Joy Behar’s mocking of Christianity as a mental illness isn’t going away as an issue.
According to the Media Research Center watchdog group, more than 25,000 people had called ABC by early Monday morning to complain about a segment on “The View” in which the comedian specifically said Vice President Mike Pence suffers from the delusions of prayer.
“It’s one thing to talk to Jesus. It’s another thing when Jesus talks to you… that’s called mental illness … hearing voices,” she said.
The remarks prompted the MRC to demand an apology — and some pushback from the vice president himself.
“Make no mistake, the slurs against the vice president’s faith insult millions of Christians and are unacceptable. If there are no on-air apologies after this deplorable episode, Christians will tune out ABC programming across the board. And we will do our best to encourage it,” MRC President Brent Bozell wrote in an open letter encouraging people to call.
He also threatened to go to advertisers.
“If there is no apology, we will contact the advertisers of ‘The View,’ and ask MRC’s millions of grassroots activists to do the same. I am sure the advertisers of ‘The View’ will be just as appalled as I am about the anti-Christian remarks made on the show,” he wrote.
According to Fox News, MRC had contacted five advertisers already.
The View addressed the controversy last week, and Ms. Behar said she doesn’t think Christians are mental illness because some of her best friends and relatives are Christians.
She then went on to make light of the matter, with the help of host Whoopi Goldberg
“I don’t mean to offend people but apparently I keep doing it,” she said. “It was a joke.”
Miss Goldberg then said the show includes jokes and said there was no possible way ABC could be intolerant because “they have Sunday nights with … um … Joel … um” repeatedly forgetting the name of Joel Osteen.
When panelist Megan McCain noted that liberals preach tolerance “except pro-lifers, except Trump supporters, except gun owners, except everyone in the red middle of the country …”
At that point, Miss Goldberg cut her off.
“I’m gonna stop you because that’s not actually true. I’m stopping you for a reason, because we don’t want to talk about what liberals are doing. I’m trying to get out of this because this is what they asked me to do,” she said.
• Victor Morton can be reached at vmorton@washingtontimes.com.
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