Whoopi's Shameful Habit
The campaign against the public display of smoking, which has attacked smoking in parks, on stage, and in movies, has now zeroed in on Whoopi Goldberg's new sitcom, in which she portrays a "chain-smoking innkeeper." The show "flies in the face of a prime-time trend," the Los Angeles Times reports. "The American Lung Assn. just last month applauded television networks and producers for increasingly snuffing out smoking scenes on network TV."
Goldberg sees the complaints about her character's cigarette habit as a positive sign. It is "extraordinary when you have an interracial couple in the show, and the thing that people are freaking about is that I'm smoking," she says. "I love it."