'View' hosts Behar, Goldberg walk out on Bill O'Reilly
after he blames 'Muslims' for 9/11.
Bill O'Reilly's fight with the ladies of 'The View' (Video)
voices.washingtonpost.com
Tyler Clementi (AFP/Getty Images)Joy Behar and Whoopi Goldberg made it clear on today's "The View": They are not fans of Bill O'Reilly. During his visit to their show today, the conversation turned to the Park51 community center. O'Reilly staunchly attacked President Obama for not commenting on the "appropriateness" of the location.
Behar tried to interrupt O'Reilly, and he said, "Hold it, hold it. Listen to me 'cause you'll learn." She called him a "pigface" "pinhead" in return.
After O'Reilly said, "Muslims didn't kill us on 9/11?" Whoopi Goldberg corrected him with, "Extremists! Extremists!"
Shortly after, Behar and Goldberg stood up and walked off the set.
Barbara Walters chastised her co-workers, "I love my colleagues, but that should not have happened."
She then told O'Reilly that he "cannot take a whole religion and demean them."
O'Reilly apologized, dropping the word Rick Sanchez made famous: "I was inartful in my explaining."
The women returned after his apology.
How many times has someone stormed off this show? Genius television, ladies.
Updated, 4:15 p.m.
Past the yelling and stomping and showmanship, the argument the women and O'Reilly end on is a question the country seems to have been asking itself for some time. What do you call terrorists? The On Faith blog poised this question to a panel in July after the 2010 National Security Strategy severed the relationship between Islam and terrorism, rejecting the use of terms like 'Islamic terrorist' and 'jihad' to describe acts of terror.
One panelist, Brad Hirschfield, a rabbi, wrote:
Failing to call Islamic terror, Islamic terror, is dangerously naïve, if not willfully so. The same can be said for Jewish terror and Christian terror as well.
David Wolpe said in a post titled, "Tell the truth: There are Islamic terrorists:"
To use the words 'Islamic terrorists' no more indicts all Muslims than to say that there is teenage drug use indicts all teenagers.
Others, such as Arun Gandhi, the grandson of India's Mohandas K. "Mahatma" Gandhi, said it was the right thing to do to unlink terror and Islam
What's in a name? Whether we call them terrorists or renegades or rebels or whatever they still remain, in the minds of most people, a dehumanized entity that needs to be eliminated.
David Gushee wrote:
There is no doubt that the vast majority of people who have sought to inflict mass destruction on the United States and its citizens in the past two decades have claimed to be motivated by their understanding of Islam. If we were to accept the self-definitions and self-descriptions of the plotters and terrorists, they could fairly be described as Islamic (or "Islamist") in their motivations.
But perhaps we should not accept their self-definitions.
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By Melissa Bell | October 14, 2010; 12:42 PM ET |
