The Obamas found the time to appear on The View on Monday, and the hour-long special was shown on Tuesday. In yet another casual interview for the entertainment-focused media, the First Couple responded to a myriad of questions from the hosts of The View that only touched on issues of significance near the end. Did we really need to hear about the Obama marriage and courtship....again?
For example, Barbara Walters wanted to know how they were going to celebrate their twentieth wedding anniversary. Sherri Shepherd thought they should share the story behind their first kiss. Joy Behar wondered what time they go to bed and what they talk about. Elisabeth Hasselbeck asked about their daughters' extracurricular activities, but Whoopi Goldberg stayed uncharacteristically quiet until she could ask a more topical question.
Hasselbeck was the first to bring up the dismal state of the economy, but she felt bad for doing so. Walters followed suit by trying to think of a relevant question or two but ultimately proved to be inept. She wouldn't even take credit for her non-partisanship, claiming that she was "being Elisabeth" at the time.
Would it be so terrible if Mitt Romney were elected? He was governor. He will probably be a little more moderate. He wants, he says... and I'm being Elisabeth... Okay, then I'll be Barbara. My point is would it be disastrous for the country if Mitt Romney were elected?
Goldberg spoke up near the end, following Behar's long awaited question concerning foreign policy and the situation in Libya. Behar was astute enough for once to wonder if what happened could've been an act of terrorism, but Goldberg seemed to suggest that free speech isn't necessarily a good thing.
...a lot of people talk about freedom of speech and we should be able to say anything that we want to say. But how do you explain to the American people that it's not just a freedom to say whatever you want to say, but to be thoughtful about the consequences? Because whether it was terroristic or not in Libya, something stirred folks up and these other folks around the world protesting, they're angry. So how do we, as Americans, how do we, like, figure out that sometimes things we say have terrible consequences as they did in Libya?
The producers also reminded us of the off-the-wall questions Behar asked Obama in the past. One of them was from a July 29, 2010 broadcast that was intended to insult Sarah Palin. "Should Snooki run as mayor of Wasilla?" she asked. While there weren't any more of these, it was abundantly clear that the president was wasting his time. He certainly could've been attending to matters of more significance, especially when Ahmadinejad ignored a U.N. warning on Monday when he used incendiary rhetoric to describe the destruction of Israel.
