Hot Topics:

• Black Friday: Whoopi doesn’t really understand the Black Friday phenomenon or what it means so Rosie P explained that it’s a good thing, when retailers end up “in the black” as opposed to in ending red, or in debt. Rosie O doesn’t remember ever shopping with her family on Black Friday, but she remembered going shopping with her mom the day after Christmas to get the good porcelain ornaments on sale.  Nicolle likes shopping for Christmas decorations when they’re on sale following the holiday too.  And she really likes to support locally owned businesses in her community on Small Business Saturday.  Rosie P went Black Friday shopping once and was almost stampeded and nearly had a heart attack.  She isn’t a fan of it but understands the desire to get a good deal.  Whoopi shops for the holidays in the summer time.  It’s too hard for her to concentrate when people are wrestling over items in the stores.  Nicolle and Rosie P joked how they would be “fightin’” over the dresses on the racks if they ever ran into each other while shopping.
• Life After Death: The ladies discussed a story about a woman who made worldwide headlines after her heart stopped beating for 45 minutes during childbirth and then survived. Her near death experience mirrors many of the near death stories we’ve heard over the years, a long tunnel, seeing deceased family members, etc.   Rosie O called it a “true miracle.”  Rosie P talked about a woman whose 92 year old Aunt passed away and then came back to life after being declared dead for 11 hours!  This, Rosie P explained, is the original reason for a wake before a funeral.  Whoopi once worked at a morgue and her boss played a prank on her pretending to be a dead person coming back to life.  He did it to teach her a lesson that weird things might happen in a morgue, but nothing weirder than that would ever happen while she worked there.    Nicolle said she would never take a job in a morgue because it freaks her out so much.
• The Kids Are All Right: They showed a video of Neil deGrasse Tyson sitting on the floor with a small child discussing how first graders can help the Earth by emptying the kitchen cupboards as a future scientist.  The ladies discussed children getting into the cupboards and pulling out all of its contents and how that is normal behavior.  Nicolle said she has a harder time stopping her son’s impulses than anything.  Her little boy loves to help out in the kitchen and help her cook.  He can crack 6 eggs without getting a shell in the bowl!  Rosie P thinks in several decades technology will be taking over and the world of coding is going to be big money.  She loves Neil and wants him to come on The View to discuss curiosity and the fields of science for children.  Rosie O is way too lenient as a mom and calls herself a “stay-at-homer,” who likes the kids to have their friends over to their house rather than go to someone else’s house.  She has found, however, that not limiting a child’s impulses at 2 or 3 makes it harder when they turn 15, 16 or 17.  She advises starting early with setting limits.  Rosie O said “the look” that Whoopi says worked for her as a parent, never works for Rosie.  She said she has to raise her voice to a level of yelling for them to listen to her.  She said not having a mom has made her create a hybrid of parent/companion in her parenting which she said worked for her because the closeness to her children was a necessity.  Nicolle talks to her mom every day and said she’s the best mom in the world.  She often thinks “what would my mom do” when she has to make a parental decision.  Whoopi said parenting just has to do with doing the best you can.  She thinks that’s how most parents parented in the past and continue to parent today.
• Unlikely Lessons: The ladies discussed an op-ed in the Huffington Post The 10 Lessons You Can Learn From The Assholes In Your Life. Rosie P admitted to being a semi-asshole at times herself.  She’s had a lot of assholes in her life and she’s learned not to be that stupid or mean from them.  The best thing she read in the article was “you can’t help someone who doesn’t want to be helped.” She said she’s really had to learn that lesson through her interaction with her friends because her gut instinct is to always fix things.  Rosie O has never found Rosie P to be assholish at all, not even once.  Nicolle thinks the best lesson from the list is that some people cannot be helped and are just assholes.  Rosie O said she’s learned it’s best not to engage with assholes via the media.  Then Rosie O not-so-casually tossed her hair to the side for no apparent reason whatsoever.
• Secrets To Seeking A Psychic: An Austrian psychic recently revealed how to find a reputable psychic. She advises doing your homework and getting good recommendations.  Nicolle doesn’t like anything that talks to her about the past or the future and just as she doesn’t like mimes or Ouija boards.  Rosie P respects psychics but doesn’t want to know about the future either, she just wants to live.  Rosie O likes psychics and thinks they’re interesting, but doesn’t always find them reliable.  She’s had a lot of people try and tell her that her mom is trying to speak to her, but they often get the details wrong.  For example, one psychic told her that her mother appreciates that Rosie has photos of her all around the house but Rosie O has absolutely no photos of her mom.  Recently, a viewer wrote in to the show who had photos of Rosie’s mom from elementary school.  The viewer wrote how she followed Rosie’s career because of her mother and was so sorry that she died so young.  As the viewer grew older she realized when you’re a mother, you’re a mother to everyone’s child.  She said if Rosie O ever needs a mother, she’s there for her out in TV land.  Rosie O thought that was the sweetest thing.  Rosie’s kids could all find her mom in the photos.  She doesn’t remember her mom being as tiny as she was but her mom was the smallest kid in the class.  She always justified her size because she thought her mom was a bigger size like her, but in fact, she wasn’t.  She was petite like Rosie P.  Whoopi said psychics come up to her all the time because she played a psychic in the movie Ghost.  They often try to read her, but she’s not interested.  She feels that nothing they can tell her is going to be relevant to her.  Rosie O had a psychic once talk to her about her daughter who was going through some problems.  And the psychic compared her daughter’s issues to a chick hatching from an egg: up close it looks like destruction, but if you take a look from afar, it’s actually a rebirth.
• Viral Video:  They showed a video of a cat winning at the shell game.  All the ladies loved it.

Guests:

Norman Lear: Legendary television producer Norman Lear, the creator of All in the Family, One Day At A Time, The Jeffersons, Maude, and Good Times, joined the ladies of The View.   Norman said he didn’t know at the time he was producing those hit shows that he was changing the landscape of television.  He was simply reflecting life as he lived it discussing topics such as family, kids, relationships and how the economy and foreign policy was affecting them.  He sees the topics as still relevant today and said we’re still living with all of those issues, from racism to abortion. The abortion show aired on Maude originally in October and with no real response, but by the time reruns came in April and May the religious right went crazy over it.  “I think we are looking in the mirror and not seeing ourselves correctly,” Lear said.  He never insulted the intelligence of his viewing audience.  Rosie O said that Maude defined who she is as a women and a feminist and thanked him for it.

Rosie and Norman Lear

Angela Brown: At 11 years old, Trey Brown suffered a traumatic brain injury after being hit in the head with a baseball.  That injury caused years of pain and complications.  When the prescribed medications proved useless, his mother Angela gave him cannabis oil.  When the sheriff found out, he swooped in and charged her with child abuse.  Angela and Dr. Sharon Levy, a representative from the American Academy of Pediatrics, joined the ladies to debate the topic.  Angela said she was stunned when she was charged with child abuse.  She was only trying to take away her son’s pain.  Dr. Levy said they need to do the studies to show which how and why children can be helped by cannabis in order to make it a legal medicine for kids.  She said our children deserve standardized medicines because of the narrow dose range they require.  Angela said any parent who is going to take the step to use cannabis as a treatment for their child, is going to do the research themselves.  She doesn’t want to standardize it.  She believes it needs to be the whole plant and not a synthesized form thrown into a pill.  Dr. Levy is open to the field of study because she’s a pediatrician but also a mom.  She just wants to get it right.  Whoopi said this debate is about helping kids from suffering and what’s standing in their way is the medical marijuana policies.  Angela said, “A friend dying from pancreatic cancer can’t wait for studies.”

Audience Gift: Everyone in the studio audience got a copy of Even This I Get to Experience by Norman Lear.

Take a little time and enjoy The View!