Thank you for being a friend. Except you, Elisabeth Hasselbeck. Blaming Obama for Islamophobia? Really?

Bill O’Reilly was on The View for some reason yesterday, and he went out of his way to rile everyone up, like always.

I don’t want to focus on O’Reilly’s incendiary and hateful comments; you can watch the clip yourself.  I want to focus on the The View’s response.

Joy Behar and Whoopi Goldberg walked off the set in protest of O’Reilly’s statements. I think it was a perfectly acceptable method of protest (and the one closest to my heart). If you don’t like what someone’s saying, don’t listen.

And while I don’t agree with Barbara Walters’ castigation of Behar and Goldberg for their protest, I agree with her when she said that, “We should be able to have discussions without washing our hands and screaming and walking offstage.” Which is exactly what she did.  

This begs the question: how much discussion can you have with someone like O’Reilly, who makes a career out of spreading incendiary opinions? Discussion is an important way to make connections and change attitudes. Walters confronted O’Reilly about his Islamophobic statements, and his half-assed apology illustrates how uninterested he is in discussion.

However, I want to thank the ladies of The View for participating in this discussion and calling O’Reilly out on his effery. I’m a believer in the power of allies, and I feel that everyone who added something constructive to the discussion on that program (again, not talking about Hasselbeck) through their walk-outs or call-outs acted as an ally for Muslim Americans like myself.

So thank you for being a friend, ladies of The View. And know that you always have a friend in me.