When The View erupted into a fight, Whoopi Goldberg had to lay down the law.
Part of the core concept of the ABC daytime talks series is that the panelists come from different viewpoints. The friction fuels conversations on current events.
However, even though these moments are good for ratings, they can sometimes be too much.
Whoopi stepped in to break up a fight on The View when two of her fellow co-hosts spun out of control.
‘The View’ broke out into a bit of a fight
As the panelists of The View were discussing the looming political horrors that the next several years will bring, one topic was education. Part of the multi-pronged conservative war on education has been school vouchers.
Co-host Sunny Hostin began citing statistics and studies of these programs.
It’s arguably not the most pressing aspects of vouchers — which effectively defund actual school districts and attempt to work around the First Amendment. But the statistics on who “benefits” from these programs are worth noting.
“What happens with vouchers, the studies show very clearly, that they fund students that are already attending private schools,” Sunny noted.
“So people with money get those vouchers, use those vouchers to pay less for their private schools, and their kids go on to do well,” she explained.
Noting already underfunded public schools, Sunny added: “Where do you get the money for those vouchers? You pull the money from those poor schools.”
This is when Alyssa Farah jumped in
Instead of waiting for Sunny to finish citing the statistics on voucher programs, Alyssa Farah jumped in, interrupting Sunny. But she did so without success.
“Let me get in just to make it a conversation,” Alyssa insisted. It did not avail her, so she swapped tactics.
Alyssa brought up that she herself had attended public school, recalling that Sunny had gone to private school. (Just a reminder that people can have childhood experiences that they don’t believe should be universal — and that vouchers are about who pays for someone to attend private school, not a referendum on private schools themselves)
“Nobody can figure out what’s being said here right now,” an exasperated Whoopi Goldberg pointed out.
As Alyssa and Sunny continued, Whoopi declared that they were going to take a break — as in, a break to commercial. All because “no one can hear what anyone’s saying.”
She sternly emphasized: “No. There’s no last thing being said here right now.”
Is a fight on ‘The View’ all that serious?
Joy Behar and Sara Haines looked on with apparent amusement as Whoopi brought her castmates to heel. Whoopi simply told the audience that they would “be right back.”
Immediately, social media users began to discuss the incident. A number of people made comparisons between Alyssa and former The View antagonist Meghan McCain.
We have to disagree there. Alyssa may have been interrupting (okay, she was definitely interrupting), but she didn’t sulk or go “ugh!” while other panelists spoke. It was an interruption, not a tantrum. Whoopi still brought the hammer down to nip the conflict in the bud.