Will The View's Elisabeth Hasselbeck bomb at Fox News?
Fox News chief Roger Ailes and some of his liberal critics are certain Hasselbeck has finally found her natural media home. Well...
On Wednesday, Elisabeth Hasselbeck bid her emotional farewell to The View, the ABC talk show she has co-hosted for a decade. (Watch above.) The night before, Fox News had confirmed swirling rumors that Hasselbeck — the ABC gabfest's reliable conservative — is joining the rival network's morning show, Fox & Friends, in September, replacing Gretchen Carlson.
Fox News chief Roger Ailes is bullish on Hasselbeck's upcoming Fox debut. "Elisabeth's warm and engaging personality made her a star on The View," Ailes said in a statement. "She has proven to be an excellent conversationalist and I am certain she will make a great addition to our already successful morning franchise."
Fox-bashing liberals are generally in agreement. Rebecca Leber at ThinkProgress found five right-wing statements "that show why Elisabeth Hasselbeck will fit right in on Fox & Friends." And at Fox, "Hasselbeck will get to be the top banana," says Josef Adalian at New York, "with co-hosts Steve Doocy and Brian Kilmeade likely to serve as an amen corner for whatever attacks she launches at President Obama or Nancy Pelosi."
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Even Joy Behar, Hasselbeck's liberal sparring partner on The View, ribbed her departing co-host: "Fox. Gee, won't you be a fish out of water, there?"
But the view that Hasselbeck will thrive at Fox News is not universally held. From outspoken conservative views to "her sharp-eyed blondeness," the former Survivor contestant does seem like a perfect fit for Fox & Friends, says Richard Lawson at The Atlantic Wire. "I'm just not sure she's going to do all that well over there," Lawson says. What made Hasselbeck a star on The View was that she was "nearly always in opposition to the other women on the panel," surrounded, if you will, "by potential enemies."
It's more than just the Hasselback-versus-the-world dynamic that has made The View compelling TV, says Amanda Hess at Slate. "The progressive ladies on the show force her to defend her conservative opinions and, in some cases, reverse them." And even when Hasselback sticks to her guns, "it can be fascinating to watch her explain her thought processes — often, emotionally — to people who don't agree." She may be more comfortable at Fox & Friends, and she may even start spouting out "ever-more wingnutty things." But without her liberal foils, it "won't be as fun to watch."
By joining her ideological peers on cable, Hasselbeck is losing the thing that made her unique and noteworthy, agrees Daniel D'Addario at Salon. "How often have Gretchen Carlson's declarations made it into tabloids, as in the mid-2000s Hasselbeck's were on a nearly weekly basis?" But the big loser in this switch is the conservative movement, which is poaching one of the few "conservative partisans with a daily platform in the so-called lamestream media."
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Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.
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