The View's Whoopi Goldberg has a long history of "appalling takes"

The Daily Beast

Before Goldberg's two-week suspension from The View for saying the Holocaust was "not about race," she had a "storied history" of controversial takes, says Kyndall Cunningham. "Specifically, many people are looking back on Goldberg’s defense of her friend, actor and filmmaker Mel Gibson, on The View in 2010, following his racist and antisemitic comments about Black and Jewish people—including an audio recording of the actor saying that he hoped his then-girlfriend, Oksana Grigorieva, was raped by a pack of n*****s,'" says Cunningham, adding: "Goldberg’s legacy as an important, trailblazing figure for women and Black people and a staple of the liberal commentariat has long been at odds with her various controversies. We all remember or have read about Goldberg’s infamous 1993 roast held at the Friars Club where her boyfriend at the time, Ted Danson, performed in blackface and said a slew of N-words and racist jokes. Goldberg ardently defended the routine and admitted to writing some of it, telling the press that she has “​'never been about political correctness.' She’s proved as much throughout her almost 15-year tenure on The View, defending former Ravens football player Ray Rice after he was caught on video violently assaulting his then-girlfriend, saying director Roman Polanski’s rape of a 13-year-old girl 'wasn’t rape-rape,' and refusing to condemn Bill Cosby during most of his sexual-assault allegations saga. Just like her most recent controversy, The View brought on an expert to speak with Goldberg about statute-of-limitation laws in rape cases. Additionally, she was accused of 'victim-blaming' actress Bella Thorne in 2019 after she criticized her for taking nude photos of herself when a hacker threatened to release them."