What I think Barbara Walters will be known for

[brettdale]

One of her last interviews she will do was with Bill O'reilly, at the end she took his hand and said

"You're smart and courageous man and I respect you"

If she had any integrity she would've said.

"I despise men, who sexually harass woman, I also think your a coward for not admitting what
you did"

[Major Hogwash]

1. She broke the glass ceiling for female co-hosts of national tv news broadcasts.

So I never underestimate Barbara's contribution for changing societal views of women.
She was really something back in the 70s -- the first female news co-host with both Frank McGee and Harry Reasoner.

I used to watch her frequently on the program "20/20" back in the 1980s because they actually broke some fascinating news stories back in those days and went in to some depth like "60 Minutes" was known for.
I preferred watching programs like that instead of spending the evenings watching mindless reality tv shows like they have on now.
Some of her "one on one" interviews were pretty darned good, so I used to tune in to watch her specials to see what the other person had to say.

I didn't watch her latest program, "The View", hardly at all, but I think she advanced women's issues in this country quite a bit.
The View has been on for 17 years, after all, good, bad, or indifferent.

And so for helping to advance the cause of how women are perceived in this country, I thank her.
I think that will be her legacy.

[Leme]

51. Someone hired her to do this

She broke the glass ceiling for female co-hosts of national tv news broadcasts.
-
She accepted the millions they offered her.
-
She always was a so-so journalist at best.

[morningfog]

62. Right, and before they offered it to her, she was just at home ironing clothes?

Did someone just call a random woman and it happened to be her?

[Are_grits_groceries]

2. No she won't!

She truly was a pioneer in the news industry for women.

I remember well how Harry Reasoner treated her when she became his co-anchor. He was rude and churlish. I never liked him after that. If he had been gracious and accommodating, the story we read about now would be much different.

She made mistakes. Who doesn't? She will not be remembered for that unfortunate moment with O'Reilly. If that's all we remember, shame on us.

[MADem]

26. Reasoner was an unreasonable bastard. Nasty and vicious.

She was a pioneer, a glass-ceiling breaker.

Was she perfect? Hell no. Who is? Does she lean right in some regards? Yes she does. Do I care at this point? No. She provided a different image for young women coming up as to what was possible on television.

Because of her, we see women anchors and reporters and interviewers and television hosts and we don't even blink an eye. Before Baba Wawa, it was a meat-n-2-veg show all the way!

Anyone with daughters or granddaughters, or nieces, owes a debt to her--the next generation has positive examples on TV thanks to her.

[Logical]

40. The O'Reilly comment was idiotic. Lost a lot of points in my book. nt

[KamaAina]

57. True Reasoner story

I saw him in person once. He emceed our school Bicentennial pageant in Westport, Conn.

He was a man of rather short stature, around 5'3". Ms. Walters is an elegant -- and tall -- woman.

So Reasoner sat on a Manhattan phone book during the newscasts, so viweres wouldn't see a woman taller than a man!

[Are_grits_groceries]

63. George Will is also a shrimp.

I saw him around DuPont Circle in DC one time.
Hmmmmm.....

[KamaAina]

64. Bad Grits! Go to your room!

Plenty of straight people go to Dupont. At least to catch the Red Line.

[Are_grits_groceries]

68. Hey. You went there.

I just said Hmmmmmm.....
Hmmmmmm........
Wonder if anybody else picked this up?

[Exposethefrauds]

3. Making Celebrities Cry in heavily edited interviews

Sure she was one the first woman anchors but it is so common now most people forgot and no longer really care about her early years.

In the end Gilda Radner’s impression will be remembered more than Barbara herself. Fame is fleeting.

[MADem]

27. You can't forgive Walters for not forgiving (so you say) Gilda?

Eye for an eye and the whole world is blind.

Some light reading: http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/tv-movies/gilda-radner-impression-finally-earned-barbara-walters-approval-article-1.1161438

[Ken Burch]

31. I hadn't heard of that. I've now deleted the original post.

Thanks to her daughter for getting her to come around.

[JJChambers]

33. It's ok to make fun of someone with a speech impediment disability?

[erpowers]

34. I Disagree

I think you are wrong. Barbara Walters will be remember more for her news career and the many female news anchors that came after her than the Gilda Radner skit.

[MADem]

59. You are correct.

There are people who, if asked on a multiple choice, would pick Gilda Radner as Prime Minister of Israel.

She was a clever comedienne but the mists of time have swallowed her. The young don't look back like those who remember her do.

[JI7]

4. she might have been ok in her earlier years, but in recent decades it was mostly celeb crap

[Bluenorthwest]

5. She was the first woman at an anchor desk. An interviewer so skilled other interviewers will

study her for years.

[Major Nikon]

6. I always figured she'd be known for inspiring Gilda Radner's Baba Wawa character

[PeaceNikki]

7. that's really sad that you would reduce such an accomplished woman to that.

[brettdale]

10. I guess

I was really making apoint about Oreilly.

I still have no idea why people like Walters or Stewart,s uck up to him, why they
have never called him up on his sexual harassment or his treatment of Jemery glick.
They just laugh it off.

[MADem]

61. You don't realize what she was actually doing. That is what is a bit sad.

She was throwing that tool a bone, so he didn't have an opportunity to diss/rail at "The View" as a liberal bastion of dangerous feminist left-wing thought on his stupid Faux show.

Even though that show is not even close to that (liberal, I mean-- especially since Behar bailed), that's how he would portray it if he felt like he was being ragged and bagged. "Waaah, the feminists! Waaah, the Obama suck ups! Waaah, a conservative can't get a break! Waaah! Waaah! WAAAH!"

She basically gave him NOTHING to whine about. She took the story AWAY from him. He'd have to work for a five minute gripefest on his stupid little show. He wasn't getting it from HER program.

She's no fool. You don't spend decades in the game, go out on top, and be one of those.

[Enthusiast]

8. Barbara Walters said, "Rush Limbaugh is a fascinating man."

That's what she said. That's enough for me.

[MADem]

28. He is fascinating--like a snake is fascinating.

Like a skunk (how do they spray that stinky stuff?) is.

She didn't say "He's oh so cute and I'd love to sleep with him and listen to his soothing voice tell me what to think" -- she said he's "fascinating." And lots of hideous things are--like train or car wrecks. If they didn't fascinate, there wouldn't be a traffic slowdown on the OPPOSITE highway from a car accident.

[warrior1]

9. she lives in a bubble of her own making

most of these people do.

They don't understand or care about the common man.

I have no use for them. I don't watch or care about them.

[scarletwoman]

11. Oh. Here I thought it would be for going to bed with Henry Kissinger.

At least, that's what I'll always remember her for.

[Ken Burch]

24. EWWW....MINDBLEACH!!!!!!!! n/t.

[MADem]

29. Ed Brooke. THAT was the big reveal in her autobio.

Pretty obvious through the long lens of history, too.

[tenderfoot]

12. You mean Barbara Walters - Big Buddy of Roy Cohn?

http://joemygod.blogspot.com/2008/05/barbara-walters-why-i-was-roy-cohns.html

Many of Walters' other friends were horrified that she would even talk to Cohn, but what Walters reveals for the first time in "Audition" is that Cohn somehow got a warrant for her father's arrest dismissed. He had failed to show up for a New York court date because the family was in Las Vegas at the time.

Cohn liked to hint that they were more than friends "because I was his claim to heterosexuality," Walters says. "He never said that he was gay, he never admitted to me that he had AIDS. He was a very complicated man. He died, alone, up to his ears in debt. He had been disbarred and he was hated. And I might have thought the same way, but he did something when my father was in trouble, [and] I never forgot that."

Loyalty, she says, means everything to her. "I still have many of the same friends I had when I was younger," she says.

Did Cohn have a secret "nice" side?

"I would not use the word nice," she laughs. "He was very smart. And funny. And, at the time, seemed to know everyone in New York. He was very friendly with the cardinal, he was very friendly with the most famous columnist in New York, Walter Winchell, he had a lot of extremely powerful friends."

[Tom Ripley]

16. I had no idea she was ever Cohn's half-hearted beard

[MADem]

38. Her father was "bad with money" and he was a failure in a lot of ways.

When he was UP, he was UP...and when he was down, well, he was down. He loved those showgirls, and IIRC, he was a bit thirsty.

Barbara Walters had a mentally impaired sister, she was always "responsible" for her, and she had to take on the role of the "adult in the room" at a very young age.

If Cohn helped her father out of a jam, of course she'd be loyal. Who the fuck wouldn't?

[tenderfoot]

49. Of course, because deep down Roy Cohn was a real mensch.

I can't believe that your defending that slime.

[MADem]

52. I am not "defending that slime" but if you have any understandng of human nature--

and by your response it's entirely clear that you don't--when someone does a solid for a beloved member of your family, you DO tend to overlook their failings. That is how people operate. The phrase "all politics is local" doesn't just apply to governmental interactions.

Cohn was obvious there for Walters' father waaaaaaay before he engaged in any nefarious activity, before he became who he ultimately was in the history books.

Your mind, though, is made up. Enjoy your black-and-white, simplistic world. I prefer the world of nuance.

[tenderfoot]

56. I will MADem and know that Walters contributed not much of anything to Journalism.

I'll stick with Amy Goodman thank you.

[MADem]

58. Well good for you. Run along and do just that. nt

[tenderfoot]

65. Will do. And quit taking my criticisms of Barbara Walters personality.

Thank you.

[MADem]

70. Personality?

Whatever!

[tenderfoot]

73. Personally.

My apologies.

[NuclearDem]

13. Wh-what?!

[L0oniX]

14. Baba Wawa ...forever!

[n2doc]

71. yep

[Tom Ripley]

15. I always think of her appearance in Tom Wolfe's "Radical Chic"

Wolfe is a smug prick, but his portrait of an overly enthusiastic Walters bouncing on Leonard Bernstein's sofa is indelible.

[UTUSN]

17. She is kindred spirits with O'LOOFAH. As for Roy COHN, he's cousins to Toesucker MORRIS and

to FERLINGHETTI the (Lib?)Beat poet, how's that for weirdness.

She and O'LOOFAH have a lot in common: Dissed by the network males; both know how to SELF-PROMOTE the heck out of themselves, shamelessly, which is the total name of THEIR game.

As for her accomplishments, the byword has been for decades that she single-handedly trivialized "serious" news with the personality/celebrity angle of her interviews. I was repulsed and disgusted that she asked to touch the Dali Lama, I forget whether she went so far as a hug.

I wish she would not be made emblematic for the issue of advancement of women.

[Raine]

18. I'll always remember her interviewing Castro, I have no

recollection of her interviewing O'lielly. Of course that's one show I would've skipped for sure.

[Beausoir]

19. She's the ultimate star-fucker.

An inconsequential airhead who had a chance to DO SOMETHING IMPORTANT with her career and instead chose to starfuck her way through life.

Yawn.

[MADem]

30. You must be very young.

You quite obviously don't realize what the landscape was like for women in television.

You may not like her, but she was a trailblazer.

I assume you keep tabs on which stars the male anchors on television schtup?

[Beausoir]

35. Haha. No.

I actually grew up with pioneer television broadcasting. I know all about her career from the very beginning.

And I think you missed the entendre of the phrase "star-fucking".

[MADem]

36. Tell me what you meant by the phrase, and I'll tell you if I missed your intent.

I don't think it's surprising at all that people who work in the same milieu get together. Like it or not, BW was and is a "star." She was the prize, not the other way around.

She was first, she didn't quit, and she deserved her propers.

George Clooney isn't going to hump a shopgirl from Liverpool, that's not where he hangs out. Miley Cyrus would only bang the garbageman for the shock value. People do stick to their circles, and she was circling in rarified air.

Frankly if you know about her career from the beginning, I'm astounded that you don't have more respect for the bullshit she endured. You wouldn't tolerate it for a nanosecond if your daughter or granddaughter had to put up with the shit that was flung at her. I can't understand why you are so dismissive of her accomplishments if you're truly aware of her career path.

[Beausoir]

46. That's quite a classist rant but I won't hold it against you.

You are perfectly entitled to a little star adoration. It's harmless fun.

Just understand that other people find her to be a complete sell-out. She COULD have done so much more with the opportunities she was offered. Instead, she spent the last 30 years....THIRTY!....of her career interviewing Tom Cruise and Kim Khardashian and that ilk of hollywood trash.


Complete and total sell-out. She could have been so much more.

[MADem]

47. Oooh, snarky put-down! Complete with virtual sneer...!

"A little star adoration...!" "Harmless fun!"

All so ... diminutive!

Just understand that some people--intelligent, thoughtful, and fair minded people, with a sense of history-- understood how hard it was for a woman born in the late 1920s to make her way in the world BEFORE women had anything resembling job protections, never mind silly little harmless things like equal pay for equal work.


But hey, thanks for unveiling your most visceral emotions, for all of us to see!

Here's some news that will please you: she's retired now--the envy will fade in time.

And you still haven't told me what you mean by that put down term "star fucking." I noticed.

I guess when Peter Jennings or Larry King did it, it was ... OK?

[markpkessinger]

48. I don't think "classist rant" is at all a fair description of what MADem is saying here

MADem simply made an observation of the reality of the way the vast majority of people socialize (i.e., within their own circles, for the most part). That isn't an endorsement of the behavior, just an observation of it. Calling the observation of classist behavior 'classism' is rather like calling the observation of racist behavior 'racism.'

[Logical]

41. Trailblazer is true. But many many mistakes after that. nt

[MADem]

43. Let he...or she...who is without sin cast the first stone, then?

I think, for someone who had to go out and work to support her bankrupt parents and her mentally retarded sister at the age of 22, who never had one of those carefree young adulthoods that most people enjoy, that she didn't make any mistakes that really mattered.

A lot of people would do well to have had one one thousandth of the accomplishments she's had, going up hill in high heels and taking shit from people less smart than she was all the way, too.

I don't think she's perfect, because no one is. But when I look at the totality of her achievements, and the odds she overcame, I'm a fan.

[Tikki]

20. What I remember walters for is purposely deciding she was so special she would interview the pos...

that murdered John Lennon.

Forever journalist refused to even say his name…but don't cha know walters is sooo special , she does as she pleases.
Not many watched the interview.

She is everything that is wrong with television journalism.

Tikki

[MADem]

37. I thought that was a great interview.

I don't know anyone who didn't want to know WHY that fucker did what he did. I don't remember any news anchor refusing to say his name, either.

Because what he did made no sense. And everyone wanted to know WHO the eff did such a thing, along with the WHY of it all.

I thought that was one of the things that was RIGHT about TV journalism--people wanted to know WHY and she went and found that out. She got the interview when no one else could.

And now we know why. It doesn't bring much solace, but at least we know.

[Tikki]

74. Your memory doesn't reflect mine.....

I checked the numbers after the interview...they we're dismally low.

But walter's is going to do what she is going to do and you enjoyed it..so there you go.

Tikki

[Luminous Animal]

21. I remember her for dating a war criminal.

[undeterred]

22. I will remember her for all the women she has inspired

to launch big careers. And that's a lot of women.

[MADem]

44. There were a few!

Some of those who have reached the upper tiers:



http://www.mediaite.com/tv/photo-every-female-newswoman-joins-barbara-walters-farewell/

[closeupready]

25. What was the 60 Minutes story she did where she had a conflict

of interest? I remember that scandal well, and forget the exact context, but that is, in part, what I will remember her for. And her worship of the powerful.

She's very talented at what she does, I'll give her that, yes.

[undeterred]

32. She was never on 60 Minutes.

So I guess you don't remember her very well.

[MADem]

39. I am pretty sure the poster meant TWENTY TWENTY. It's all numbers.

60 Minutes was as sexist as sexist could be, for many, MANY years.

[closeupready]

66. Yes, thanks. Let me see if I can find it quickly.

>>4. Bashar Assad
Walters held the Syrian leader's feet to the fire about his treatment of political dissidents in a 2012 interview. She later acknowledged a conflict of interest, because she helped the daughter of Syria's U.N. ambassador by trying to get her an internship or college admission.

“In retrospect, I realize that this created a conflict and I regret that,” Walters said.<<

This is merely the latest conflict of interest issue Walters got into - there was another one from the early 90's I believe. I'm not able to find it at the moment.

[MADem]

69. Let's see...she helped the daughter of the Syrian UN ambassador...

Yet, instead of going easy on Bashar, she STILL "held his feet to the fire."

If she gave Bashar a pass, and let him do the old bullshitty soft shoe, and never asked him any tough questions, I'd be a bit more poutraged. The fact that she helped the daughter and still beat up the girl's father's boss sounds to me like smoothing the way for the kid didn't affect her reporting.

It was more of an APPEARANCE of conflict rather than an actual one.

And she isn't at ALL afraid to second-guess her decisions, and say when she was wrong or felt as if she was exploitative. I like the fact that she has enough guts and integrity to do these kinds of frank self-assessments:

http://www.thewrap.com/barbara-walters-five-most-controversial-interviews-video/

[ScreamingMeemie]

42. I will remember her for being an a-MAZ-ing name-dropper, and that's about it.

[6000eliot]

45. She seemed always to care way more about FAME than she did about TRUTH.

[snooper2]

50. Did she dead?

ah, no, I checked still here


http://www.deadoraliveinfo.com/dead.nsf/wnames-nf/Walters+Barbara

[nilesobek]

53. She went to Syria and did a nice fluffy

piece for President Assad. Barbara sounded pretty sympathetic of Assad, repeating out loud how nicely educated and mannered he is. She had the nerve to go to Syria.

[Tuesday Afternoon]

54. for lowering journalism standards and forwarding "soft' news for comingling celebrity gossip as news

[Tom Ripley]

55. ^^^THIS^^^

Walters' enduring accomplishment

[taught_me_patience]

60. A great interviewist and an inspiration

Nobody will remember this interview with O'reilly except you and your wild imagination.

[SidDithers]

67. She has a great history, but I'll most remember her for...

"What kind of a tree are you, if you think you're a tree?"

Sid

[joeybee12]

72. I recall her blaming Clinton for 9-11 when she was r*mming Bush...

There's a special place in hell for her.