Once again, Walters proves she’s incapable of living up to her reputation. I watched the interview and was sadly unsurprised when Walters once again refused to ask a single legitimately illuminating question. No testing or probing, no truth-squading of any kind. She simply asked Hillary for a book report and Hillary obliged. Wasn’t there room — in an hour-long conversation — to ask Hillary if there was any contradiction between her view of Bill’s acts as “private” and Hillary’s longstanding feminism which said “the personal is political”? Does she still think Anita Hill was right about everything? Does she recant her view expressed on the Today Show that if the Lewinsky allegations were true that they would amount to a very serious transgression? What about the discrepencies between her account of how she learned and others? Wouldn’t a real journalist ask a couple tough follow-up questions there?
Barbara Walters bristles whenever it is suggested that she’s nothing more than a vaguely lispy transmission belt for whatever her interviewees have to say. But there’s nothing wrong with being that if that’s what you are. I just wish she’d admit it.