Al Franken Offers Mind-Boggling Excuse for Whoopi Goldberg Amid Holocaust Remarks
The old school “Saturday Night Live” — I’m talking the John Belushi, Gilda Radner and Dan Aykroyd crew — were a big hit in the 70s and 80s because they were experts at mimicking reality in hilarious fashion. Nowadays it seems like the show was performed in another world.
The roles have been reversed. Reality now mimics “Saturday Night Live.” And it’s not funny anymore — not SNL the show or the reality mimicking it.
Former Democratic Sen. Al Franken of Minnesota was one of the original writers for SNL back in 1975. Somewhere along the way, Franken lost his way and now melds the once separate worlds of political reality and entertainment into one bizarre episode. Franken’s not alone. Far from it. It’s the leftist norm.
Franken recently defended “The View” host Whoopi Goldberg, who was issued a two week suspension for saying on air that the Holocaust had nothing to do with “race,” according to The Daily Wire. Franken attempted to argue that Whoopi’s stage name, “Goldberg,” because it has Jewish roots, is proof that she isn’t an anti-Semite.
“I know Whoopi,” said Franken, who is Jewish. “She’s not anti-Semitic. She chose ‘Goldberg’ for her last name for a stage name. I think she gave a really fulsome and sincere apology.”
Whoopi, to her credit, did apologize for her comments.
— Whoopi Goldberg (@WhoopiGoldberg) February 1, 2022
Case closed, right? Not so fast.
After Whoopi’s apology, Kim Godwin, ABC News president, said, “Effective immediately, I am suspending Whoopi Goldberg for two weeks for her wrong and hurtful comments. While Whoopi has apologized, I’ve asked her to take time to reflect and learn about the impact of her comments. The entire ABC News organization stands in solidarity with our Jewish colleagues, friends and communities.”
Whoopi has not been cancelled. Suspended is not the same thing as canceled. She’s been held accountable for making an absurd argument.
Franken’s defense of Goldberg is just as absurd. Stage names are made-up by people trying to get noticed. That’s what Whoopi did. She was named Caryn Elaine Johnson at birth. Not very memorable.
Franken’s argument amounts to yet another case of leftists thinking they can name reality whatever they feel like in order to fulfill their desire. Though Whoopi claims she has Jewish ancestors, she does not practice the Jewish religion. If Jewish isn’t a race and only a religion, can Caryn, I mean Whoopi, be Jewish just because she picked a Jewish name?
Welcome to the radical left’s reality slippery slope. But you already know the drill. A male swimmer wakes up and says, “I feel like a girl, so I am a girl. I think I’ll get a bit of testosterone therapy and then join the women’s swimming team.” Biological reality be damned.
I’m sorry people, you can’t create reality because you feel one way or another. Language must correspond to reality to remain viable, not the other way around. Imagine if a NASA team felt that a propeller driven airplane, oppressed by the reality of lunar spacecraft, should be sent to the moon.
But that’s not all. Whoopi’s statement on “The View” was not only delusional but flat out historically wrong. Not inaccurate. Wrong. Maybe that’s why so many in the Jewish community were outraged by her comments. Something had to be done to correct Whoopi, not only for her own sake but for those viewers as woefully ignorant as she is about the unspeakable horrors of the Holocaust.
Whoopi’s remarks about the Holocaust were connected to a Tennessee school board’s decision to ban a graphic novel named “Maus” that focuses on the Holocaust.
A strong dose of reality is a good way to bring a wayward imagination back to planet earth.
Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt appeared on “The View” the next day to set the record straight.
“Well, Whoopi, there’s no question that the Holocaust was about race,” Greenblatt started, according to Yahoo. “That’s how the Nazis saw it as they perpetrated the systematic annihilation of the Jewish people across continents, across countries with deliberate and ruthless cruelty.
“And literally the first page of ‘Maus,'” Greenblatt continued, “The book you were talking about yesterday, Whoopi, it opens with a quote from Hitler, and literally, it says, ‘The Jews undoubtedly are a race, but they are not human.’”
The history lesson wasn’t over. “You see, Hitler’s ideology, it was predicated on the idea that the Aryans,” Greenblatt said, “the Germans were a quote, ‘master race,’ and the Jews were a subhuman race. It was racialized antisemitism.”
I’ve never met Whoopi Goldberg. I don’t watch “The View.” Her apology about the Holocaust remark seemed sincere. I don’t get the sense that Whoopi Goldberg is intrinsically evil. Few people are. A lot of people on the left are good people. I’ve met them. They’re just confused. They fell for the leftist narrative and need to be corrected. Some will listen to reason. Some are too far gone.
It looks as if Whoopi listened and may have even understood. Time will tell. It looks like her unfortunate utterance was made out of gross ignorance rather than malice. Maybe the two week suspension will give her a little time to reflect further and read up on the subject. That might do her some real good.
It might even get Whoopi to reflect on the cancel culture embraced by the left. It was only a matter of time before they started targeting their own. The same thing happens when too many lab mice are forced to live together into a small cage: cannibalism. More of it is likely on the way.
So don’t pay any attention to radical progressives like “Morning Joe’s” Mika Brzezinski lamenting cancel culture as “getting so out of hand.” They’re as confused as Al Franken about the nature of reality. You’d be confused, too, if one day you were told to support cancel culture and the next day you were told to criticize it. Cognitive dissonance is a disease of the mind.
MSNBC’s @morningmika Brzezinksi: “Everyone knows Whoopi Goldberg. She’s been on TV for decades … If you don’t know her heart, then you haven’t been watching … This cancel culture is getting so out of hand!” pic.twitter.com/lFaNt87xHP
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) February 2, 2022
Let the lefties continue to talk all they want. That’s the beauty of the First Amendment. Free speech is a sure way to expose all the self-righteous idiots roaming the world these days. It’s better when they’re out in the open. If you cancel them, they won’t go away; they’ll just go underground. But they need to be held accountable when they go too far in their ignorance.
Look at the bright side. Whoopi may have learned a valuable lesson here: The canceling of history — tearing down statues, the 1619 Project, CRT — makes people ignorant, and they will say stupid things in public.
The trick is to not let them get away with it. Speak up. Be calm. Correct them with facts, and don’t back down — just as Greenblatt did on “The View.”
Reason cures ignorance for those who are willing to take the medicine.
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