The Worst Show on TV?

ABC’s The View – a Barbara Walters creation – is quite possibly (not arguably) the worst show on TV.

The group of harpies who host the hour-long show example the lowest common denominator in human intelligence and sophistication.

Whoopie Goldberg dresses like the proverbial slob, and looks, everyday, as if she needs a bath and a good shampoo. (And when she adopts her “Valley Girl” persona, sensitive viewers reach for a barf bag.)



Sherri Shepherd is a woman devoid of common sense and or any I.Q. whatsoever. Her tendency to interrupt any conversation on a roll goes to her lack of awareness, about what is going on. (She’s the archetypal nobody, but The View likes her – uses her – because she brings a black demographic that Goldberg’s messy visage can’t.)



Elizabeth Hasselbeck is the white honky of The View – an egotistical loaf of white-bread ignorance, whose sensibility about women and politics is the nadir of intellectualism, and human decency.



Joy Behar may not be the most ingratiating personality on television but she is a comedienne and often provides surcease from the rafts of putrid bon mot by her co-host partners.



The View is representative of just how far television as sunk as a medium to enhance humanity. The dream of television’s pioneers – Philo Farnsworth and William Paley (among others) – for a medium that would provide culture and learning for the great unwashed has turned into a veritable nightmare with shows like The View.

Of course ABC won’t cancel such a show; it has an audience of stay-at-home women while their husbands sustain them and a raft of gays who are attracted to the likes of a Goldberg or Behar.

Sure, there are and have been other disgusting shows – The Jerry Springer show comes to mind – but those shows don’t pretend to be modes of enlightenment, which The View thinks it is.

Ms. Walters should be sent into exile for foisting such an abomination on the viewing public. She has substituted her clout and cachet for a nerve-rattling confluence of ignorance and ego.

(Give us a moment to puke.)

The Yin-Yang of Morning TV

Good Morning America lags The Today Show in viewers, and Robin Roberts is one of the reasons this is so.



Ms. Roberts is a caffeinated co-host of the ABC a.m. effort, and is one of the worst “interviewers” on all of television.

Roberts is always over-the-top and topically irrelevant, but she is a cancer-survivor, which is why ABC is loath to put her on the back-burner. Moreover, she’s African-American and everyone knows that firing blacks raises all kinds of problems for firers.

If viewers want jalapeno waffles for their morning repast, Roberts is their dish. She spices up GMA but a little goes a long way, and her professionalism as a journalist is nil.

On the opposite side of the a.m. coin is The Today Show’s Meredith Vieira, who comes to the early hours as a wet mop, lacking sparkle and journalistic acumen.



Ms. Vieira always appears somnambulistic, and her interviewing technique is – to be kind – vapid at best.

Ms. Vieira is the archetypal, tired mom. As a morning dish she isn’t an egg, sunny side up or even a hard-boiled version. She’s poached.

These two women make morning newspapers a viable option for those interested in news and societal gossip. The national print press should be delighted.