Incensed Whoopi Goldberg Rips Columnist On ‘The View’ After He Describes LSU Team As “Dirty Debutantes”: “How Dare You?”

Whoopi Goldberg gave a lengthy, impassioned response on this morning’s episode of The View after a writer criticized the Louisiana State University women’s basketball team in an offensive column prior to the LSU-UCLA March Madness matchup.

Ahead of the highly anticipated game, which took place on Saturday (March 30), Los Angeles Times columnist Ben Bolch described the game between LSU and UCLA as “good vs. evil” and called the LSU players “dirty debutantes.” He has since apologized.

On this morning’s show, Goldberg said the media had been casting LSU player Angel Reese “as a villain.” In a teary press conference after she and her team lost to the Iowa Hawkeyes on Monday (April 1), Reese said she had been getting death threats, had been sexualized and threatened as her popularity rose in the past year.

Goldberg, defending Reese, her team and all female NCAA players, gave a fiery rebuke to Bolch and those like him who have been unfairly critical of the women’s teams.

“Now, I just have to say … this really pissed me off. How dare you? How dare you? You didn’t learn from the last time somebody did something stupid like that?” Goldberg asked. “You didn’t learn that that’s not how you talk about these women or these athletes? How dare you call them dirty anything?”

She continued, “You can’t do what they do. You better make sure that when you have kids, if you have kids, that you apologize to your daughter. Because that’s who you’re calling a ‘dirty debutante.’ Every little girl that you pass, that’s who you’re talking about. Really, really disappointed in you. And I was a fan, not so much now.”

Bolch issued an apology for his words on Monday, writing on X, in part, “Words matter. As a journalist, no one should know this more than me. Yet I have failed miserably in my choice of words.”

“In my column previewing the LSU-UCLA women’s basketball game, I tried to be clever in my phrasing about one team’s attitude, using alliteration while not understanding the deeply offensive connotations or associations,” he continued. “I also used metaphors that were not appropriate. Our society has had to deal with so many layers of misogyny, racism, and negativity that I can now see why the words I used were wrong. It was not my intent to be hurtful, but I now understand that I terribly missed the mark.”

His statement came after he was criticized by LSU coach Kim Mulkey, who said during a Saturday postgame news conference that Bolch’s column was “awful” and “wrong,” per ESPN.

“I’m not going to let you attack young people, and there were some things in this commentary that you should be offended by as women. It was so sexist. It was good versus evil in that game today. Evil? Called us dirty debutantes? Are you kidding me?” she said, adding, “I’m not going to let you talk about 18- to 21-year-old kids in that tone.”

The View airs weekdays at 11/10c on ABC.