ABC’s The View analyzes Gov. Sarah Palin’s acceptance speech.

 

For those that aren’t familiar with the program the co-hosts on this day were Whoopi Goldberg, Sherri Shepherd, Joy Behar and Barbara Walters.

 

Whoopi :  Yesterday Governor Sarah Palin came out swinging at the Republican convention.  She made her speech, did it do what it was supposed to do?

 

Barbara:  Well, everyone knows she was an unknown quantity, and I mean, whatever your view is, she was just wonderful.  And every paper that we’ve seen said that her delivery, her composure… Now you can then talk about what she said and didn’t say.  She was very strong and she was very sarcastic.  It’s going to be tough for Joe Biden in a debate.  But every paper said, “Explosive, Home Run, this and that…” Again, it was an attack on Barack.  There are a lot of things we don’t know and she has done no interviews, so…

 

Whoopi:  Sherri

 

Sherri:  You know, I thought she was going to be a very formidable opponent.  One thing she said that really disappointed me, her a Giuliani, is how they kind of made fun of Barack’s experience as a community activist.  And I feel like Barack graduated from Harvard, he could have taken a high paying job as an attorney, but what he chose to do was got to one of the poorest cities and help the underprivileged, help the older people, help the poor people.  And he wanted to serve.  So to me to make light of that when you want to serve your country… He was serving his country as well as she was.  But the only time I broke down into tears was when she said you have a friend if you have a special needs child, you have a friend who will be an advocate for that.  That touched my heart with Sarah Palin.

 

Joy:  I thought she was great.  I thought she really sold it.  She could be a comedienne.  She was very funny, has great timing.  Uh, it was interesting.  I was watching Chris Matthews when he goes out to the people who are outside the convention and he asks regular people what do you think?  And the women that he asked, the Republican women, were all, before she spoke, “Well, I don’t like this, I don’t like that, but she’s OK…” but the men were like “Yes!”  And I think they’re attracted to the woman.  She’s a hot-looking babe.  And somebody explained to me, one of my friends, a guy, that she looks like the kind of woman who, like a librarian, who has the ponytail and the glasses, and then she takes it all off and Va-va-va-voom.  And I think they are attracted to the woman.  They may construe that to be sexist to say that, but I think it’s true.  I don’t think they were attracted to Hilary as they are to her.

 

Barbara:  What did you think, Whoopi?

 

Whoopi:  I thought it was a very good speech.  I thought she came out strong.  She gave us information that we might not have had about her.  We saw the family, we saw that she’s a hockey mom and she has all these qualifications.  There were a couple of things that bothered me, that being one of them, Sherri, because there are so many community activists.  You know, one of the things that community activists do is they bring the messages back to the mayors, OK, and in big cities, sometimes you need somebody to help get things done.  So that bothered me.  I was sort of really aggravated by a couple of things and let me show you one of them.  Take a look:

 

Clip [Sarah Palin:  I was the mayor of home town….]

 

Whoopi:  And the crowd went crazy, the crowd went nuts and I thought, you know, when people work for the community, they do have responsibilities.  But something that I did love that I will share with you is she had her daughter there who was holding the baby.  This clip made me chuckle so much because it’s so real.  I loved it.  That was a real moment. [Clip of daughter with baby]

 

Joy:  They were passing that baby around a lot.  Cindy McCain had that baby, then somebody else had the baby, why are they passing the baby around like that?

 

Whoopi:  Because your arms get tired.

 

Barbara:  There was a lot of her, this is probably going to cost me an interview, but I’ll say it anyway…

 

Whoopi:  Yesterday, you said the same thing, Barbara.

 

Joy:  There’s no where to go but up from here.

 

Barbara:  I know…She criticized the media.  Now, it’s a very easy thing to criticize the elite media.  And Joe Klein, yesterday, who’s a columnist, said “There’s a tendency in the media to kick ourselves, cringe and withdraw when we are criticized, but I hope my colleagues stand tall in this case.  It’s important for the public to know that Palin raised taxes as governor, supported the Bridge to Nowhere before she opposed it, pursued pork barrel projects as mayor, tried to ban books at the local library and thinks the war in Iraq is a task from God. All of these are very legitimate things for her to say, but she has to be questioned.”  Also, this is not from him, this is the Washington Post, “Earlier this year, Palin used line item veto to slash funds for a state program benefiting teen mothers in need of a place to live.”  Now, her daughter, fortunately, has a place to live.  I thought she was wonderful last night and I’ve said that, but I think there are legitimate questions that have to be asked of her and any candidate.

 

Whoopi:  Right

 

Barbara:  And none of these were addressed last night.

 

Sherri:  I was just watching and I said, “the RNC was a good day for black people”….[goes on about the one black man shown on TV]

 

Joy:  Can we get a shot of the baby daddy, also?  He looked a little flummoxed.  Do we have the baby daddy there? [Picture of Palin] Not her [clip of Bristol and fiancé] There he is.  Look at this kid, what is he thinking?  I think he’s thinking the same thing the governor’s thinking, “Drill, Baby, Drill.”  You know?

 

Sherri:  He just had a look, Joy.  He just had a look like “how did I get here?”  You know, we met at the dance and it was just supposed to be fun and now I’m at the RNC.”

 

Joy:  Well you know, you sleep with the governor’s daughter, you better watch your step.

 

Barbara:  Just to be… you know, we don’t have Elisabeth here on the other side and you know, I try to be impartial.  And, and, but what you did feel about her, too, because there was this question, what if anything happens to him, could she manage the White House even without the experience.  This woman is obviously intelligent, this woman has guts, this woman has drive.  And I think whatever the party, because what we care about most is the country, whatever the party, you felt reassured by what she said last night.

 

Whoopi and Sherri just couldn’t get over the fact that Palin was right that Obama’s stint as a community organizer is not a qualifier to run the country.  Give me a violin.

 

As for Joy Behar, she should apologize to Bristol Palin’s fiancé for the crude sexual reference she made about him looking at Bristol’s younger sister and saying “Drill, Baby, Drill.”   The other women on the show just gave her this look of shock and then Whoopi moved on.  If this had been said about the fiancé of a Democrat it would be all over the news but Behar has the liberal protection plan so she is unfortunately immune from criticism.

 

In the end it was Barbara Walters who turned out to be the most impartial host on the program.  She was actually to the right of everyone else in her defense of Palin. 

 

It would have been far more interesting if Elisabeth Hasselbeck had been on the show to defend Palin instead of leaving it to Walters but she was actually in St. Paul at the convention so it was left to four liberals to evaluate a conservative woman and they looked very ill at ease.

 

 

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