Embattled ABC star Whoopi Goldberg has made a career out of speaking for liberal causes, but she’s getting some unexpected support after being suspended from The View for her comments about the Holocaust.
“If you don’t like what Whoopi Goldberg said, guess what. Change the channel,” said Fox News host Sean Hannity — a stunning defense of the liberal entertainer.
9 drugs linked to Alzheimer’s disease? [Sponsored]
Hannity has long argued against cancel culture and against boycotting people simply for their statements, rather than for their actions.
“Censorship via big government, corporations is never the answer,” Hannity said again this week – and he didn’t change his tune just because Goldberg was on the other side of the political spectrum.
In fact, he defended all of the progressive TV stars, including some who are among his own biggest critics.
“If you don’t like Stephen Colbert, Kimmel, Fallon constantly shilling for Democrats, telling bad jokes, don’t watch it,” Hannity said. “No one is forcing you to. You don’t have to tune in.”
Goldberg was suspended for two weeks by ABC Television after saying that the Holocaust, in which several million Jews were killed by the Nazis, was “not about race” but instead about “man’s inhumanity to other men.”
She quickly apologized several times, both in writing and on television.
Sponsored: One Man Beats Cancer with Food Swap Trick
But that wasn’t good enough for the “cancel culture” warriors. ABC suspended her for two weeks, with network chief Kim Godwin telling CNN that Goldberg’s comments were “wrong and hurtful” and that the apology wasn’t enough.
“While Whoopi has apologized, I’ve asked her to take time to reflect and learn about the impact of her comments,” Godwin said. “The entire ABC News organization stands in solidarity with our Jewish colleagues, friends, family and communities.”
The New York Post spoke to an unnamed insider who said Goldberg feels “humiliated” by the network.
“She feels ABC executives mishandled this. She followed their playbook,” the source told the NY Post. She apologized – as they wanted – only to be suspended anyway.
Now, she’s threatening to make her suspension permanent… on her own.
“Her ego has been hurt and she’s telling people she’s going to quit,” the source told the newspaper. “Suspension from ‘The View’ is like getting suspended from Bravo. The bar is very low.”
The Truth About CBD [Sponsored]
Hannity wasn’t alone on the right in defending Goldberg.
Former Rep. Joe Walsh, R-Ill., said Goldberg “did nothing wrong.”
“She expressed an opinion that was uninformed,” he wrote on Twitter. “She then got informed. And she apologized. @abcnews you suck for suspending her. A suspension??? What a stupid, timid world we live in.”
Take a look —
.@WhoopiGoldberg did nothing wrong. She expressed an opinion that was uninformed. She then got informed. And she apologized.@abcnews you suck for suspending her. A suspension??? What a stupid, timid world we live in.
— Joe Walsh (@WalshFreedom) February 2, 2022
REVEALED: The TRUE cause of tinnitus (surprising) [Sponsored]
Over at the National Review, senior writer Charles C. W. Cooke said Goldberg is just an actor on a talk show who made a “stupid” comment on television… where actors make stupid comments all the time.
“It seems that Goldberg’s only crime was ‘being wrong in public’ — an eventuality that is all-but-guaranteed to arise when we televise spontaneous political debate,” Cooke wrote in an editorial.
“Why have such productions if we intend to police them like this?”
Cooke warned where these suspensions may be lead.
“Historians who look back on this era will presumably be shocked when they learn that, somehow, the institutions that were supposed to be the most tolerant and resilient — the media, the universities, the entertainment industry — were, in fact, the least tolerant and resilient of all,” Cooke wrote.
“We can add ABC to this growing list of shame.”
Sponsored: This INSANE Fish Experiment Will Leave You Speechless
Goldberg herself spoke out against liberal cancel culture in a Variety interview last year… presumably, because she has been a victim of it once before.
In 2004, SlimFast canceled an ad campaign with Goldberg after she told a joke about President George W. Bush.
If Goldberg decides to remain on The View, at least one prominent Jewish figure will be in her corner.
Anti-Defamation League president Jonathan Greenblatt said he accepts Goldberg’s apology and that it’s time to move on.
“I don’t believe in cancel culture,” Greenblatt said on CNN.
“I like the phrase that my friend Nick Cannon uses: We need counsel culture. We shouldn’t cancel Whoopi because she made a mistake.”
Now if only conservatives would get that same understanding.
— Walter W. Murray is a reporter for The Horn News. He is an outspoken conservative and a survival expert.