In September of 2009 Whoopi Goldberg who was the new moderator of the View at that point, made the infamous statement that Roman Polanski was not guilty of rape: " Whoopi Goldberg suggested that whatever he was guilty of it wasn't "rape-rape".As a guest on The View chat show on US television, she said: "I know it wasn't rape-rape. It was something else but I don't believe it was rape-rape. He went to jail and and when they let him out he was like, 'You know what, this guy's going to give me a hundred years in jail. I'm not staying.' So that's why he left."' This outraged many people because Polanski was charged with plying a 13 year old girl with drugs and alcohol and then sodomizing her. And infact he was charged with rape: "In March 1977, film director Roman Polanski was arrested and charged in Los Angeles with five offenses against Samantha Geimer, a 13-year-old girl, rape by use of drugs, perversion, sodomy, lewd and lascivious acts...." Goldberg's statement that it was not "rape-rape" was both inaccurate, (it was rape-rape as she put it); but it also seemed to soft-pedal or excuse Polanski's crime to a certain degree.
When Sherri Shepherd was asked if the world was flat by Whoopi Goldberg on an infamous episode of The View, she responded: "I don't know. I never thought about it Whoopi. Is the world flat? I never thought about it. I tell you what I thought about, how I'm going to feed my child." "Well you can do both, you know," Barbara Walters responded to Sherri Shepherd; rejecting the theory that she could not be a mother and ponder whether or not the earth was flat at the same time. Later Shepherd would dismiss the whole incident as her "having a brain fart." Howard Stern would later be a guest on The View and would mock Shepherd as well for her flat earth theories: "I know what you mean Sherri. Sometimes when I walk around I feel like I could walk over the edge and fall off the face of the earth."
Former View Moderator and Hollywood superstar Rosie O'Donnell slammed Ramin Setoodeh, the author of Ladies Who Punch; a memoir and expose about the View, featuring tell all interviews from most of the panelists. "My biggest regret was ever sitting down with (Setoodeh) for 20 minutes, and that's exactly what I did to appease my publicist," O'Donnell said to Us Weekly at Sunday's opening of "Oklahoma!" in New York City. "But it's my biggest regret." O'Donnell continued to share her disdain for author Setoodeh in an Instagram message she posted. Rosie criticized Setoodeh as "a man taking a history of 'The View' and creating only the stories that were negative and conflicted between everyone. And then he named his book 'Ladies Who Punch.' So, he's a misogynist ... and I'm disappointed in him as a human being." Barbara Walters also said she would not be reading the book.
"That's the big difference; we don't fight back stage." Joy Behar to Elizabeth Hasselbeck; comparing their fighting to Behar's fighting with Meagan McCain.
On Thursday, July 29th, 2010, Barack Obama became the first president (in office) to appear on a television talk show.