Barbara Walters explains herself

Barbara Walters is usually the one asking people the tough questions, so it's always a treat when the tables are turned. This week, the Los Angeles Times grilled the broadcast journalist on a few hot topics, including a comment she made last week on The View about co-host Whoopi Goldberg's sexuality :

L.A. Times: Last week, when the show had the openly lesbian MSNBC host Rachel Maddow as a guest, you made a joke about Whoopi coming out of the closet, and Whoopi deadpanned, "Please — that door's been open for years." What the heck?

Walters: I caught that myself! This was not her way of saying she's a lesbian. She's been open about herself and her life for years: She meant it that way.

If you missed the episode, you can watch it here:

Babs didn't say what prompted her to make that joke, so I can only assume she means she's playing off everyone else's ideas that Goldberg has a speculative sexuality. Still, it was kind of an awkward moment on that episode.

When asked about former host Rosie O'Donnell, who famously exited the show in an abrupt and highly publicized fashion, Walters spoke positively, despite the press having detailed heated altercations between the two in the recent past:

I can never be mad at Rosie. I just saw her; she was doing a reading of a one-man play that Nora Ephron had written, and I went backstage and gave her a hug.

Rosie was so used to doing a show on her own that, as I said at the time to someone, "It was like Diana Ross and the Supremes, and Rosie was Diana Ross." Rosie would have been just as happy doing the show with two people behind her, or no one behind her. But all of us are better together than we are, in general, separately.

The interview ends with the Times pointing out that Walters is 79-years-old (wow, really?) and asking if she has any plans to "slow down." Her answer:

Well, I don't do it every day. I could pull back to nothing? But it's something I enjoy doing. The audience seems to think that I add something.

It looks like we'll be seeing a lot more of Barbara Walters. Seventy-nine is the new 25.