Springer, D. et al.
The producers of ABC’s long-running daytime talk show The View announced today that a parasitic lamprey, found largely in coastal and fresh waters in temperate regions, will be joining the show’s cast next month [1].
In a press release, the show’s executive producer Brian Teta enthused that “we at The View pride ourselves on the diversity of the voices featured on our program, and we are thrilled to finally include a panelist who can represent the parasitic-fish perspective, which is sorely missing from broadcast television.”
The unnamed fish, who has no previous television experience, is expected to clash with its costars, particularly Meghan McCain and Whoopi Goldberg, both of whom have gone on record as finding lampreys to be “slimy and disgusting.” It is likely to defend such practices as burrowing under the skin of other fish and sucking their blood, and spawning in piles of sand and gravel, putting it at odds with Joy Behar, who has dismissed such activities as “a load of crap.”
The lamprey’s hiring isn’t the show’s first attempt at branching out into non-human hosts [2]. In 2003, a toddler’s drawing of a flamingo was briefly made a co-host, but was fired after only two months due to backlash over comments it made in the press criticizing the Iraq War.
