Barbara Walters is an overpaid hack, a farce, a blabbering idiot, a disgrace to her profession. She hasn't been a journalist for twenty years now, if ever.

Sure she does interviews, but interviews don't make a journalist. Nobody considers Jay Leno or David Letterman journalists. They interview people daily. Hell, even starstruck losers on MTV's Fanatic interview famous people. I daresay they aren't journalists. And the fact of the matter is that her interviews present even less journalistic value than those mentioned above.

Hers aren't interviews, they're vanity vehicles whose only intent is to show us that: 1) "Babwa" still alive, 2) she deserves her outrageous seven million a year because she can corner celebrities and pseudo celebrities even more desperate than her for media exposure, 3) if you combine the soft lighting from Elizabeth Taylor's "Diamonds" commercials and any given episode of Ally McBeal, you can make 100 year old women look not a day over 90.

Sure, she sits her tired, old ass on that stomach turning, inane piece of garbage called The View. But The View isn't journalism. If it is, then anyone who's ever hung out at the water cooler to gab ignorantly about current events is a journalist. Journalists find news, they don't just talk and bitch about it. I can talk and bitch about news for two. I don't need some noisy whores to do it for me.

And yes, she sits at the 20/20 desk, reading off a teleprompter and disagreeing with every other word coming out of John Stossel's mouth. I'll be the first to admit that John Stossel can be a bit abrasive, mostly because he's always right, and isn't afraid to call people on their hypocrisies. But he's a real journalist. He actively finds interesting, informative, relatively non redundant stories and researches them comprehensively. If she tries hard enough, Walters might remember doing something similar in the mid seventies.

John, just slap her in the mouth and tell her to leave journalism to journalists.

On that note, since the genuine journalists at ABC are so miffed at ABC news sending Leonardo Dicaprio instead of Sam Donaldson to interview the President, where is their outrage over that 100 year old sack of dead weight? She's nothing but a hack, and her presence in the news division can't be justified with anything but her consistently strong ratings. What's wrong with Dicaprio then? Surely his ratings would be through the roof, if only for the gawk factor. This is not to say that Dicaprio should consider himself a serious journalist, but he has an equally strong claim to such a title as that incompetent wench.

Perhaps she's there on a history of being a hard hitting, relevant and engaging journalist? Sorry, but I was born in the twentieth century. Forgive me if I don't have the Rosetta stone handy and thus am unable to translate her last "serious" news story. If previous work justified present employment, then Joe Montana would be an NFL quarterback forever. But he's not. Either she does journalistic work or she should stop calling herself a journalist.

Lately, on any given episode of The View, Walters and company can be seen berating the governor relentlessly. Considering that no self respecting journalist would be caught dead on that hour of ingratiating trash, I find their attacks highly amusing. It would be akin to President Clinton getting in a huff over accusations of infidelity- while he gets his dick sucked in the Oval Office. Oddly this is something I have an eerie feeling has actually occurred.

Hint: if you're going to deny allegations of child molestation, try not to do it at the yearly NAMBLA convention. (North American Man Boy Love Association for the non pedophiles in the house). Likewise, don't dodge accusations of softball journalism on a show that epitomizes it.

No two ways about it- Barbara Walters is the icon of softball journalism. How long do self indulgent teleprompter matriarchs live anyway? Too long, much too long.