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Whoopi Goldberg has been given an unpaid break from television by ABC.
The long-time host of The View was suspended from her job for two weeks on Tuesday, following a number of controversial comments she made a day earlier about the Holocaust.
“Effective immediately, I am suspending Whoopi Goldberg for two weeks for her wrong and hurtful comments,” ABC News President Kim Godwin said in a statement on Tuesday evening.
Continued Godwin:
“While Whoopi has apologized, I’ve asked her to take time and reflect and learn about the impact of her comments.
“The entire ABC News organization stands in solidarity with our Jewish colleagues, friends, family, and communities.”
In a separate Twitter thread, CNN senior media reporter Oliver Darcy shared an alleged email sent to network staffers that further delved into Goldberg’s remarks, which read in part:
“Words matter and we must be cognizant of the impact our words have.”
Hours before receiving her punishment, Goldberg issued a mea culpa on air for the comments she made on Monday’s episode of The View, in which she argued that “the Holocaust isn’t about race.”
“I said something that I feel a responsibility for not leaving unexamined because my words upset so many people, which was never my intention,” she began in this apology.
“And I understand why now, and for that I am deeply, deeply grateful because the information I got was really helpful and it helped me understand some different things.”
Goldberg’s scandalous remarks were uttered during a conversation on The View about the Tennessee school board’s ban of “Maus,” a nonfiction graphic novel about cartoonist Art Spiegelman’s dad’s experience as a Holocaust survivor.
“Let’s be truthful about it because [the] Holocaust isn’t about race,” Goldberg in response at the time.
“It’s not about race.
“It’s about man’s inhumanity to man.”
The strange take drew immediate, sweeping criticism from Jewish organizations, including the Anti-Defamation League and the U.S. Holocaust Museum.
“The Holocaust was about the Nazi’s systemic annihilation of the Jewish people — who they deemed to be an inferior race,” wrote Jonathan Greenblatt, the CEO of the Anti-Defamation League.
“They dehumanized them and used their racist propaganda to justify slaughtering 6 million Jews.
“Holocaust distortion is dangerous.”
Goldberg tried to walk her comments back on Tuesday’s installment of this morning talk show, on which she serves as the lead host.
The Holocaust “is indeed about race, because Hitler and the Nazis considered the Jews to be an inferior race,” she said.
“Now, words matter and mine are no exception. I regret my comments as I said and I stand corrected.
“I also stand with the Jewish people, as they know, and as you all know because I’ve always done that.”
Among those who have been very critical of Goldberg?
Her former colleague, Meghan McCain.
“I was lectured to thousands of times on The View, there is a belief that ‘cancel culture’ is really ‘accountability culture’ among the woke left,” wrote McCain for The Daily Mail yesterday.
“Which seems to be a belief that’s quickly forgotten whenever it’s Whoopi who has to be held to account.”
McCain, who wrote this piece prior to the suspension getting announced by ABC, added that Goldberg’s apology was “half-assed,” concluding:
“I hope this can be used as a teachable moment to explain to millions of Americans why conflating the Holocaust as something that is specific and limited to ‘white people’ is insane, ahistorical and anti-Semitic…
“Whoopi has said a slew of insanely-controversial and hurtful things over the course of her tenure at The View.
“Some of the more notorious ones include defending Roman Polanski for raping a 13-year-old (calling it ‘not rape, rape’) and defending Bill Cosby after over 50 accusers had come out publicly with their stories.
“With age and status comes protection at The View.
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