Quickly approaching her last day on The View, Meghan McCain defended the role nepotism has had on her career on Thursday, stating that she “no longer cares” what people think because her “work ethic speaks for itself.”
Regular viewers of The View are well aware that McCain’s father is the late Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), as she has not been shy about dropping his name and repeatedly mentioning how she is “John McCain’s daughter.” At the same time, the conservative host has been sensitive about charges of nepotism, even as she relentlessly trades on her family name.
In one of the last “Hot Topics” she would debate with her soon-to-be ex-colleagues, McCain weighed in on the criticism actor Ben Stiller has received for denying that nepotism is rampant in Hollywood. After news broke that a slew of children of famous parents were working on a film project, Stiller (himself the son of two famed comedians) said, in his experience, that show business “ultimately is a meritocracy.”
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“What do you think, Meghan? You come from notable stock,” co-host Whoopi Goldberg asked McCain. “Can you relate to this at all?”
After McCain said that all of the View’s hosts’ children will “have this same problem” because they’re all well-known, she went on to then offer up her own personal viewpoint.
“Look, I can only speak for myself,” she said. “But every single door I’ve ever walked in my entire life, people automatically assume you’re going to be a lazy, spoiled brat that won’t contribute anything because you have famous parents, and it’s something I have dealt with my entire life.”
McCain continued: “I no longer care. I think my work and my work ethic speaks for itself, but I think people think when you have a famous family or a famous parent, everything is just given to you and things are really easy.”
She went on to use Hunter Biden as an example of a child of famous parents who has “shared his struggles so publicly and vulnerably,” adding that she knows many other people from prominent families who’ve “struggled with very serious demons” because they’re constantly compared to their parents.
“Nobody’s going to feel sorry for a person with famous parents, but it really isn’t always what people think,” McCain concluded. “In fact, it almost never is, and yeah, I feel bad for these kids trying to just—just trying to make a movie and I’m sure they got help because of who their parents are. If the movie is crap, it’s crap, and we will see how it ends up being.”
Co-host Joy Behar, McCain’s longtime sparring partner, had a slightly different take on the subject.
Noting that her own father was a working-class truck driver, the veteran comedian said there was “no discussion” over the fact that nepotism helps people get a head start.
“If you have a connection, you get a foot in the door,” she declared. “But that doesn’t mean that you will be able to succeed at it.”
Behar added: “You know, I could name names of famous people whose children did not make a dent, and they tried very hard, and it didn’t work, and others, like Jane Fonda, who’s brilliantly talented and did very well. Who’s even to know that if her father wasn’t Henry Fonda she would be the famous movie actress and talent that she is?”
