Watching • Video Digest: April 4, 2006

The View has always been fascinating for the wrong reasons: the egregious lack of insight among its female hosts; the infomercial leading up to Star Jones’s wedding; Jones’s stunning weight loss, which somehow left her looking just as dysmorphic as she did at 300 pounds. I skipped most of this drama, because I had a day job and because I can only break so many dishes in a one-hour period. But last week, The View outdid itself with this wonderfully classy exchange between Star Jones and Joy Behar.

Behar: “OK, Star. That’s enough about you! On to us. Bye! Keep your tits perky.”
Jones: “I’m glad to see you haven’t changed. Even today, you’re still a bitch.”

For those who take context with their Schadenfreude, let’s explain. Star Jones had gone on leave for a breast lift. This is remarkable for two reasons. Because: A) gross; and B) Jones has never discussed (or admitted to) the stomach stapling surgery that resulted in her radical weight loss. And yet viewers must be subjected to this kind of cringe-inducing imagery: “Last week was my 44th birthday, but my breasts still think they’re 20!” On the telephone from the hospital, Jones babbled incoherently, something you’d think everyone was accustomed to by now, when Behar interrupted with the above exchange and producers promptly cut the telephone line. So the rumors are true: Joy hates Star as much as the rest of us. Thanks, Barbara Walters, for bringing us this kind of awesome female empowerment.

The View was introduced nearly a decade ago to be a celebration of women’s intelligence and beauty, but it has instead become an argument for the opposite. The women’s Hot Topics discussion, at the top of every show, is generally a parade of ignorance. Their celebrity interviews are weak at best and downright uncomfortable at worst, with the women pawing over guests such as poontang prince Wilmer Valderrama like they were the drunkest aunt at the bar mitzvah. Last week, the women brought on a medium to speak to audience members’ dead relatives. With this kind of dumb-ass programming, The View will never be a good talk show. But thanks to Joy and Star, it may have finally become daytime television’s hottest soap.

 —Sarah Hepola, Apr. 4, 2006

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