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Things got messy last week with the girlfriends on "The View."
1 Jul 2006 06:23:45 -0700 rec.arts.tv
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An unusual 'View' offers a look into a web of show business lies
Saturday, July 01, 2006 By Robin Abcarian, Los Angeles Times Things got messy last week with the girlfriends on "The View." What was supposed to be a carefully choreographed series of lies, told to save face, spare feelings and protect careers, devolved into a nasty catfight, leaving a veteran newswoman, Barbara Walters, in the position not only of having admitted lying, but also of accusing her now-former co-host, Star Jones Reynolds, of lacking dignity for failing to lie about why she was leaving the show. Jones Reynolds, for her part, had already been slammed for (allegedly) lying about how she lost more than 100 pounds. And of course, the woman who accused her of that, "The View's" new co-host, Rosie O'Donnell, lied for years about having a deep crush on Tom Cruise ... before she came out of the closet. Everybody in TV lies, of course. To save face, to save feelings, to save careers. But rarely do the lies come apart so publicly. And rarely is a journalist such as Walters, whose main asset is her credibility, after all, forced to admit to tangoing with the truth. "I have always told the truth on this program," Walters told the New York Daily News on Tuesday, "except in the case of Star." Her big lie: Last May, when O'Donnell was hired to replace Meredith Vieira, Walters tried to dampen speculation that Jones Reynolds' contract would not be renewed for a 10th season. "If Star wants to continue to be there," Walters told The New York Times, "she is welcome." As it turns out, not so much. "This was not one of Barbara Walters' finest moments," said Robert Thompson, director of the Center for the Study of Popular Television at Syracuse University's S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications. "The one person who can stabilize the equation is the one person who has done more harm than good." Walters, of course, had known for months that ABC would not renew Jones Reynolds' contract. Jones Reynolds was supposed to let Walters lie for her, but her feelings of betrayal must have gotten the best of her. So she did two things: Instead of waiting until Thursday, the day she was supposed to announce that she was leaving, she jumped the gun on Tuesday and announced during the show that she was not coming back in the fall. And then Jones Reynolds compounded the insult by telling People magazine, "I feel like I've been fired." Which, of course, is true, but that is not what the script had called for. On Wednesday's "The View," a solemn Walters spun the debacle for viewers, and unwittingly -- perhaps even historically -- outlined the ritualized deceptions now regularly used when any high-profile employee is fired: "This is, truthfully, a very difficult day for us," said Walters. "If you were watching the program yesterday, you would have heard Star announce that she's leaving. ... We didn't expect her to make this statement yesterday. She gave us no warning, and we were taken by surprise. But the truth is that Star has known for months that ABC did not want to renew her contract, ... But we were never going to say this. We wanted to protect Star. And so we told her that she could say whatever she wanted about why she was leaving and that we would back her up. We worked closely with her representatives, and we gave her time to look for another job, and we hoped then she would announce it here on the program and leave with dignity. But Star made another choice." Yes, the difficult, almost unheard-of other choice: telling the truth. Lava...
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