I love Whoopi Goldberg – the comedian and actor, that is. You know – the one who cracks me up with her standup routine, the one who has been hilarious in the Sister Act movies, the one who was great in The Color Purple and Ghost. I actually caught her on the radio the other day on her Wake Up With Whoopi show. Funny stuff.
But the Whoopi who debuted on The View wasn’t funny. Not at all. And her comments about Michael Vick were about the most ill-informed statements I’ve heard in a while. Defending Michael Vick – when he offered no defense himself – was more than enough. But instead, she opened her mouth and inserted her foot by providing an inaccurate description of why Vick engaged in dogfighting:
He’s from the South, from the Deep South … This is part of his cultural upbringing.
[…]
“For a lot of people, dogs are sport,” Goldberg said on the show. “Instead of just saying (Vick) is a beast and he’s a monster, this is a kid who comes from a culture where this is not questioned.”
When I was in fourth grade, we were divided into groups to study the states. I eagerly volunteered for the group to study the Southern states, thinking this would be a cakewalk since Virginia was in the South, right? Wrong. Virginia was considered a Mid-Atlantic state. Now all will agree that Virginia is a part of the South; after all, Richmond was the capital of the Confederacy, but the “Deep South”? No. Not then, not now. Whoopi flunks a basic geography test with that claim.
And then she blames it on”cultural upbringing.” Well, as someone who grew up in Phoebus, just a stone’s throw away from Vick in Newport News, dogfighting was not a part of my cultural upbringing.
Finally, I take issue with him being referred to as a “kid.” A man who is 27 years old is hardly a “kid.” Perhaps he has not matured as he should have, but that in no way excuses his behavior.
I have no idea why Whoopi decided to try to defend this guy. But if she wants to come down here and take a tour of Virginia, I’d be happy to show her around. In the meantime, she should stick to what she knows – and it ain’t Virginia.
Technorati Tags: Whoopi Goldberg, Michael Vick
VIVIAN J. PAIGE | All Politics is Local 
Ugh, Jamie Foxx came out with the same type of statements. I’m not buying this argument at all.
No, we don’t all agree!
The South is – South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama (including that bit of FL otherwise known as Lower Alabama), and Mississippi.
The rest are all Border States.
🙂
I was disappointed in Whoopi, too. No, she doesn’t know the deep South from the mid-Atlantic, and this stuff about abusing animals being part of a black and/or southern culture ought to offend us all….Whoopi’s had better days.
Thank you so much for this post! While I expect unsubstantiated nonsense from the other women on The View, I expected more from Whoopi. How hard is it to take a second to google Micheal Vick and learn that he is not from the Deep South? That he spent three years at an excellent college (Virginia Tech)? I hope she can step up her game in the future.
I am a white woman old enough to be Michael Vick’s grandmother, and I know from my own experience that what he did was NOT exclusively part of southern culture and NOT exclusively part of black culture. I grew up in a caucasian rural area in the north where dogfighting was practiced. Even all those years ago, everybody with an ounce of brains or compassion knew that dogfighters were sadistic lowlife sleezeballs that were unworthy of support. Unfortunately, those sleezeballs still are all too common in every racial group and every part of the country–and they (including Vick) remain unworthy of support
whoopi is selling herself to the devil to be on the view. she is a smart lady, don’t let the blond nit wit stiffle you whoopi.
and as for the vick comment, jeezus, was that stupid.
Where is Whoopi even from? It seems like she’s awfully misinformed as to what’s going on in black communities in “the South.”
It sure looked like a forced shot, a stunt to jump-start her new job. Maybe it was her idea, maybe not. But I like Whoopi, always have. Still, on this one I think she’s wrong.
Like the rest of us, she’s entitled to be wrong. But right now Mike Vick is radioactive.
I agree with FT and also that she may have been trying to make a misplaced joke. I don’t think, or at least hope, that this is any indication of her future on The View.
And, for the record, my folks in Georgia would be incensed at hearing Virginia referred to as the Deep South. Head of the Confederacy notwithstanding, ya’ll don’t even have regular old sweet tea in some restuarants!
What is often not mentioned in critiques of Goldberg’s statements regarding Vick is that the following day on The View she explained that she was not excusing Vick’s actions, just offering up an explanation, however imperfect, in an effort to get people to address the underlying causes of crimes like dogfighting.