Whoopi Apology May Cushion Her Words
– By Ed Kociela –
As a point of full disclosure, I love Whoopi Goldberg. I don’t care if she is working in film, standup comedy, or chatting it up on “The View,” I am a fan.
I respect her social conscience, her compassion, her razor-sharp wit.
But, Goldberg is sitting out a deserved two-week suspension from ABC-TV’s daytime talk show “The View” for a comment she made last week that was, at best, naive, at worst, ignorant.
The topic was the Holocaust. Goldberg said the Holocaust was not about race, rather that it was an example of “man’s inhumanity to man.”
The comment and subsequent discussion led to a firestorm of criticism aimed at Goldberg.
Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League tweeted: “No @WhoopiGoldberg, the #Holocaust was about the Nazi’s systematic annihilation of the Jewish people – who they deemed to be an inferior race. They dehumanized them and used this racist propaganda to justify slaughtering 6 million Jews. Holocaust distortion is dangerous. #ENOUGH.”
It was an appropriate response.
While Germany’s genocide that resulted in the killing of those 6 million Jews could, without question, be described as “man’s inhumanity to man,” it is also undeniable that it was motivated by race.
I am, in no way, going to try to get inside Goldberg’s head to analyze it all. It would be fruitless and, quite honestly, futile because nobody really knows what goes on in the dark recesses of a person’s mind. If I had to guess, I’d say she got sloppy. I’ve been in media interviews and discussions like that and the thing is, you are always looking for that trump card to slam home your idea. Only thing is that if you are going to play that card, make damned sure it is the right card, otherwise you can end up embarrassing yourself.
I would also like to think that Goldberg had a momentary lapse of judgment, that her attempt to look in what may have been a macro view of the Holocaust caused her to bypass the root of it. I don’t know. But as a woman of color, you would think she would be able to parse out her intentions, to understand how race isn’t only something that has to do with skin color, that the intention of the Germans who ran those death camps was singular in purpose: to eliminate all Jews, period. It was an ethnic cleansing along the lines of the attitude white settlers had about the indigenous people of North America except there was considerable land to grab by decimating the Tribes that occupied the United States when the Europeans arrived.
Goldberg, to her credit, owned it when karma came to call.
“On today’s show, I said the Holocaust ‘is not about race, but about man’s inhumanity to man.’ I should have said it was about both,” she said in an apology on Twitter. “The Jewish people around the world have always had my support. I am sorry for the hurt I have caused.”
The tweet ends, “Written with my sincerest apologies, Whoopi Goldberg.”
“I cannot imagine more appropriate, even humble, responsibility-assuming words,” said Clifford Kulwin, rabbi emeritus of Temple B’nai Abraham in Livingston, New Jersey, one of the oldest synagogues in the United States.
What separates this, I think, is that there is no malice attached to her statements. Goldberg didn’t deny the Holocaust, as many do, did not underplay it, did not sympathize. She did, however, neglect that racism is at the heart of the matter. Again, I wonder if, as a woman of color, she is so accustomed to racism that she skipped it over, never giving a second thought. If that’s the case, it is even more incumbent on her to rectify because if we let the issue of racism slide, we are on that slippery slope, as they say, to acceptance, something life experience should have taught her.
Most importantly, if we let her comments slide simply because we love her acting or her comedy or her appearances on television, we are furthering the problem.
Look, nobody gets a pass regardless of how much we like them. Popularity and stardom do not place a person of celebrity in the untouchable status. In fact, a person in the public eye should be held to much higher standards simply because of the influence they have on others. We are all accountable for our actions, words, and thoughts.
Goldberg deserved her suspension and reprimand from the network. In fact, she is lucky she held onto her job because ABC has far less tolerance for ignorance and misrepresentation than even some of the most widely watched news channels. It has a reputation to protect, a code of ethics it works to adhere to, and takes the public trust seriously.
There is no telling what kind of impact this is all going to have on Goldberg and her career, but I will pretty much guarantee that it will stick to her in some way for the remainder of her years.
I want her to be funny.
I want her to challenge my emotions with her acting.
I want her to maintain her, usually, spot-on social conscience and biting commentary.
But, right now, she deserves her timeout to gather herself and move on.
Goldberg is usually a very bright woman who can suss things out in a hurry.
Let’s hope she takes these two weeks to grow, learn, and understand that it is often better to pause a moment before saying something you will regret because once something like that is said, you cannot unsay it.
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