With all of the hoopla surrounding the publication of Barbara Walter’s book called, “Audition” i have to wonder; where is her dignity? i think she lost it somewhere between bragging on her affair with a married man approximately 20-30 years ago and dishing on the ongoing public tongue lashing of her former co-hosts Rosie O’Donnell and Star Jones. There is so much more, i am sure, in Barbara’s memoirs but i have to wonder…with all of the truly outstanding news stories she has brought to our attention over the years…why resort to digging dirt?
After all, the book would have been interesting enough because of some of the all time history making interviews such as Fidel Castro, Monica Lewinski, President Gerald Ford, Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, Rudy Giuliani former mayor of NYC and the list goes on. Then there are all of the famous celebrities she has interviewed over the years as well. Some celebrities doing a PR spin on whatever scandal they were going through at the time…there would have been enough sex, drugs, violence to attract the gossipmongers to the book strickly because of some of those interviews.
Barbara’s book would not have been short on excitement, intrigue, or interest had she concentrated strickly on those interviews and all of the behind the scenes regarding them. I fail to see the need to tell us of her sex life and such. She is interesting in her own right just because of her childhood, her professional life, her adoption of her daughter Jackie and the famous people in and out of her life.
I wonder if this type of publicity buzz will have a disasterous backlash when it comes to the sale of the book; or, whether it will bring publishing to a whole new level of indigity itself. The business of publishing has been going through it’s own destructive roller coaster over the last decade or so; regarding making a profit, plagerism, fictionalized memoirs, editors who publisher hop from one company to another; and then, the spector of how digital publishing is affecting printed publishing financially. When dignity is for sale we all lose out.
Write where you are 
I have lost respect for Barbara Walters. She could had did this book without telling us about her sex life or who she had an affair with or hot for who care. Why do she think it okay keep bring up Rosie O’Donnell and Star Jones. Everybody know what happened with that. She is the one who gave then the job, what do that say about her. Why did she bring up all problems her daughter had growing up. Do this lady have any dignity. NO!!! NO!!! Whatever good she did for women on TV, over the past fourty years +, this book trash everything.
The “VIEW”, I don’t rather like that show. I only watch the first ten minutes to see what dumb things come out of they mouths. The only one on that show that have any class is Joy.
I know Barbara Walter did not write the book for money. Maybe she wrote it for attention, who knows. This shows us all the money in the world can’t buy class.
I don’t care who Barbara Walters sleeps with — as long as it doesn’t affect her work. But the first thing I thought of when I heard about her affaire with a senator was that it finally explains why she was so soft on Monica Lewinski.
I bet Barbara thanks God every day that she wasn’t friends with Linda Tripp in the 1970s.
Barbara Walter’s life was influenced greatly by her older sister and she’s written a beautiful memoir about her life. I read another memoir of a life influence by a sibling that I recommend highly – I actually liked it even more. The memoir is “”My Stroke of Insight”” by Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor. Dr Taylor became a Harvard brain scientist to find the cause and cure for schizophrenia because her older brother was a sufferer. Then, crazy as life can be, Dr. Taylor had a stroke at age 37. What was amazing was that her left brain was shut down by the stroke – where language and thinking occur – but her right brain was fully functioning. She experienced bliss and nirvana and the way she writes about it (or talks about it in her now famous TED talk) is incredible.
What I took away from Dr. Taylor’s book above all, and why I recommend it so highly, is that you don’t have to have a stroke or take drugs to find the deep inner peace that she talks about. Her book explains how. “”I want what she’s having””, and thanks to this wonderful book, I can!