Barbara Walters: Catty, self-serving bitch

A new biography rips the feminist veneer off Barbara Walters, and what's underneath is an unholy combination of ugly, vicious, and hilarious

There’s a quote from some guy whose name I cannot recall that sums up women very well, and I mention it here as it directly bears on what will follow in this article:

“A misogynist is a man who treats women the way they treat each other”

Truer words were never spoken or written! And that brings me to the topic of this article: Barbara Walters. Some of you younger people might not know who she was, but you will by the end of this article. The rest of us already know her as one of the first female TV journalists and one of the original presstitutes (male or female journalists who serve as bullhorns for regime propaganda).

Barbara Walters: Fake feminist

Since she was one of the first female television journalists, Walters has been lauded as a trailblazer for feminism and women’s rights, blah, blah, blah. But a recent Daily Mail article, based on a new biography, has blown Walters’ feminist image to smithereens. You see, Barbara Walters was a catty, self-serving bitch! Oh yes, frens, old Barbara didn’t give a damn about feminism; she was out for her own glory and paycheck:

She may have broken the glass ceiling for women journalists, but Barbara Walters crushed her female colleagues on the way up.

A new biography of the TV legend reveals that she saw other women - especially Diane Sawyer - as 'potential competitors' who had to be pushed aside so that she could ascend to the top.

Walters thought that 'another woman's gain could well be her loss' and she crushed rivals while she conquering NBC then ABC News.

Walters 'stole' exclusives from the likes of NBC's Andrea Mitchell, who foolishly let slip she had snagged an interview with Fidel Castro, only for Walters to bag her own with the Cuban leader - and persuade him not to speak with Mitchell.

According to The Rulebreaker: The Life and Times of Barbara Walters, by Susan Page, the Washington Bureau chief of USA TODAY, which will be published later this month, Walters 'rarely acknowledged' other female trailblazers in journalism out of fear it 'might somehow diminish her own achievements.'

So much for Barbara being a trail-blazing feminist. Any other woman that was perceived to be her competition got a dagger in the back the first chance Barbara got, with no mercy whatsoever. She was cunning and ruthless, and her methods certainly worked because she had one of the longest careers on TV of any journalist in history.

Walters, of course, tried to cover up her willingness to destroy other women right until the very end of her life:

In her final The View taping, the TV host said that her biggest pride was seeing "all the young women making and reporting the news" and that "if [she] did anything to make that happen, that's [her] legacy"

I got a good laugh off Barbara’s attempt to lay claim to the young women working as reporters. If she had been their age, she would have crushed them completely to climb the ladder of success. Really, Barbara, who did you think you were fooling with that legacy nonsense?

Why do women have to be so fake with one another?

I chuckled frequently while reading the Daily Mail article because it reminded me of my own experiences with women at times. For example, let’s say two women meet up at a party after not having seen each other for a while. Here’s how the exchange between the two will go, what they say to each other, and what they are really thinking in their heads:

Two women meet at a party and give each other the usual fake hug and kiss on the cheek.

Women #1 speaking to Woman #2: Oh my, you look fabulous! Have you lost weight?

Women #1’s real thoughts: You fat fuck! You must have put on twenty pounds, you are a land whale!

Woman #2 speaking to Woman #1: Thanks so much! I love your hair, it looks gorgeous on you!

Woman #2’s real thoughts: You rotten bitch! I despise you and I will do everything in my power to utterly destroy you and lay waste to your misbegotten life!

You see what I mean here, right? Women always do this fake lovey, dovey crap with each other while secretly despising one another. Barbara Walters certainly did it, over and over again, over the course of her long career. She pretended to make nice-nice with other women to get information and connections while utterly despising them and while planning to stab them in the back at the first opportunity.

For men, it’s a different story. If you get two guys at a party that hate each other, they either avoid each other completely, or one of them is looking for a fight and finds the other one. Then, the next thing you know, the fists and furniture are flying left and right across the room. Men are more honest with each other than women are, by far.

The Daily Mail article has a good example of Barbara Walters and Diane Sawyer making nice-nice in an elevator, and it ends as you would expect it to end:

Ira Rosen, an Emmy-award winning producer on Primetime Live, tells of one extraordinary occasion where Walters got into an elevator with him and Sawyer.

Walters announced: 'People say we don't get along, they should see us now', reaching for Sawyer's hand.

Sawyer laughed and said: 'I know. I don't understand that'.

The second Walters walked out of the elevator, Sawyer turned to Rosen and said: 'I hate that woman. Don't believe a word she says. She knifes me any chance she can get.'

Ha, ha! Priceless! And I bet Barbara was thinking similar thoughts about Sawyer after she left the elevator.

Barbara Walters was overrated as a journalist

I must admit that I never enjoyed watching Walters when she was on TV. I found her voice and mannerisms annoying, and I found her questions pretentious and sometimes downright stupid. Remember the question to Katharine Hepburn about what kind of tree she would be?

Walters, of course, belongs to a different time that occurred long before the Internet age began. These days, you can easily find better journalists and interviewers on YouTube and Substack. If she were just starting out now, I doubt very much that Walters would have had the career she had back in her time. The competition now is much fiercer, and she would have to figure out a way to survive in an environment that moves much faster than the one she worked in all those years ago.

When a celebrity takes their last breath, there goes their public image!

One of the things that always amuses me about celebrities of all sorts is that they try to keep their public image pristine throughout their lives. But as soon as they are dead, the truth starts to come out, and the whole world gets to see them in all their petty ugliness. That’s what’s happening with Barbara Walters right now, and when the process is complete, the image she worked so hard to maintain all her life will be thoroughly ripped apart and discredited.

I can’t say I feel sorry for Walters. She had a great deal of success, and she made a lot of money over the course of her life. But she’s not someone I would ever want to have known personally. People like her should be kept at arms length, and it’s amazing to me that anybody ever trusted her enough to allow her to interview them in the first place.

But, hey, there’s a sucker born every minute, right?

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