Why a Gay Man on The View Is an Awful Idea

Rumor has it Mario Cantone will be one of the new co-hosts on The View following the abrupt re-shuffling at the talk show—and if true, it's "the worst idea The View and its executive producer Barbara Walters have had yet," writes Daniel D'Addario on Salon. Cantone is gay—you might know him from his stint on Sex and the City—and bringing him on as the only male on an otherwise all-female panel "sends a very weird message—as though he’s somehow in a liminal space between the genders," a "barely-male emissary to the world of women" just like his character on SATC was portrayed.

And that's not all: Why does The View need to add a male perspective anyway? "The View is one of the few places on television in which women talk to one another without that talk being mediated by men—and it’s unique in that the conversation is not about gender," D'Addario writes. "The guy’s perspective is represented by literally everything else on television." And if the show begins to focus on male-female differences of opinion, it will "[bring] out a streak of gender essentialism that waxed and waned through the show but, when it appeared, was always the dumbest aspect of the conversation." Click for his full column. (More The View stories.)