Reply #8: She was hurt by it and she had to know that it would be interpreted

[karynnj]

exactly as it was:

Here is a transcript of the offending joke.

"That's why I'm here tonight. Because I love bush. But someone's giving bush a bad name. Someone has tarnished name of `bush.' Someone has waged war, someone has deliberately misled the country, someone has attempted to amend the constitution, all in the name of bush. The bush I know and cherish would never do such things. My bush is smarter than that. And if my bush is smarter than that, you can understand just how dumb I think that other bush is. And anyone who would wave to Stevie Wonder is not fully there. I will do whatever it takes to restore bush to its rightful place and that ain't in the White House. Vote your heart and mind and keep bush where it belongs."
From Whoopi's own press release - http://www.acmewebpages.com/whoopi/whoopisaid.htm (Frankly some of her other comments were pretty weird too.)

She knew the meaning people would think of. If she meant say lilac bushes - the third sentences could - without ruining the joke, be "Unlike lilacs, someone's giving bush a bad name." then continued as she did.

She had to know that because it was a fundraiser that the RW would go after anything offensive - and she gave them this. That she expected Senator Kerry to defend her and say that he had no problem with it - is crazy. It was frankly in bad taste and it would have hurt him politically if he did. As it was the Kerry campaign statement was mild.

The Kerry campaign distanced itself from Goldberg. "Our campaign has made it clear that those comments were inappropriate and crossed the line," said Chad Clanton, a Kerry spokesman. http://www.usatoday.com/news/politicselections/2004-07-14-goldberg-slimfast_x.htm

Use google and see how they used Whoopi's idiotic comments to trash John Kerry and to a lesser degree Edwards. Many conservative sources reported Kerry laughing - but I think he was not there yet. Here is Whoopi's claim that she didn't say anything wrong - and it is not believable.

"http://www.contactmusic.com/news.nsf/article/goldberg%20denies%20slamming%20us%20president_1045535"
Comedienne WHOOPI GOLDBERG has denied slamming U.S. President GEORGE W. BUSH at a Democratic fundraising event in 2004 - insisting rumours are a conspiracy to tarnish her name. The Sister Act star was vilified after comparing the American leader's name to a crude term for a vagina. In the aftermath, she was dropped as a spokesperson for diet aid company Slim-Fast. But Goldberg insists the comments - which damaged her professionally - were falsified. She tells U.S. chat show host Larry King, "It hurt me professionally hugely. "And actually the truth of the matter was I didn't criticise President Bush. I came out and I made some remarks to the crowd about John Edwards, the then-vice presidential candidate, and made a comment about John Kerry, who was then the presidential candidate. And I then said that I loved Bush and that someone was giving Bush a bad name, and it was time to put Bush in his proper place. That's all I said. "And before I got off the stage, it was on the (American news agency) A.P. that I had been vulgar and nasty and horrible. "And what we subsequently discovered, was that there are groups out there when they target you, they send out emails and... they are charged to go out and target folks. They did it with Sean Penn. They did it with a lot of people. And it cost me four years of work."