OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
Meghan McCain, the daughter of the late Sen. John McCain and former co-host of the ABC Daytime show “The View,” has weighed in on the Whoppi Goldberg situation.
To recap, On Monday’s show, Goldberg said that the “Holocaust isn’t about race… it’s about man’s inhumanity to man.”
Co-host Ana Navarro attempted to correct her when she said, “But it’s about white supremacists going after Jews.”
But Goldberg, as she often does, interrupted her cohost, talked over her, and insisted that “these are two white groups of people! The minute you turn it into a race it goes down this alley. Let’s talk about it for what it is. It’s how people treat each other. It doesn’t matter if you’re Black or white, Jews, it’s each other.”
She then went on to apologize for what she said, first on Twitter.
“On today’s show, I said the Holocaust ‘is not about race, but about man’s inhumanity to man.’ I should have said it is about both. As Jonathan Greenblatt from the Anti-Defamation League shared, ‘The Holocaust was about the Nazi’s systematic annihilation of the Jewish people — who they deemed to be an inferior race.’ I stand corrected,” she said.
“The Jewish people around the world have always had my support and that will never waiver. I’m sorry for the hurt I have caused. Written with my sincerest apologies, Whoopi Goldberg,” the host said.
And she began Tuesday’s show with another apology for what she had said.
“Yesterday on the show I misspoke. [The Holocaust] is indeed about race, because Hitler and the Nazis considered the Jews to be an inferior race,” she said.
She continued: “Now, words matter, and mine are no exception. I regret my comments and I stand corrected. I also stand with the Jewish people,” she said.
But McCain says that the fact that Whoopi only got suspended after her ‘half-assed apology’ shows that there are two sets of rules for conservatives and liberals.
“I was lectured to thousands of times on The View, there is a belief that ‘cancel culture’ is really ‘accountability culture’ among the woke left,” she said in her column for The Daily Mail
“Which seems to be a belief that’s quickly forgotten whenever it’s Whoopi who has to be held to account.
“I am not calling for Whoopi Goldberg to be fired, if only because I don’t believe there is any universe where she could possibly do anything that could get her fired – she is the crown jewel of The View and a pop culture icon,” the former host said.
“But I hope this can be used as a teachable moment to explain to millions of Americans why conflating the Holocaust as something that is specific and limited to ‘white people’ is insane, ahistorical, and anti-Semitic,” she said.
She continued:
I also think ABC and The View at large need to take a hard look at why some hosts — and let me be completely candid here – why some liberal hosts are held to an entirely different standard than anyone else.
Whoopi has said a slew of insanely-controversial and hurtful things over the course of her tenure at The View.
Some of the more notorious ones include defending Roman Polanski for raping a 13-year-old (calling it ‘not rape, rape’) and defending Bill Cosby after over 50 accusers had come out publicly with their stories.
With age and status comes protection at The View.
This goes for the other liberal hosts as well.
Instead of half-assed apologies and bringing in experts in the antisemitism space, maybe dedicate an entire ‘Hot Topics’ segment to discussing why what was said was so deeply offensive and dangerous.
In the world of media, there are people who will never face the same ramifications and repercussions that others will.
There’s a double, triple, and even quadruple standard if you are conservative.
