Meghan McCain's exit underscores the problem with The View's remote taping during the pandemic as basic respect seemed to have broken down

Variety

"What’s been lost on The View in its remote-taping era isn’t debate, really — it’s good debate," says Daniel D'Addario "The show literally makes its name on framing the political in personal terms, and a certain degree of cut-and-thrust in strongly-felt debate is nothing new. Too often over the past year-plus, though, McCain in particular was at the center of arguments that verged so far beyond professional disagreement as to be discomfiting. There was a sort of vicarious embarrassment to watching co-workers who, deprived of the camaraderie that necessarily comes with sharing physical space, seemed to have forgotten how to speak to one another, all on a show that seemed most interested in egging them on. The most famous fight in The View’s history, between Rosie O’Donnell and Elisabeth Hasselbeck in 2007, culminated in a split-screen showing both conversation partners; for the past many months, every conversation has been in split-screen, allowing derision, in particular between conservative McCain and liberal comedian Joy Behar to bleed through the screen." D'Addario adds: "This much rang true — even critics of McCain, who early in her career tended to deflect counterarguments by relying on her youth and family name, can acknowledge that she managed to stick it out in an omni-directionally hostile environment. But it’s an open question as to what was accomplished, especially in the final year of her tenure. The View is not so very different from other programming that’s packaged as news — its purpose is to excite the pulse with invective. The only difference, perhaps, is that The View is honest about framing its debates as clashes rooted in something beyond policy disagreement....Elsewhere, the backbiting and caustic sarcasm exchanged between Behar and McCain has perhaps not been as newsworthy as their positions on the issues. But it also made those positions difficult to discern, as one first had to get through a level of snideness in the air that obscured everything else. Basic respect seemed to have broken down. Speaking directly to camera rather than to one another and an in-person audience, the co-hosts veered into a place that wasn’t even good TV. McCain, who’d made a burgeoning career out of striking a careful balance between speaking her mind and telling off her colleagues, seemed to have trouble finding the right note in this moment, and the rest of the View cohort had no interest in helping her find it."

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• Meghan McCain's time on The View is bursting with lowlights: "Looking back on McCain’s time with the ladies of The View I have but a single fond memory of her in the four years that she has been bickering with Joy Behar," says Shannon Melero. "One time, she said something agreeable. That’s it. It was a beautiful, fleeting moment overshadowed by all the times McCain chose to be willfully racist and ignorant and called it being conservative. But perhaps it was not as beautiful as the time Whoopi Goldberg embodied the spirit of thousands of viewers and told her co-host plainly, 'Shut up.'"
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