ABC has temporarily suspended Whoopi Goldberg as co-host of The View for comments she made about the Holocaust.
ABC News President Kim Godwin said in a statement issued Tuesday, “I am suspending Whoopi Goldberg for two weeks for her wrong and hurtful comments. While Whoopi has apologized, I’ve asked her to take time to reflect and learn about the impact of her comments. The entire ABC News organization stands in solidarity with our Jewish colleagues, friends, family and communities.”
The suspension came a day after Goldberg commented on a Tennessee school board’s banning of Maus, a Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel about the Nazi death camps during World War II. She said the Holocaust was “not about race…it’s about man’s inhumanity to other man.”
The remark drew condemnation from several prominent Jewish leaders. Goldberg apologized hours later and then again on Tuesday’s morning edition of The View, stating, “I misspoke.”
“My words upset so many people, which was never my intention,” she said. “I understand why now and for that I am deeply, deeply grateful because the information I got was really helpful and helped me understand some different things.”
Pat Benatar, Judas Priest and Devo are among the 17 artists who have been nominated for induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2022.
The other nominees are Beck, Kate Bush, Duran Duran, Eminem, Eurythmics, Fela Kuti, MC5, New York Dolls, Dolly Parton, Rage Against the Machine, Lionel Richie, Carly Simon, A Tribe Called Quest and Dionne Warwick.
To be eligible for induction, an artist must have released their first commercial recording 25 years before the year of their nomination.
Benatar previously was nominated in 2020, while Judas Priest and Devo both received nods twice before.
Speaking with ABC Audio, Rock Hall VP of Education & Visitor Engagement Jason Hanley notes, “I think it’s a great year for someone like Pat Benatar. Between her and [her husband and guitarist] Neil Giraldo…they wrote some of the great classic songs of the 1980s.”
He adds that songs like “Hit Me with Your Best Shot” “were…delivered with this great rock edge, classic kind of clean but distorted ’80s guitar, and Pat’s just amazing voice.”
As for Judas Priest, the band’s induction might help soothe the critics who think the Rock Hall has an anti-metal bias.
“[Judas Priest is] the band that takes the early days of heavy metal from bands like Black Sabbath and Deep Purple, and they turn it into what we know as metal,” Hanley says.
Hanley also feels Devo definitely deserves to be in the Rock Hall, praising the group for their “humorously disguised political songs,” and for being “innovators of sound and technology and music video.”
A Tribe Called Quest, Dionne Warwick and Lionel Richie are among the 2022 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame nominees.
To be eligible for induction, an artist must have released their first commercial recording 25 years before the year of their nomination.
A Tribe Called Quest is being nominated for the first time this year. Speaking with ABC Audio, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s Vice President of Education and Visitor Engagement Jason Hanley points to the group’s “laid-back” and “almost philosophical” style — which pioneered the alternative hip hop movement of the ’90s — as a reason for their nomination.
“They were talking about the African-American community in the United States, and getting a message out that was important for them to talk about,” Hanley notes of the group’s socially conscious songs.
As for Warwick, who’s seen a recent resurgence thanks to her social media presence, Hanley says, “Her legacy is fantastic.”
“Here’s a woman who was just so good year after year at interpreting songs,” he adds, noting that Warwick’s performance on the 1964 top 10 hit “Walk On By” alone ” “is probably enough to get her inducted into almost any Hall of Fame.”
Richie, who got his start in the Commodores, scored his nomination thanks to his ability to write songs across genres – from classic funk and emotional R&B to party songs like “Dancing on the Ceiling.”
Eminem and Nigerian Afrobeat pioneer Fela Kuti also made the ballot this year, along with rock bands Rage Against the Machine and Judas Priest, country star Dolly Parton, singer-songwriter Carly Simon, new wave band Duran Duran, and more.
The actual inductees will be announced later this year.
It seems few would deny Dolly Parton‘s a metaphorical rock star — but she could soon be one for real.
The Country Music Hall of Famer is now one of 17 nominees for potential induction this year into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. That puts Dolly in the same category as fellow contenders Lionel Richie, Dionne Warwick, Carly Simon, Pat Benatar, Eurythmics, and Duran Duran, among others.
Of course, the superstar from East Tennessee is certainly not without cred in the pop and rock world. She made it to #3 with “Here You Come Again” as far back as 1977, following that with lesser crossover hits like “Two Doors Down” and “Baby I’m Burnin’.” By 1980, she’d made it all the way to the top with “9 to 5.”
“Her songwriting transcends just maybe her home base, which is country,” the Rock & Roll Hall’s Jason Hanley points out. “And you’ve got Whitney Houston having one of the biggest selling songs ever with ‘I Will Always Love You.'”
“You’ve got other bands recording ‘Jolene,'” he adds. “You know, she has hit singles with Kenny Rogers, ‘Islands in the Stream.'”
Dolly returned to the top of the pop charts in 1983 with “Islands,” before Whitney’s cover smash in 1992. Rock duo The White Stripes covered “Jolene” in 2004, with Dolly most recently winning a Grammy for guesting on the Pentatonix version in 2017.
We’ll find out if Dolly makes it into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame when the final inductees are revealed later this year.
This year at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, it’s all about the ’80s: Among the 17 artists who’ve been nominated for induction in 2022 are Lionel Richie, Pat Benatar, Duran Duran, Eurythmics and Devo.
“I think it’s a great year for someone like Pat Benatar,” says Jason Hanley, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s Vice President of Education and Visitor Engagement. “Between her and Neil Giraldo, her longtime partner, they wrote some of the great classic songs of the 1980s…delivered with this great rock edge, and Pat’s just amazing voice.”
As for Lionel Richie, it was the “emotional songs” he released after leaving The Commodores that made him a solo ’80s superstar, Hanley tells ABC Audio.
“A song like ‘Hello’ [is] just really one of the great, great emotional love songs from that time period,” Hanley adds. “But then he could also write these great party songs, too.”
Hanley praises Duran Duran for being both “pop icons and incredible musicians” — or, as he puts it, “Yes, they were on the cover of Tiger Beat but they also wrote and performed really great songs.” The music of Eurythmics, Hanley says, “was so catchy, but also…kind of dug into these darker sides of the human emotion.”
Another nominee this year who started in the ’70s but had continued success in the ’80s is Carly Simon. Hanley says the fact that younger artists like Taylor Swift have cited Carly as an influence has led to a revaluation of music by female singer-songwriters in general.
“It’s softer, it’s more intimate. It might be one person with a piano and a voice or a guitar and a voice,” he notes. “But the power in that music is just so important.”
The other nominees include Judas Priest, Dionne Warwick, Dolly Parton, Eminem, Kate Bush, rap group A Tribe Called Quest, proto-punk bands New York Dolls and MC5, Afrobeat pioneer Fela Kuti, and ’90s alt-rockers Rage Against the Machine and Beck.
Bobby Bank/Getty Images; David M. Benett/Dave Benett/Getty Images
Pat Benatar, Duran Duran, Eurythmics, Lionel Richie, Devo, Carly Simon, Dionne Warwick and Dolly Parton are among the 17 artists who have been nominated for induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2022.
Also on the ballot are Beck, Kate Bush, Eminem, Fela Kuti, Judas Priest, MC5, New York Dolls, Rage Against the Machine and A Tribe Called Quest.
To be eligible for induction, an artist must have released their first commercial recording 25 years before the year of their nomination.
Benatar, Eurythmics, Warwick and Devo have all been nominated for induction before, while Duran Duran, Richie, Simon and Parton are among the first-time nominees.
Speaking with ABC Audio, Rock Hall executive Jason Hanley notes, “I think it’s a great year for someone like Pat Benatar. Between her and [her husband and guitarist] Neil Giraldo…they wrote some of the great classic songs of the 1980s.”
He adds, that songs like “Hit Me with Your Best Shot” “were such good songs and delivered with this great rock edge, classic kind of clean but distorted ’80s guitar, and Pat’s just amazing voice.”
Hanley also says he’s excited that Duran Duran have been nominated, noting that the British New Wave act combined good looks, catchy tunes and excellent musicianship.
“Yes, they were on the cover of Tiger Beat. And yes, they also wrote and performed really great songs,” he offers. “And I think if you can handle both sides of Duran Duran…then you really have a really good argument to vote for them.”
Hanley also similarly touts Eurythmics for the multifaceted appeal of their music.
Singling out the ’80s synth-pop duo’s signature tune “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of These)” as an example, Hanley notes, “[T]heir music was so catchy, but it also really made you think and it kind of dug into these darker sides of the human emotion.”
(ARLINGTON COUNTY, Va.) — Former Senate Republican Leader Bob Dole — a decorated World War II veteran and presidential candidate who served in Congress for 36 years — will be laid to rest with military honors on Wednesday at historic Arlington National Cemetery.
Dole died on Dec. 5, 2021, after announcing last February that he’d been diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer and was starting treatment.
Dole’s wife of 46 years, former Cabinet secretary and North Carolina Sen. Elizabeth Dole, and daughter, Robin, are expected to attend the invitation-only, graveside funeral with family members, close friends and former colleagues. Dole was given the rare honor to lie in state in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda late last year before his body was taken to his home state of Kansas for memorials and then back to Washington, where he’ll be laid to rest Wednesday afternoon alongside American war heroes.
Dole, a native of Russell, Kansas, served as an army officer in World War II and was severely wounded in action at age 21, left with permanent limited mobility in his right arm. Overcoming adversity, Dole went on to graduate law school, serve in the Kansas legislature, and represent his home state for four terms in the House of Representatives and five terms in the Senate, where he led the Republican Conference for more than a decade.
In Congress, he was an advocate for the rights of veterans and Americans with disabilities, spearheading the inclusion of protections against discrimination in employment, education and public services in the Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990. Dole also served as national chairman of the World War II Memorial Campaign which raised funds for the World War II Memorial to be built on the National Mall.
He ran three times for president, ultimately winning the Republican party nomination in 1996 but losing the general election to Bill Clinton, who was seeking a second term. Months later, Clinton presented Dole with the Presidential Medal of Freedom at the White House.
In a USA Today op-ed he finished on pen and paper less than two weeks before his death, Dole wrote Congress needs teamwork now more than ever, writing, “Those who suggest that compromise is a sign of weakness misunderstand the fundamental strength of our democracy.”
Nick Cannon is giving an update on his celibacy journey.
The talk show host, who recently announced he’s expecting his eighth child with Bre Tiesi, shared that he started the journey in October 2021.
“My therapist was one of the [people] who said I should probably be celibate and the reason why is because I had shared that news about Bre being pregnant,” he said on his show. “That was the reason why I started my celibacy journey back then. So for anyone who’s thinking, ‘Oh he wasn’t celibate,’ I was!”
Cannon, 41, elaborated, “I felt like I was out of control and honestly, celibacy did help me through the journey of getting one with myself and being able to deal with this.”
While the Wild ‘n Out host admitted that being celibate was a useful tool, he also revealed that he’s not anymore.
“No, I’m not [celibate] anymore,” he shared. “I made almost to New Year’s.”
Cannon currently shares 10-year-old twins Monroe and Moroccan with his ex-wife, Mariah Carey; four-year-old son Golden and one-year-old daughter Powerful Queen with Brittany Bell; and twins Zion Mixolydian and Zillion Heir, who were born in June, with Abby De La Rosa. In December, Cannon announced that Zen, his son with model Alyssa Scott, died at five-months-old after being diagnosed with brain cancer.
(WASHINGTON) — President Joe Biden on Wednesday will relaunch the federal government’s cancer “moonshot” initiative, with the goal of cutting the death rate from cancer in half over the next quarter-century, according to the White House.
The initiative is personal for Biden, who lost his son Beau to brain cancer in 2015 and who first launched the initiative as vice president.
After the Obama presidency, Biden and wife — and now first lady — Jill Biden founded a nonprofit foundation dedicated to finding a cure for cancer.
In 2016, Congress authorized $1.8 billion in funding for the initiative over seven years. There’s $410 million left for the next two fiscal years.
In addition to cutting today’s age-adjusted death rate from cancer by at least 50% over the next 25 years — after it has fallen by about 25% over the past 20 years — the initiative will aim to “improve the experience of people and their families living with and surviving cancer,” the White House said.
“Taken together, these actions will drive us toward ending cancer as we know it today,” the White House said.
On Wednesday, Biden and the first lady will also announce “a call to action on cancer screening to jumpstart progress on screenings that were missed as a result of the pandemic, and help ensure that everyone in the United States equitably benefits from the tools we have to prevent, detect and diagnose cancer,” according to the White House.
More than 9.5 million cancer screenings were missed in the U.S. because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the White House said.
But the pandemic has also led Biden to set “very ambitious goals,” a senior White House official told reporters Tuesday.
“The scientific advances that we saw from the COVID-19 pandemic, from the response to it, also points to things that are possible today,” the official said.
One example, according to the White House, is that the re-launched initiative will aim to “study and evaluate multi-cancer detection tests, like we did for COVID-19.”
The cancer “moonshot” initiative will have a coordinator in the White House, and the White House will form a “cancer cabinet” of officials from across the federal government. The initiative will involve the private sector, foundations, academic institutions and others, too.
Other goals, according to the White House, include increasing equitable access to screening and prevention — with at-home screening, mobile screening, and community health networks, as well as “accelerating efforts to nearly eliminate cervical cancer through screening and HPV vaccination, with a particular focus on reaching people who are most at risk.”
There will be a White House cancer “moonshot” summit, as well as a White House roundtable conversation series, they said.
On Wednesday, Biden will speak at an event in the White House’s East Room, joined by about 100 members of the cancer community — patients, survivors, researchers, advocates, caregivers, members of Congress and others — according to a senior administration official. The first lady and Vice President Kamala Harris (whose mother was a breast cancer researcher) will also make remarks, the official said.
(BRIDGEWATER, Va.) — A campus police officer and a campus safety officer were killed during a shooting at a Virginia college Tuesday afternoon after responding to reports of a “suspicious” person on campus, officials said.
Multiple agencies responded to Bridgewater College in Bridgewater following a report of an active shooter around 1:20 p.m. local time, school officials said.
The two officers were responding to a call of a “suspicious male individual” on the grounds of the college’s Memorial Hall, according to Virginia State Police spokesperson Corinne Geller. After a brief interaction, the suspect opened fire, striking both officers, she said.
The suspect fled on foot and was apprehended about a half-hour later off-campus, officials said. Officers followed the suspect after he waded into the North Rive, onto an island in the river, and he was taken into custody without incident, Geller said.
The two officers died from their injuries, Bridgewater spokesperson Logan Boger confirmed to ABC News. They were identified by the college’s president as Campus Police Officer John Painter and Campus Safety Officer J.J. Jefferson.
“Today our campus community experienced unspeakable tragedy. Two members of the Bridgewater College family were senselessly and violently taken from us,” Bridgewater College President David Bushman said in a statement.
“This is a sad and dark day for Bridgewater College. I know we all have so many questions and not many answers,” he said.
The officers were known as the “dynamic duo” and were close friends, Bushman said. Painter was Jefferson’s best man in his wedding this year, he said.
The suspect was identified by authorities as 27-year-old Alexander Wyatt Campbell, of Ashland, Virginia. He has been charged with felonies: 2 counts of capital murder, 1 count of first-degree murder and 1 count of use of a firearm in the commission of a felony, according to Geller, and is being held without bond at the Rockingham County Jail.
Campbell was treated for a non-life-threatening gunshot wound, according to Geller. It is unclear if he was shot by Painter, who was the only one of the two officers armed, or if it was self-inflicted, she said.
Multiple firearms “associated with Campbell” were recovered on and off-campus and seized as evidence, Geller said.
Virginia State Police did not comment on Campbell’s relationship to the college, but Geller said several college employees called 911 after seeing the suspect in and around Memorial Hall. “He was not supposed to be in this particular location,” she said.
A motive is still under investigation, and Campbell is the lone suspect, police said. It is unclear if he has an attorney.
Bridgewater Mayor Ted Flory said the community is “shocked by today’s senseless violence.”
“We are heartbroken by the needless injuries and loss of life. And we are rightly angered at the evil which alighted upon us,” he said in a statement. “But even in our grief, we turn our heads and we see the goodness of humanity: police officers running toward the danger, rescue personnel rushing in, and neighbors keeping each other safe.”
Agencies including the Virginia State Police, the Rockingham County Sheriff’s Office and the Harrisonburg Police Department responded to the college following reports of an active shooter. The FBI was also sending agents to the scene, according to a spokesperson.
By 4:33 p.m., the university gave an “all clear” message on its website.
Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin said in a statement on social media that he had been briefed on the situation and “will continue to monitor the situation in conjunction with law enforcement.”
Bridgewater, a small private liberal arts college, enrolled around 1,500 full-time students as of fall 2021.
Classes were canceled for Wednesday. School officials said they will provide information soon on grief counseling and other support.
The is a developing story. Check back for updates.
