I am not a regular viewer of The View, but I have watched
the show, now and then. A lot of my viewing of it has been through
You-Tube: I want to see if a controversial guest (i.e., Ann Coulter,
Michelle Malkin, Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, maybe Jesse Ventura) holds
his or her own, or I want to watch Rosie O’Donnell’s historic clash with
Elisabeth Hasselbeck over the Iraq War, or Whoopie Goldberg’s lecture
to Elisabeth about race. I watch the YouTube video, You-Tube recommends
to me other excerpts from The View to watch, and I then watch those.
I have occasionally watched the show in the morning. This has
usually been when I have known that certain guests would be on it. I
think of Barack Obama, Dick Cheney, Bill Clinton, or Rachel Held Evans.
Rosie O’Donnell will soon be a host on the view again, after a long
time of absence. And I have also learned that Nicolle Wallace will be
one of the hosts.
Nicolle Wallace worked on the McCain campaign in 2008. You may have seen the movie, Game Change,
which was about John McCain’s running mate, Sarah Palin. Well, the
character of Nicolle Wallace in that movie was the lady with the blond
hair who was trying to advise Sarah Palin on what to say in interviews.
In the movie, and in real life, Nicolle ultimately decided not to vote
for John McCain due to her doubts about Sarah Palin’s qualifications.
I’m wondering what The View will be like with Nicolle
Wallace as a host. I was rooting for her to be on it, but there is a
part of me that thinks that she may be too smart, too nice, and too
careful about what she says to be a host for the show. She is a
conservative, but I question whether conservatives will root for her as
they did for Elisabeth, on account of Nicolle Wallace’s criticisms of
Sarah Palin. (Also, see this article,
which questions whether she is even conservative.) And I have
difficulty envisioning a knock-down, drag-out clash between Rosie
O’Donnell and Nicolle Wallace, or Whoopie Goldberg seeing any need to
lecture Nicolle Wallace on race. Nicolle Wallace will probably present
her point-of-view in an intelligent, polite, yet strong manner, as she
has in the past.
Maybe that’s a good thing. Maybe Nicolle Wallace will bring the debates on The View
to a higher level. Unfortunately, that may be at the expense of the
raw honesty that drew viewers to the show. But the show would focus on
substance and issues.