View since its debut. Yep, I’m talking Meredith Vieira-era View. Not only did it occasionally provide me with some fodder for my radio show (and still does), but I have always been a fan of interview programs where stars schlep their latest project and it didn’t hurt than Vieira was both easy on the eyes and quite the pro. Soon enough they even added Lisa Ling (replacing a leggy, utterly forgettable blonde) to the table and the hotness quotient really went up. It would hit the stratosphere a few years later when Elisabeth Hasselbeck was added but by then Vieira was long gone, replaced two times over, and by decided non-journalists (Rosie O’Donnell and Whoopi Goldberg, respectively). The View was by this point a bickering-fest that cut back on the celebrity interview time in favor of more “hot topics.” Ugh.
Gone was any real sense of structure, and with it decorum. The ladies not only cut each other off tirelessly, they seemed hell-bent on finding something to disagree about, Walters’ pleading to do just the opposite falling on deaf ears (and she’s the only one who should be bemoaning difficulty hearing!).
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After Ling handed the baton to Hasselbeck tons of drama followed: Star Jones wore out her welcome just in time for O’Donnell to step in as moderator, which she struggled with, never more famously than during a meltdown with Hasselbeck on-air. Rosie had brought a new energy to the show, but drained the audience of theirs in her one season’s time. By the time Whoopi Goldberg, an Oscar winner for Christ’s sake, decided to slum on the set Behar had gone from the go-to gal for laughs to some sort of neighing Dennis Miller wannabe. She had at once been the relatable aunt from the Bronx and was by now pontificating about the Middle East, the only punch-line in sight being Mario Cantone.
I was glad to hear Behar was leaving, though surprised that Walters’ announcement that she would be retiring didn’t trump it, or result in the show going with her (I’m still holding out for that). And Jenny McCarthy? Don’t even get me started. She’s making such a fool of herself on there I threw out my Singled Out VHS.
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Vinnie Penn (@VinniePenn) first hit the airwaves as co-host to Glenn Beck. By 2001 he was a regular on Howard Stern, and his work has appeared in national magazines such as Maxim, Hit Parader, and Cracked. He currently writes for MSN. Visit his website VinniePenn.net.