HLN's Joy Behar and guest Rachael Ray fawned over former President Bill Clinton on Monday. "They don't just hand out those Rhodes scholarships for presidencies," remarked the Food Network's Ray, who also called Clinton "incredibly charming" and "so honest with people."
Behar was especially enamored with Clinton. "I find him extremely sexy, don't you?" the HLN host asked Ray, adding that Clinton was "brilliant." She even compared his presidency with Reagan's.
"I think people are going to look back on his presidency the way they look at St. Ronald Reagan," Behar raved. "They'll say St. Bill Clinton eventually. Because he had his problems during his administration, but in retrospect he did a great job.
HLN (formerly CNN Headline News)
By Matt Hadro | September 20, 2011 | 5:44 PM EDT
By Matt Hadro | August 29, 2011 | 5:24 PM EDT
In the days leading up to Hurricane Irene's march through the Northeast, journalists repeatedly suggested that the storm was yet more evidence of climate change.
"The scale of Hurricane Irene, which could cause more extensive damage along the Eastern Seaboard than any storm in decades, is reviving an old question: are hurricanes getting worse because of human-induced climate change?" asked the New York Times' Justin Gillis in his August 28 piece.
HLN guest host Don Lemon asked scientist Bill Nye on Wednesday if the storm was proof of climate change. Nye answered that it was "consistent with all the predictions of climate change models" and added that the United States is behind the times in taking action on climate change. "There's no other developed world country that isn't very concerned about climate change," Nye asserted, and ABC's weatherman Sam Champion agreed.
By Matt Hadro | August 27, 2011 | 2:30 PM EDT
Liberal comedienne Sara Benincasa ridiculed conservatives Wednesday for criticizing President Obama's vacation to Martha's Vineyard. Benincasa joked to guest host Don Lemon on the Joy Behar Show that "right-wing conservative white Republicans will only accept one black man on the golf course in the world ever."
Probably referring to Wednesday's earthquake, Benincasa added that the Republicans "think that was God telling him [Obama] to get off the course."
By Geoffrey Dickens | August 24, 2011 | 4:57 PM EDT
Substitute hosting on HLN's The Joy Behar Show, on Tuesday, CNN's Don Lemon prodded Jay Bakker, the son of televangelist Jim Bakker, to accuse Rick Perry and Michele Bachmann of exploiting fears of Christians as he claimed that the GOP presidential hopefuls were: "playing to a group of people who deal a lot with fear and using fear to control folks."
The dismissive Bakker then asserted: "I feel like they've kind of hijacked Christianity," and added that he thinks the Perrys and Bachmanns were advancing "fairy tales" that global warming doesn't exist and claimed they wanted to "ignore" science.
(video after the jump)
By Noel Sheppard | June 10, 2011 | 10:59 AM EDT
Conservative columnist Ann Coulter had a lively discussion with HLN's Joy Behar Thurday as she discussed her new book "Demonic: How the Liberal Mob Is Endangering America."
After her host claimed the Republican Party has made a saint out of Ronald Reagan, Coulter countered, "Liberals would drink Obama's bathwater" (video follows with transcript and commentary):
By Noel Sheppard | May 18, 2011 | 8:15 PM EDT
As NewsBusters previously reported, Joy Behar called former Senator Rick Santorum (R-Penn.) a "big homophobe" on the HLN program bearing her name Monday.
Santorum struck back Wednesday on WOR radio's "The Steve Malzberg Show" saying, "This is really the problem that we see on the left which is the personalization of politics" (audio follows with transcript and commentary):
After Revealing He Is Gay, CNN's 'Objective' Don Lemon Asks Network to Support Others 'Who Choose to Come Out'
By Matt Hadro | May 17, 2011 | 3:00 PM EDT
CNN anchor Don Lemon grabbed headlines over the weekend with his Twitter announcement that he is gay. On Monday his co-workers provided plenty of time for him on two separate shows to share his story and his own views on the gay-rights issue, and showered him with support. As if that wasn't enough, he asked them in turn to do the same for others "who choose to come out."
"I really appreciate all the support, and I hope you continue to support not only me, but other people who choose to come out," Lemon told afternoon Newsroom host Brooke Baldwin. In the past, Lemon has himself provided a podium for gay rights activists to makes themselves heard, though he claims objectivity on the issue.
(Video after the break.)
National Security 'Expert' Joy Behar: U.S. Should Have Given Terrorists Book Deal, 'Paid Them Off' for Information
By Matt Hadro | May 3, 2011 | 4:45 PM EDT
America should consider gathering important national security information by giving terrorists book deals, or paying them off, says the liberal Joy Behar. The HLN host offered her bizarre expertise on foreign intelligence Tuesday morning on ABC's The View.
"If we use these enhanced techniques, then they [the terrorists] can use them on us," Behar said of "enhanced interrogation techniques," which include the practice of "waterboarding" and are used by the U.S. military to extract information from prisoners. The panel was discussing whether America should be using the interrogation program to gather intelligence, if indeed it does produce valuable information.
(Video after the jump.)
By Matt Hadro | April 29, 2011 | 4:21 PM EDT
Apparently, the Left will never get over John Kerry's loss in the 2004 presidential election. On Thursday's Joy Behar Show, Joy Behar used a discussion of the "birther" claims against Barack Obama to slam what she called the "lies" of the Swift Boat veterans, who challenged Kerry's account of his service in Vietnam.
"Does this treatment remind you of the swift-boating that went on when John Kerry was running? ...These people make up a lie, they continue the lie, they perpetuate the lie, and then people start to believe it. They destroyed Kerry," Behar ranted to a liberal guest, Columbia University professor Marc Lamont Hill.
In smearing the anti-Kerry veterans, Behar is following in the steps of many others in the liberal media. Back in 2008, then-New York Times reporter Deborah Solomon (NYT Magazine, August 3, 2008) berated Boone Pickens for financially backing the group four years earlier: "You help re-elect Bush in '04 when you gave $3 million to the Swift Boat campaign to discredit John Kerry's Vietnam service. Do you regret your involvement?"
By Brad Wilmouth | April 29, 2011 | 8:12 AM EDT
On Thursday’s Joy Behar Show on HLN, host Behar quipped that former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin has returned "like jock itch," after playing a clip of Palin on Fox News Channel making fun of CBS anchor Katie Couric. Behar: "I give Sarah Palin credit. She's out of favor. She's out of the limelight. And then, suddenly, she's back like jock itch, and just as snarky as ever."
After commentary from her panel members for the segment, the HLN host ended up cracking that Palin is reminding people that she’s "illiterate" because the former Alaska governor also alluded to her own answer to Couric’s question about what she reads. Behar: "I think that she learned from being on Saturday Night Live that the way to reconstruct your image is to take the joke on yourself. But all she's doing is reminding us that she's illiterate."
Panel member and actor Josh Gad then oddly suggested that Palin has a history of making anti-Semitic jokes as he chimed in: "I miss her anti-Semitic jokes so much."
By Matt Hadro | April 20, 2011 | 2:00 PM EDT
In an interview with liberal actress Shirley MacLaine, HLN's Joy Behar admitted that Bill O'Reilly "bullies you around a little bit" and suggested he needs to a figure to "smack him around" as the two women teed off on the popular Fox News host.
"Well, he is little bit intimidating as you say," Behar remarked to MacLaine confirming her . He bullies you a little bit, I think. I felt that." At the end of the segment MacLaine insisted that O'Reilly needs a motherly figure like Joy Behar to control him. "To smack him around," Behar added, and MacLaine agreed.
By Brad Wilmouth | April 13, 2011 | 5:05 AM EDT
On Tuesday’s Joy Behar Show on HLN, host Behar claimed that "poor white people, poor black people are the ones who are oppressed by the right wing in this country," during a discussion of a poll finding that 42 percent of Americans believe the American Civil War was fought over states rights instead of slavery.
Panel member and comedian Baratunde Thurston had just cited the Mississippi state secession charter as evidence that slavery really was the primary cause of the war, and then suggested that the Republican Party oppresses the poor in modern times. Thurston:
These were rich Southern men who not only oppressed black people, they oppressed poor white people who made up most of the population. And so the idea that we’re empowering the people represented today want to go back to this time where they were more oppressed is a perfect representation of the Republican Party agenda today.
Behar responded: