Hollywood’s desperate these days, but they’re not that desperate — and that, to “The View” co-host Sunny Hostin, means that they’re racist.
If that logic sounds stupid to you, here’s how stupid it sounded on Monday’s “The View” — even Joy Behar called her out on it.
So, for those of you who haven’t been following the career of co-panelist Hostin, she’s a former federal prosecutor and legal pundit who decided that arguing with a rotating cast of inane women on daytime TV was much more fulfilling, or at least more remunerative, than that career.
I cannot avouch for every single minute she’s spent arguing with someone on “The View,” but from what I’ve seen, I’ll say this much: She specialized in prosecuting sex crimes in her former career, and if she was as logically coherent in the courtroom as she is on your flatscreen, I’m personally glad she made the change, because I can’t imagine there aren’t some guilty perverts walking free if her legal chops are as good as her general punditry ones.
But I digress. A former federal prosecutor might get bored just sitting around and hearing Alyssa Farah Griffin and Whoopi Goldberg talk over one another, and so she has a bit of a sideline in writing romance novels where she has fun “exploring black joy and Latina joy and exploring friendships,” she told People magazine.
She admitted that these novels were not, in fact, “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy” or “The Master and Margarita,” or even something from the “Twilight” series. They were, instead, “beach reads” — but intersectional beach reads!
“I love beach reads, but I never see beach reads with people of color. I really wanted to write about characters that have similar lived experiences to my own,” Hostin told People in 2021.
“When I would travel, I would run into the little airport bookstores, and I would look for characters of color on the cover — they just didn’t exist. I thought that if I was looking that maybe other people were looking as well, and Toni Morrison often said, ‘If there’s a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.'”
Yeah, and Christopher Hitchens often said, “Everybody does have a book in them, but in most cases that’s where it should stay.”
Point being, I haven’t read these masterpieces, but I tend to side with Mr. Hitchens here. Nicholas Fondacaro of the conservative Media Research Center called them “smut,” and I have no idea how far “exploring black joy and Latina joy” went in these books, but this is necessary background information for one of the most hilarious grievance gripes to ever appear on a show practically based around the grievance gripe.
So anyway, Hostin is peeved. Not that these “beach reads” have become bestsellers, obviously, but that Hollywood hasn’t come knocking on her door to produce her tales of black and Latina romance pap on the big screen.
Anyway, she announced Monday that she’s “partnered with a company called Fountain Zero who had an AI movie released at the Tribeca Film Festival. It’s the first time that that was done.”
“And one of the reasons I partnered with this company is because I’ve written a trilogy, and for six years, I’ve tried to get my films or my stories made into series and films. And the gatekeeping in Hollywood around black and brown creative content is insane,” she said. “I cannot get New York Times best-selling books onto the screen to tell diverse stories to diverse communities..
“So what does that have to do with AI?” a skeptical Behar asked.
“With AI that cuts out the gatekeeping. You get to make your film. You get to have a director,” Hostin said, before Griffin — often the voice of reason when such exists on “The View” — interjected.
“Do they have actors in it, though?” she asked.
Negative. Hostin has “licensed my image” to this company.
“I may appear. But in all seriousness, it’s a way to go then to a streamer and say, ‘Here’s the product. Will you license it? Will you show it?’ It’s a way, I think, to get black and brown stories told. There are a lot of hidden figures out there,” she said. “And those stories are not being told.”
“But if those people are, in fact, robots, how does that help the real black community?” asked Behar, who apparently suffered a concussion on the way to the studio and started making sense. “The real people are not working!”
“Because the stories are not being told, Joy!” Hostin hit back. “Because the real people are not getting jobs in Hollywood. Black and brown actors are not getting the jobs.”
You heard the woman: If her beach-read smut can’t be turned into real movies with real actors, she’ll use fake ones because these books are just that important.
“Well, this makes sure they never will,” Behar said. (Again, please go under the blue tent to see if you need to go into concussion protocol, Joy. This is too much sense for you.)
This went on, unbelievably:
Alyssa Farah Griffin points out that by using AI, Hostin herself is keeping black and brown actors from having those rolls. Hostin still blames the racism of the studios:
FARAH GRIFFIN: But I worry that you’re closing the – two things. I worry you’re closing the doors to those… pic.twitter.com/nuXT8WIAHO
— Nicholas Fondacaro (@NickFondacaro) September 14, 2026
Now, there are few points I’d like to run through here, starting with one of the novels I mentioned before: “The Master and Margarita.” It’s an anti-Soviet, anti-communism satire that somehow made The Guardian’s list of the top 100 novels ever written; considering that The Guardian loved the Soviet Union and still loves it some communism, that takes some talent.
It’s a wildly funny tale about Satan appearing in Moscow and causing all sorts of trouble; I won’t spoil it for you, but it was the blueprint for the Rolling Stones’ “Sympathy for the Devil,” one of the great conservative rock songs of all time (in my humble opinion) if you spend any time analyzing the lyrics.
It, too, has never been made into a big-budget Hollywood production. Not because it’s overlong (the book is actually just the right length for a movie, or a trilogy if you really want to stretch the material), or because it’s tedious as so much literature is (aside from being wildly funny, do you think a book that inspired “Sympathy for the Devil” is going to be boring?), but because, well, Hollywood makes weird decisions.
So one of the great novels of the 20th century has never received a legit Hollywood treatment, but we’re supposed to expect that Hostin’s “Summer on the Bluffs: A Life-Changing Summer Among Friends” — which can’t get through the title without a redundant use of the word “summer” — should be adapted, and it isn’t because “the gatekeeping in Hollywood around black and brown creative content is insane?” I do espy insanity in this logic — and for once, it ain’t from Hollywood.
Also, it’s not as if Hostin has been ignored by Hollywood or the entertainment industry. In 2020, Fox green-lit development on a one-hour drama series based around Hostin’s time in the legal system, but it apparently lapsed into “development hell” — where little to no headway was made on producing actual episodes — as so many projects do. She’s also had a podcast and a memoir, along with those three novels she implicitly admits are trash that publishers have promoted onto the New York Times bestseller list.
But finally, and most persuasively — and somehow from Joy freaking Behar — Hostin is very concerned about the fact that there’s not enough black and brown representation on screen, so she’s working with a company that has “AI that cuts out the gatekeeping” so that there’s no real black and brown representation on screen? I mean, aside from her getting some kind of release for her “beach reads.”
Again, I beg of you: If it keeps this woman from actually having to prosecute alleged sex offenders, by all means, buy these trash books.
Everyone needs a hobby, and one hopes hers isn’t getting back into the courtroom for funsies. But a make-work program for America’s most delusional legal pundit does not extend to Hollywood, where “beach reads” are screened inside dark theaters for three hours and exorbitant ticket and concession prices.
Just go to the beach, and advise Hostin to follow suit. Heaven knows, the woman sounds like she could use a vacation.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
