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

[Mister Baredog]

How do you think it will be received by the public?

Liberal garages will be full of copies, I'm sure people like Striesand will but thousands to help her friend the HILDABEAST!

[SkyPilot]

Yes Baba WaWa--you're right.

What we really, really want to hear are Hillary's views on prescription drugs vor seniors vis a vis Medicare.

[lilylangtree]

Barbara Walters can interview everybody else and ask hard questions supposedly but she doesn't want to confront Hitlery with the same questions. Oh, puhleesseee! Spare the audience the biasness that will be evident in the interview.

[Fred Mertz]

Good one!

[Hildy]

Isn't it odd to have a Senator that has to field interviewers? I mean, shouldn't Senators be open to the press anytime, anyplace? Think about how bizarre that is.

[freekitty]

I don't suppose she will mention the alledged rape of Juanita either?

[TC Rider]

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."

I bet he wears a size 4 1/2 loafer.

[Eva]

Who is Star? A friend? That was the only interesting item that was mentioned.

[Cate]

There's a big difference between having a big head and being a bubble brain. Or is that a bubba brain. puke..

[hosepipe]

Post # 5:
Jeff Head nailed the proper response to Walters...
Alamo-Girls have nailed the Clintoons to the post...
All that remains is reading the "poster"...

[BossLady]

"Oh, let's drop, let's move on!"

I was hoping this applied to Bill and Hill.......(sigh)

[sauropod]

OK, would you New Yawkers care to explain why you have now put the rest of the country in this position?

I suspect there will be a hell of a lot of garlic clove shortages in 2008!

[Future Snake Eater]

Hillary, a staunch Republican.

While that may be true, I have no doubt whatsoever that Hillary! becomes what she wants to be in order to gain more power and influence.

[bray]

BABA-"As a role model for professional women Ms Clinton, do you think women should stay with a sexual predator in their marriage? I mean if it means your personal advancement?? Is this what the women's movement was about??" Or do you have perhaps the sickest marriage on the planet?

Pray for GW and The Truth

[ValerieUSA]

If she wants to "move on" then why is she doing this interview and reading the book and hyping the "tell all"? Can people be more phoney? Moving on means leaving the Clintons behind in obscurity... not trying to resurrect a dying career by repeating their scripted old talking points.

[smiley]

If I remember...and I could be mistaken...but didn't The View talk about Monica's lovely handbags on the show?

[Samizdat]

And how did she "feel" about murdering her way to the top?

[Zavien Doombringer]

I smell a firing at The View...Anyone remember the cute blonde, Matenopoulos was her last name...Barbara had a hard time with her and she disappeared!

[Carolinamom]

His hands look like white spiders.

[Zavien Doombringer]