She got suspended from her job on “The View” and was forced to apologize less than a year ago.
But her view hasn’t changed at all.
And now, Whoopi Goldberg is getting a richly deserved shaming from the people who know best.
The ABC personality, who has been inflicting her arrogance and ignorance on the American public for 15 years from her perch on the cackle-fest “The View,” made headlines in January with the ludicrously ignorant claim that the Holocaust wasn’t about “race.”
The ensuing firestorm got her kicked off the set for two weeks even after she made an on-air apology, but it turns out her “apology” was empty words.
Because in a weekend interview with the British newspaper The Sunday Times, Goldberg showed her understanding of history is still blinkered by the current American liberal obsession with skin color — claiming that the Nazi attempt to exterminate the Jewish people during the Holocaust was not a matter of “race” at all. Even if the Nazis themselves thought otherwise.
It went over about as well as it did the first time.
One of the most effective responses came from Holocaust survivor Lucy Lipiner, author of “Long Journey Home: A Young Girl’s Memory of Surviving the Holocaust.” She accused Goldberg of using the Holocaust as a “punching bag” to make her points for progressive politics.
“Whoopi Goldberg continues to use the Holocaust as her punching bag,” Lipiner wrote.
“We told her that her comments harm us and she simply doesn’t care. I survived the Nazis and the Holocaust, so I’ll be damned if I let a comedy has-been, peddling a fake Jewish name get the better of me.”
Whoopi Goldberg continues to use the Holocaust as her punching bag.
We told her that her comments harm us and she simply doesn’t care. I survived the Nazis and the Holocaust, so I’ll be damned if I let a comedy has-been, peddling a fake Jewish name get the better of me. pic.twitter.com/wgAHGsBPPU
— Lucy Lipiner (@LucyLipiner) December 25, 2022
There are many ways to describe Goldberg, but “comedy has-been, peddling a fake Jewish name” has to be up there with the best.
Goldberg’s acting and entertainment history is sketchy. And as a comedian (“Sister Act,” etc.) it is tough to think of anything about her that’s actually funny (even counting the “whoopee cushion” joke). “Goldberg” is a stage name for the woman born Caryn Elaine Johnson.
(“She claims to have taken her stage name from a distant Jewish ancestor,” the Times’ Janice Turner wrote. However, Goldberg appears to have no actual Jewish ancestry, according to a February report in the Jewish Telegraph Agency. Other, unconfirmed reports indicate that “Johnson” was “not Jewish enough” for a career in show business, according to a Jewish Chronicle report from 2011.)
Another way of describing her is as a woman too ignorant to know what she doesn’t know — and too arrogant, apparently, to care.
The Times interview was part of a publicity campaign for the movie “Till,” about the case of a black teenager whose brutal murder in 1955 galvanized the civil rights movement. Given the topic, it’s not surprising Goldberg was focused on American racism.
Given her fairly recent history, though, it’s surprising that she was so willing to speak cavalierly about another topic — the Holocaust — that has already been a minefield.
Do you think Goldberg’s remark was anti-Semitic?
Yes: 86% (6 Votes)
No: 14% (1 Votes)
“As we talk, I’m struck by how often Whoopi references Jewish experience,” Turner wrote.
“She compares making Till to Otto Frank publishing his daughter Anne’s diaries, and the migration of black Americans from the racist Deep South to more liberal northern states to ‘the end of Fiddler on the Roof, when they’re taking all their possessions and they’re leaving town’ to flee a pogrom.”
And she persists in distorting history by insisting it be viewed only through the lens of the American experience — and that the American experience be viewed only through the lens of slavery.
In the process, her description of the Nazi treatment of the Jews and others — gypsies, for instance — as somehow not a product of racism displays her shuttered worldview.
When told that Nazis specifically declared race to be their priority, Goldberg turned that on its head.
“Yes, but that’s the killer, isn’t it?” Goldberg said. “The oppressor is telling you what you are. Why are you believing them? They’re Nazis. Why believe what they’re saying?”
Goldberg might think that’s a brilliant question. It’s not. The “oppressor” is telling you who he is and why he’s doing it. That’s usually a pretty good indicator of motive.
Pretending otherwise because it doesn’t fit the narrative of current liberal ideology — which holds blacks as the epitome of American and global victimhood — is self-evidently absurd.
And social media users let her know it:
So, after supposed ‘apology’ earlier in year, Whoopi Goldberg doubles down on her vile remarks that the Holocaust was not about race, and instead ‘white on white’ violence. Someone get this ignorant fool off the air! @TheView pic.twitter.com/zxDP6PX4Ig
— Arsen Ostrovsky (@Ostrov_A) December 25, 2022
Once again Whoopi insists on dismissing the Holocaust as a mere white-on-white crime, rather than the industrial-scale murder of Europe’s Jews. #Antisemitism — history’s oldest and most toxic hatred — is surging, but Whoopi is determined to trivialize it.https://t.co/Kv9jLTbXI7
— Jeff Jacoby (@Jeff_Jacoby) December 25, 2022
This one puts it perfectly:
“Accepting apologies from some people who spew Antisemitic garbage is the triumph of hope over experience,” writer and educator Joel Petlin wrote.
“We know that the Antisemitism will likely reoccur, but we still hope that they learned something along the way. Alas Whoopi just learned she could get away with it. Again.”
Accepting apologies from some people who spew Antisemitic garbage is the triumph of hope over experience.
We know that the Antisemitism will likely reoccur, but we still hope that they learned something along the way.
Alas Whoopi just learned she could get away with it. Again. https://t.co/Tx28cfpeTE
— Joel M. Petlin (@Joelmpetlin) December 25, 2022
That’s the crux of it. Goldberg knows that, as a prominent liberal voice who has the right skin color and politics, she can say anything and get away with it.
Her suspension in February should have humiliated her. It didn’t.
It should have taught her the importance of educating herself before making obscenely offensive statements in public. It didn’t.
It should have at least taught her the importance of keeping her mouth shut about one of the most atrocious crimes against humanity in the history of mankind. It didn’t do that either.
Like so many on the left, Whoopi Goldberg’s views are set.
They won’t change until they have a reason to — as long as they can get away with it.
