Jewish Columnist Calls on Whoopi to Drop Goldberg From Her Stage Name, Says That She Wasn’t ‘Trying to Blend in’

As the Whoopi Goldberg comments on the Holocaust controversy continue to swirl, we reported that there might be some controversy around her name now, given that it isn’t her real name but rather a stage name.

In an op-ed published in the New York Post yesterday, Jewish columnist John Podheretz, in fact, suggested that she drop the name.

Podheretz titled the piece, “Drop the Goldberg name you co-opted, Whoopi — you don’t deserve it.”

“Through the years, she’s offered many weird and contradictory explanations for her change in moniker, but it might have seemed at the time that a black person sporting the surname Goldberg would be especially eye-catching and noteworthy (especially in conjunction with that wild first name) because it would represent the proud ownership of her outsider status. She wasn’t trying to blend in. She was doubling down — on race,” Podheretz wrote.

Podheretz explained, “Note, please, that Caryn Johnson didn’t become Whoopi Rockefeller. No. She knew that by becoming Whoopi Goldberg, she would be choosing to flaunt in every way possible the fact that she was a minority person in a majority-white country. The ‘Goldberg’ was the cherry on top.”

“You see, in the early 1980s, when Johnson became Goldberg, it was still commonly understood that Jews were a people apart. We were apart due to facts of history, due to discrimination and hatred based on our very being and — for those who practiced the faith rigorously — due to the way we ate, dressed, celebrated the Sabbath and prayed,” Podheretz added.

Podheretz isn’t the only one to call out Goldberg for her stage name

Juanita Broaddrick asked in a tweet not long after Podheretz’s op-ed was published, “You now have to wonder why @WhoopiGoldberg…whose real name is Caryn Elaine Johnson… would appropriate a Jewish name?”

You now have to wonder why @WhoopiGoldberg…whose real name is Caryn Elaine Johnson… would appropriate a Jewish name?

— Juanita Broaddrick (@atensnut) February 2, 2022

GOP Congressional candidate Vic DeGrammont pointed out in a reply to Goldberg’s apology tweet, “The irony is that it’s a black woman who changed her last name to a Jewish name, denying racism.”

The irony is that it's a black woman who changed her last name to a Jewish name, denying racism.

— Vic DeGrammont (@votedegrammont) February 1, 2022

In the early-2000s, Goldberg had a sitcom named “Whoopi” that lasted one season and many simply refer to her by her first name, so it certainly wouldn’t be surprising if she dropped the last name.