For the second time this week, Whoopi Goldberg shared strong opinions on The View about a controversy involving a country star.
Two days after she jokingly left her seat over the Miranda Lambert selfie incident, Goldberg criticized Jason Aldean on Thursday's (July 20) episode for his song "Try That in a Small Town" and its music video.
"He talks about life in a small town, and it's different, and he chose these images," Goldberg said. "He's got folks from the Black Lives Matter movement, and he's talking about people taking care of each other, and I find it so interesting that it never occurred to Jason or the writers that that's what these folks were doing: They were taking care of the people in their town because they didn't like what they saw.
"Just like you talk about people taking care of each other in small towns, we do the same thing in big towns," she continued. "You just have to realize that when you make it about Black Lives Matter, people kind of say, 'Well, are you talking about Black people? What are you talking about here?'"
Aldean's been condemned by some and praised by others for the song's lyrics and the video's use of politically-charged imagery and its filming location.
Goldberg added that Aldean had gone "too far" with the song: a sentiment shared by co-hosts Alyssa Farah Griffin, Joy Behar and Sunny Hostin.
Griffin said the song reminded her of the 2020 murder of Ahmaud Arbery, a "Black man in a small town in the South who got shot for doing nothing wrong."
Behar called the song "deplorable," while Hostin recalled stories from her parents about their small-town experiences.
"What was evoked for me was.... those sundown areas. My mother and father, because they were an interracial couple, were run out of South Carolina by the KKK," Hostin said. "My father is still scarred from that experience ... so don't tell me that not only was he aware of what he was doing by using that imagery, he embraces that imagery. Unfortunately, this became the No. 1 song on U.S. iTunes. We have a problem in this country about race, and the biggest problem is we refuse to admit that it exists."
