Behar Calls Out McCain’s Lies on The View

Remember when feminism meant talking truth to power?

Joy Behar, the resident comedian and proud feminist on the View, shows us what feminism looks like when she looks Presidential Candidate John McCain in the eye and asks him how he can approve campaign commercials that are based on lies.

Barbara Walters also reminds McCain that he has used the “lipstick on a pig” cliche before.

Did you notice that McCain seemed angered by these tough questions from the ladies of the View? I wonder what words were running through his head as he thought up a defense for himself.

Maybe Behar and Walters should moderate one of the upcoming debates?

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Complex Rhetorical Times

I watched the ladies on The View duke it out this morning over Sarah Palin. Walters, Goldberg, and Behar struggled to support their questioning of Palin to the conservative Hasselbeck, who in turn roundly defended her candidate.

At issue: the conflict between Palin’s duties as vice president and her role as mother of five minor children, including an infant with Down’s Syndrome. Walters, Goldberg, and Behar argued that the conflict was a valid issue.

Hasselbeck accused her democratic cohort of anti-feminism. No one, she argued, is asking about Barack Obama’s work-life balance. While Obama as a father is a pivotal part of his public image, Hasselbeck is right: no one is asking him how he will make time for his young children.

Of course, Walters, Goldberg, and Behar had a point too. Palin’s status as a mother, and the really inevitable fact that the vice-presidency will take up much of her time, is an issue. She’s a social conservative. Isn’t her most important job to be a good mother, according to the mores that she embraces, and the mores that propelled her to the vice-presidency in the first place?

In other words, what should be scrutinized is not her mothering skills but her possible hypocrisy.

This fact seemed lost on all of the women on The View, as they tried to account for several identities at once—mother, Republican, feminist, social conservative—and failed miserably.

One thing Goldberg and the ladies at The View had all right: these are some complicated rhetorical times.

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