The women of “The View” were split on Tuesday morning following the public defacement of the Mona Lisa in the Louvre. While Whoopi Goldberg, Sara Haines and guest host Tara Setmayer slammed the stunt, Joy Behar and Sunny Hostin argued it might’ve just worked.
On Monday, a man attempted to vandalize the famous piece by smearing frosting all over the its protective glass. The man reportedly did so in protest of climate change, as a video posted by a witness included audio of him saying “Think of planet Earth, there are people destroying it,” in French as he was escorted from the museum.
For half of the “View” table, the stunt was way off the mark.
“It’s asinine!” guest host Tara Setmayer exclaimed. Though she laughed at the extreme circumstances, she added that people are talking more about the stunt itself, rather than the reasoning behind it.
“We’re talking about that, as opposed to the cause,” she said. “So I think those kinds of stunts — like he wore a wig, and he dressed up as an elderly woman in a wheelchair to smuggle it in — we’re talking about that, as opposed to what the issue is that he’s actually protesting. So I think that stunts like that don’t work at all.”
Of course, hosts Sunny Hostin and Joy Behar disagreed a bit.
“I think they work. I mean, we’re talking about it,” Hostin said with a laugh.
Hostin pointed out that, because of the glass in front of it, the Mona Lisa can’t truly be destroyed, so it wasn’t at any real risk. Meanwhile, Behar likened the stunt to one pulled off by the “Yippies,” a group of anti-war protestors in the 1960s, who regularly pulled public stunts.
But Behar and Hostin were the outliers, as Whoopi and Sara Haines doubled down. Haines argued that the protest had no clear plan, and seemed like a decision made by a drunk person, while Whoopi took issue with the destruction of someone else’s artistic work.
“I totally get protest, I dig it,” Whoopi said. “I don’t think it’s OK to destroy somebody else’s art in order to make your point.”