So, everyone in my company must take a week-long unpaid furlough, and I am onto day two of mine. So this morning, I am leisurely drinking coffee, lounging on the sofa, and doing something I have never done before - watching “the View.”
The panel of women were discussing David Carradine’s death. Barbara Walters brought up the fact that apparently his genitals and hands were tied up, and that ‘some people’ think this was autoerotic-asphyxiation. And Babs claims not to have ever heard of such a thing. (Why do I not believe that?) Another one of the women (the redhead) said she’d never heard of it either. And that led to something that made me laugh out like I haven’t in a while: Babs turns to the studio audience and says “If you have heard of autoerotic asphyxiation, would you please applaud?” For some reason, that left me in stitches. Let’s all clap & cheer for autoerotic asphyxiation!
Of course the discusssion devolved from there. “I heard that his third wife was writing a book where she says he did that sort of thing all the time.” chirps one. “Do you think he did it because he was depressed? Because, like drugs, people only get into sadomasicism because they’re unhappy with their life” another one opined (I’m wondering where she got that little factoid?) “Maybe he was murdered by some Kung Fu martial arts ninja gang!” Finally, Whoopi Goldberg impressed & surprised me by laying down the law: "We don’t know what happened. The F.B.I. and the Thai police are STILL INVESTIGATING and we should all wait to hear their report before we start commenting on this. She just went up a notch in my estimation.
Anyway, that was about as much of “the View” as I could stand to watch. So I decided to go online and post something. Still, Barbara Walters saying “Would you please applaud for autoerotic asphyxiation?” is making me giggle.
Edit: disclosure: I am slightly paraphrasing what these women are saying. But not by much, believe me.
So, did anyone in the audience actually applaud? Was there just one guy who started to clap enthusiastically, like “Yay for auto-erotic asphyxiation!” all by himself? That would be excellent.
I watch The View more than I should. Whoopi always seems to make a point to put the kibosh on too much rumor and speculation when it comes to other celebrities. It could be that she’s the voice of reason or it could be that she’s friends with the people being discussed and she’s trying to protect them. When she announced last Thursday that Carridine had died she called him her friend.
I’m also not buying that Baba never heard of AEA, you don’t have to engage in the act to have heard of it and it has come up in the news before. She’s supposed to be a journalist so you’d think she might have heard of it at some point in her 100 years on the planet.
I just saw this one. All I can say is that it’s fairly typical behavior from Grandma Walters. Such a conundrum: to be naive and gossipy simultaneously. She tries so hard to be the authority on celebrity life, yet comes across as being out of touch and sheltered.
Is she playing the wide-eyed innocent? I hope so, because I’d hate to think an award winning journalist such as herself (Oh, have you read her latest book? Called “Audition”? Because it’s out in paperback now!) is really that unaware and lacking in curiosity.
To be truthful, now that I’m home during the day, I check to see which of the View ladies walks out on stage at the beginning. If Barbara’s there, I tend to go do something else. The shows suffer when she’s on the panel because the other women must defer to her as she plays “The Grande Dame” of the show. Just my take on it.
Just a bit about Whoopie- she had a late-night syndicated talk show for maybe one season. Two great episodes was when she had guests with whom she totally differed BUT she was respectful & asked pointed intelligent questions & both she & they were winsome & well-behaved. One was G. Gordon Liddy, but the big surprise was Tom Metzger.
Tom Metzger- leader of the White Aryan Resistance.
The show was about intelligence discussion, which is why it as well as the Dennis Prager TV show were doomed.
There was a slight pause after she asked, then a smattering of applause. Perhaps a few people were embarrassed to admit they knew what it was, but at least a few more saw the humor in what she was inadvertently saying.
