American TV personality and author Meghan McCain, who used to co-host The View talk show on ABC and who describes herself as an activist against antisemitism, wrote a column for the Daily Mail in which she reflects on the incident with Whoopi Goldberg's Holocaust remarks.
According to McCain, during her time working at The View, she became "deeply engaged as an activist against the growing rise of antisemitism in America."
"What Whoopi said yesterday was too serious to avoid addressing it," she wrote.
After offering some data revealing that antisemitism has been on the rise in the US in recent years, McCain says that "bigotry toward the Jewish people is not just tolerated but defended."
"I am not calling for Whoopi Goldberg to be fired, if only because I don't believe there is any universe where she could possibly do anything that could get her fired – she is the crown jewel of The View and a pop culture icon. But I hope this can be used as a teachable moment to explain to millions of Americans why conflating the Holocaust as something that is specific and limited to 'white people' is insane, ahistorical and anti-Semitic," McCain wrote.
According to her, "the truth of the Holocaust, who it targeted and why, deserves to be known and understood by all."
McCain believes that there is a need to "take a hard look at... why some liberal hosts are held to an entirely different standard than anyone else." She recollects other remarks previously made by Whoopi at "The View", adding that "with age and status comes protection at The View."
"There's a double, triple, and even quadruple standard if you are conservative," says McCain.
She suggests dedicating an entire segment to the show to discuss why the remarks made by Goldberg were "deeply offensive and dangerous".
On Monday, actress Whoopie Goldberg and her co-hosts on The View were discussing the ban of Art Spiegelman's Maus by the McMinn County School Board in Tennessee for "inappropriate language" and nude images. Goldberg said "the Holocaust was not about race but about man's inhumanity to man", which caused a fiery backlash from Jewish organisations in the US. She later apologised for her remark but ABC News president Kim Godwin announced the next day that Golberg would be suspended from the show for two weeks.