Joy Behar Calls Atheists “Pathetic” on The View

Never heard of the “View” or of Behar, but that’s appalling. She should definitely be called to task and the prejudice involved should be pointed out plainly and emphatically.

Whether or not she apologises is up to her; if she’s a decent human being she’ll make the apology.

I wish I could have heard the comment being made. (I tried watching the video, but apparently there’s no way to skip the first 8:40. I’m not going to sit through all that.) It’s entirely possible she was using “pathetic atheists” as though coming from the mouths of others who really do think that way. She might have been deriding those people, not atheists.

I think mikespeir is right. Her humor is typically quite sarcastic and usually takes the role of resident “religion basher” on the View. I don’t think she was calling atheists pathetic, she may even be one herself.

I’ve often wondered whether atheists were considered worse for not believing in any gods than those who believe in the “wrong” gods. Now I know.

I still don’t know why though.

Joy either didn’t think about the comment or she was trying to score points at atheists expense. If it was the former she needs some awareness training. If it was the latter then I can’t see how she gains from it.

I believe that Joy Behar IS an atheist (or at least she calls herself an agnostic).

I’d be willing to bet she inflected “pathetic atheists” in an overtly sarcastic way, to make fun of people who look down on atheists, not atheists themselves. I couldn’t see her deriding a group of people that way, whether religious or not. But I didn’t see it, so I can’t know for sure. I’ll have to check out your link, Hemant, later tonight.

I didn’t watch the video (I hardly ever watch videos), but to me it reads like a sarcastic remark – an attempt to denigrate people who think atheists are pathetic. So I’m with mikespeir.

I agree with others that she is the resident “religion basher” on the view. She does make Jewish jokes and Catholic jokes, and pretty well everything aside from Muslim jokes. If she’s now including Atheists in her jokes, that’s a good thing, right?

Yes, her joke was to poke fun at Barack Obama’s speech as if HE were saying “christians, jews, and those pathetic atheists”.

It was a jab at the POTUS for being part of the majority that disregards atheists; as though POTUS had thought “I’ll toss those idiots a bone and include them in my speech.”

Yeah, sarcasm ftw. I could never watch more than sixty second of The View in one sitting though – I think my brain might start to melt. I react to the craziness and interruptions so that about 100 things are bouncing around in my head at once, and most of them involve being annoyed. I could even end up convinced that I’m a misogynist, but then I remember Rachel Maddow and smile.

I saw the clip and truly thought she was being sarcastic. She’s an atheist,too, I think.

um… yea.. lighten up. She was being sarcastic or facetious or sarcasticly facetious.

my question to you Hemant is “Did you watch the video despite how utterly awful ABC’s video player is?”

Her intent was clearly a jab at people who actually think that way. It’s a very effective way of ridiculing people, if you get the joke…

The statement “pathetic atheists” was said mostly in jest. The sentence prior to that was congratulating President Obama for including all faith groups, as well as non-believers, and received a round of applause. I think she was echoing the stereotype that other people feel.

To an extent, we atheists bring it on ourselves. You don’t see other groups promoting their negative stereotypes such as, all Jews are greedy, all blacks are lazy, all Irish are alcoholics, all French are arrogant, anywhere near the extent that we do. Even though I personally find it amusing and entertaining, I guess Hemant is as much to blame as anyone with the baby eating paraphernalia.

I made an Atheist Cooking video where I had puppies in a big pot on the stove and was chopping up vegetables over them with the sound of Hank Williams ‘Hey good lookin, what ya got cookin’ in the background and the following recipe moving past the screen: –

Four tasty plump succulent puppies – Sorry, got carried away there
Water – Not the holy variety
Half a bag of crackers – Transubstantiated for that meatier taste
One potato – Preferably with the image of the Virgin Mary
Simmer for one hour – Starting when the agonizing creams turn into slight whimpers
While cooking, run around the kitchen fornicating – preferable the homosexual variety

I didn’t post it on YouTube because I thought it promoted our negative stereotype just a little too much.

Even that stupid f–ing Samaritan knows what is right.

The Samaritans don’t take nearly enough abuse anymore. I think we should start that up. It would help put that story back in context.

Man, I hate those goddam effing Samaritans.

But even as a joke, I don’t think she’d get away with this if she substituted a different word in for “atheist.”

The fact that she couldn’t get away with it if she said it about someone else is no reason to act like the spoiled baby who is the one man Catholic League.

Why is the ADL awesome, and the Catholic League non-awesome?

Because the ADL doesn’t scream bloody murder at a hangnail. They confine themselves to substantive, actual defamation, and not every time anyone makes a joke (like “Suck it Jesus”).

Ah us po pathetic atheists.

And those great masses who spend their exhausting lives in service of a jealous triple headed myth

Hemant, if Joy needs to apologize for a single facetious adjective, then I think you need to apologize for the baby-eating jokes. After all, it’d be offensive if you talked about Jews or Koreans eating babies, wouldn’t it?