I am three seats away from the stage where the hosts of The View will soon sit. It's a beautiful morning—early, crisp, sunny. A couple hundred people are already sitting in their chairs out here by the pool at Caesars. A hundred more are inside in the standby line, which is convenient to the gift table, which is covered in The View baby-blue sweatshirts and The View pink disposable cameras and The View embroidered denim skirts. The crew is busy fiddling with the flowers on the table around which the all-woman cast of hosts will sit. There's something not right about the way the flowers look on the cameras, apparently—one guy keeps moving them while another relays urgent messages from his headsets: left, right, left, forward. Behind me, two gentleman have this conversation:
"Have you seen the show?"
"No."
"I have. It's a woman's show. But it's all right."
Until then, I had honestly forgotten that The View is known as a woman's show—I hadn't seen it in quite some time. The signs were all there though. I knew, upon taking a gander at the souvenir table, that none of the goods appealed to me precisely because everything was either pink or soft blue, and despite being a woman, I have some strange repellent reaction to all things pastel. Then: the flowers—were this John McLaughlin's roundtable, they might've skipped the flowers. I looked around, and yes, at least three quarters of the audience was female.
Strangely, though, I came down to see The View being taped live in Las Vegas because I wanted to see Barbara Walters, a media landmark and infotainment maverick.
I'm not a Barbara fan so much as I cherish little opportunities to brush up against history—particularly set here in our shmaltzy back yard. There's a satisfying time-warp feel to it. And here, in front of Caesars' fountains, would be a woman who interviewed Fidel Castro, Anwar Sadat, Menachem Begin, six U.S. presidents, Margaret Thatcher and Boris Yeltsin. More importantly, she was the subject of one of my favorite comics, Gilda Radner. Upon meeting Ms. Walters, I decided, my personal game of Six Degrees of Separation would be almost complete.
But now there was this woman show thing going on in my head—what did they mean, "a woman's" show? Was it a simple matter of differentiating between styles and colors and flora, or was this some occasion that called for me to accept feminist duty? And didn't they know that regardless of the pastels, this was Barabara Walters? In 1976, Walters left Today to co-anchor the ABC Evening News with Harry Reasoner, the first time a woman was hired as network evening anchor—and she drew seven figures. But her approach to the news—talky, prying, featurey—led critics to say she was bringing a new "infotainment" quality into hard news. She was bumped.
This train of events suggests that women brought the growing kaffeeklatsch tone to the news industry. But nearly 20 years later, infotainment has given way to everything from hyper-punditry on CNN to reality TV on every channel, and you can hardly blame Barbara Walters for that, or credit her, depending on your take.
So here I am, a parasite on the many accepted forms of today's "news" production, a media employee sitting in a TV audience. The View's crowd-warm-up woman is prodding us into a frenzy and the music starts and the hosts enter the patio and they stride through the audience, and the crowd stands and screams and fawns. I, too, am beside myself, although I've forgotten why. I'm just cheering and clapping nonsensically when I see her: Barbara Walters, newsish woman, heading down the aisle toward me.
And I think, Man, she's skinny.
I mean tiny. I could pick her up and toss her to Star Jones with one hand.
So the show gets started, and they're talking about pastel stuff, introducing Star's fiance´, talking about diamonds and a good man, blah blah blah, and I'm thinking of Fidel and Boris and Thatcher. Or trying to. I'm not here for girl stuff, I tell myself. I'm here to glom off of the international energy of Barbara Walters, infotainment mogul! But every time I look at her, a biddy voice cackles in my head: She must be a size 2! TV really does add 10 pounds. I wonder if she works out at her age?
During the commercial break, the hosts graciously come into the audience and shake hands. My chance to meet Ms. Six-Degrees-To-Everybody is upon me.
"Hello everyone," she says to everyone in my aisle, but mostly to me.
"Hello Barbara." I say.
And here's where I could have asked about six presidents or that awful "Does it hurt?" question she asked Martha Stewart before Stewart's trial. But I said, and I quote, "You look great."
You look great, Interviewer of World Leaders, Prying Pest to Controversial Figures, First Woman Network News Anchor. You look great. I'm not even sure it was sincere, because she's really quite a waif.
The show went on. Carmen Electra and Dave Navarro talked about their love for one another and their love of sex. Wayne Newton showed up and sang "Love Me Tender" to a lovely young woman from New Jersey or somewhere. She was putty. I was giddy.
When the show ended, we were shepherded off of Caesars' patio like so many sheep with afterglow.
I had met my mogul. And I went away dumbfounded by the infotainment veteran's itty-bitty waist. "Barbara Walters is like a size 2," I told my sister later, knowing full well that had Dan Rather been on the set, I likely wouldn't have left with an estimate of his waist size. I might've said something about some comment he had made, or about how I had grilled him on why he didn't turn Saddam over when he had the chance, or more likely something about his demeanor or his aging appearance—but likely not his pants size.
Shamefully, my lasting impression of Barbara Walters will forever be, Wow, what a teensy ass.