"The View" to Barry Manilow: "You sit with one of us, you sit with all of us"
Did Barbara Walters slip Barry Manilow a $20 bill or something to get him to create a big stink about not appearing on "The View" if Elisabeth Hasselbeck was in the segment? I ask because ithe controversy made great fodder for her and "The View" producer Bill Geddie for the launch on Monday of "Barbara Live," Walters’ exclusive weekly live call-in show on SIRIUS.
Manilow did not want to appear with the ultra-conservative Hasselbeck because "I strongly disagree with her views. I think she's dangerous and offensive," according to a statement the singer made to TMZ.com
Obviously, Walters and Geddie aren't going to have any guest dictate things like this and they talked about it on the show. Here are some excerpts:
WALTERS: Mr. Manilow…whom I like a lot.
GEDDIE: I like him too, and he’s always been great on the show, and he’s always supported The View for the past 11 years. I wouldn’t even be talking about this except that he called up TMZ. So, now, what are we going to do? Last Friday we got the word that he’s very close to Rosie, and he doesn’t want to appear…I [had] told his representatives that he would be on with all of you.
WALTERS: That’s Elisabeth Hasselbeck, Joy Behar, Whoopi, Sherri and me.
GEDDIE: Yes. And he’s said he’ll appear with everybody but Elizabeth. Well, we don’t do that. It’s just not the way it works here, we support everybody. He said I’ll do Barbara and Whoopi, or I’ll do Whoopi and Sherri, or somecombination, but I won’t sit with Elisabeth. And I said ‘Well, then you won’t be on the show, it’s that simple.’ And that was the end of it. I would have thought, OK, fine. I don’t know what it is, ten years getting to this stage. He’s been on with us every year for the past ten years…and I figured OK fine, let him go to what he needs to do, it’s not that big a deal, he seems like a nice enough guy, he’s got an issue with Elisabeth but so be it. He’s not going to call the shots. You’re not going to tell me how to produce the show.
WALTERS: And if you disagree with somebody’s political point of view you don’t come on? We’re called The View because we have different points of view.
GEDDIE It got me thinking. You know, I’ve never heard Jane Fonda say ‘I won’t sit with Elisabeth Hasselbeck.’ I’ve never heard Susan Sarandon say that. If someone was conservative and said ‘I won’t sit with Joy Behar’ I’d react the exact same way. I don’t understand this when this became an issue for him, and why would you go off and then call TMZ and make a big column item. Is it all about publicity? Is this all it is?
WALTERS: Well also, Elisabeth Hasselbeck is not an enemy of Rosie’s. None of us are. If Elisabeth disagrees with Rosie, and Rosie disagrees with Elisabeth….nobody is to my knowledge is taking sides. All I can think of is that wonderful song (Walters breaks into rendition of ‘I Write the Songs That Make the Whole Sing’…adding her own lyrics) Provided They Happen to Be Liberals.’
WALTERS: (Laughing) That was awful, he should be mad at me for that.
WALTERS: Too bad it happened. Because we could have sung all of his songs, he’s been on with us for ten years.
GEDDIE: He’s always seemed like a nice guy, but I don’t get him on this. We’re The View, we have people with different opinions.
GEDDIE: You sit with one of us, you sit with all of us.
On having Whoopi and Sherri as new co-hosts on The View:
WALTERS: We adore having Whoopi on and our ratings are higher than they were last year at the same time. Rosie O’Donnell, she was great…
GEDDIE: But this Whoopi/Sherri thing seems to be working out.
WALTERS: We kept hearing that if it weren’t for Rosie this show wouldn’t have made it, and Rosie was terrific. The fact that our ratings are higher now than they were last year, starting with Whoopi, then with Sherri Shepherd…. and its fun, we can disagree and we can have different opinions. It’s just terrific.
Keep reading...there's more after the jump!
BILL GEDDIE: Somebody came up to me the other day and said ‘Why did you hire two black women?”
BARBARA WALTERS: Really?
GEDDIE: Yeah, really. And I said, ‘One, I think it distinguishes this year, and I hope the next many years from the previous years.’
WALTERS: [Joking] See, I didn’t know they were both black. I didn’t know this.
GEDDIE: [Joking] Yeah, they’re both black, who knew?
GEDDIE: And the other thing I thought is that it shows that there’s diversity between two women of color. Because these woman couldn’t be more different. And how often do you see that on a show? Because there’s always this point of view, like if somebody’s Jewish they have a Jewish point of view, and if somebody’s black they have a distinctly black point of view.
WALTERS: Not necessarily.
GEDDIE: That’s what I’m trying to say, they don’t.
WALTERS: Because Whoopi is quite liberal, and I remember one day Sherri, when she was on with us last year, said she didn’t believe in evolution. So we have very different points of view.
GEDDIE: Which I think is going to be very interesting this year.
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in Hollywood
Greg Hernandez has covered the entertainment industry for the Daily News since 2001. He's considered a bit odd by some for his obsession with box office numbers, has been known to camp out near the kitchen at premieres for first crack at the hors d'oeurves, and Greg's never seen a red carpet he didn't want to stroll down.
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It is very common on The View for the musical guest plugging a new CD not to appear on the couch with everyone. Often, they are interviewed onstage sitting on barstools with just two of the cohosts. It would have been very easy for control-freak Bill Geddie to arrange for Whoopi & Joy or whoever to do the stage interview and not create all this drama. Sad that those great women are letting that man pull their strings. I suspect he was behind most of the Rosie drama as well.
So, I wonder if Barry will be on when EH goes on maternity leave?
As for BW and BG saying what the show has become, it's just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. They really HOPE that this Whoopie/Sherri thing works out because the alternative ain't so pretty