Feb 20 Recap: Banned children’s book and Richard Lewis
Sherri Shepherd was back as guest host today, as Rosie O’Donnell continues her R Family vacation cruise. Today’s hot topics segment involved a second day of discussion regarding Britney Spears. Barbara Walters said that Britney is a “lost soul” and that she feels sorry for her. Elisabeth Hasselbeck suggested that maybe club owners should not let her in to their clubs, because they know she needs help.
Joy Behar said that she does not understand how Lindsay Lohan is back out on the club scene right after leaving her 30-day stint in rehab. Joy said that when she is on a diet, she cannot go to restaurants because the temptation is too strong. She said that she would think it would be the same for someone trying to stay away from alcohol.
Barbara wondered if 30 days was long enough for a treatment program, adding that her daughter Jackie runs a camp for adolescent girls and the program there lasts nine weeks. That organization is called New Horizons.
Barbara Walters switched topics to the subject of a children’s book called Higher Power of Lucky, by Susan Patron which is about a young girl who listens in on addiction recovery meetings, in order to find a higher power. The book, which won a Newberry medal and is targeted for 9 to 11 year-olds, has been banned in several libraries because it uses the word “scrotum.” Specifically, according to Barbara, Lucky witnesses her dog being bit by a snake on his scrotum.
Barbara Walters made sure everyone knew what she was talking about, by reading the dictionary definition of the term. It was pretty funny to see, given the somewhat formal way she normally speaks. During the discussion of the censorship that followed, ABC’s standards and practices folks repeatedly bleeped Joy, Sherri, and Barbara, as they discussed different alternatives for the word scrotum.
Elisabeth Hasselbeck said that she often censors books that she reads to her 22-month old daughter Grace. She gave an example of a Babar book in which Babar becomes engaged to his cousin. She said that is not appropriate, so she skips that part when reading the story. She suggested that rather than using the word “scrotum,” the author of Higher Power of Lucky should have instead said the dog got an “ouch in its pouch.”
Sherri Shepherd said that she would not want her child to read that word at age 9. She disapproved of the author’s statement that the sound of the word is “so delicious,” adding that she thinks “it is delicious too!” but that does not mean she wants her child reading it.
They never really tackled the larger issue of banning books and instead focused more on what they want for their own children. ABC has posted a video of a small portion of the discussion (the part with all the bleeping is not included). You can view it here.
Next, the ladies talked about the problems that Jet Blue airlines has had in the last week, which has caused them to issue a Bill of Rights, which will provide passengers with vouchers or tickets when their flights are delayed. Elisabeth said that she could not believe that one set of passengers last week were stuck on the runway for 12 hours. She said that one of them should have said they had a bomb and then they all could have gotten off the plane. Joy suggested that maybe saying “I feel a heart attack coming on” would be safer than saying you have a bomb.
Barbara Walters asked whether Black History Month is still necessary. Sherri Shepherd said that it is still necessary, because if they get rid of it, people will conveniently forget the important contributions of African-Americans.
Richard Lewis appeared on the show and started the segment by singing a song about his scrotum. The rest of the segment was even more chaotic than most interviews on the show and it was difficult to decipher exactly what he was talking about. Richard kept jumping around from topic to topic. He spent the first part of the interview wearing sunglasses, saying that he just flew in last night, is still on Los Angeles time, and only got one hour of sleep.
Richard said that Elisabeth was wrong for editing her daughter’s books and that it was “absurd” to cross-out the word scrotum. He later said that his scrotum is “so old it has the 10 commandments on it.”
He talked about how is a recovering alcoholic and that he feels comedy is an enabling profession, because someone is always trying to buy you a drink after the show. Joy asked him what else he did and he said that he was a drinker, did a little cocaine, and then added something else, which was also bleeped by the censors. I was unable to read his lips, but, whatever the statement was caused Barbara to exasperatedly say, “What are we doing on this show?”
Here is a video of the “scrotum song,” courtesy of Best Week Ever:
From her blog, Rosie weighed in saying:
i will b back home tonight
on the view tomorrow
sad to have missed
the scrotum conversationhee heee
peace out
Wedding planner and designer David Tutera appeared on the show and talked about how he designs dream weddings at Disney World. Brides and grooms have four styles to choose from, with prices starting at $80,000. For more information on the weddings, visit Disney weddings.
The View, Rosie O’Donnell, Barbara Walters, Richard Lewis, Joy Behar, Sherri Shepherd, Elisabeth Hasselbeck, Susan Patron, Higher Power of Lucky, jet blue bill of rights
