By Karu F. Daniels, BlackVoices.com



With the release of her long-overdue, and much bally-hooed new memoir, 'Audition,' Barbara Walters has been thrust into the entertainment spotlight like never before.

Mostly because of some of the details in the gargantuan-sized read, which was published by Knopf on May 6.

One juicy morsel that has gotten America into a tizzy: the veteran news journalist's revelation that she had a lurid affair with a married man – a married Black man (former U.S. Senator Edward Brooke).

Star Jones, who infamously exited her long-running stint on 'The View' (which Walters created, produces and co-hosts), threw her two-cents in the mix last week, criticizing the former '20/20' host for using scandal to sell books.

"It is a sad day when an icon like Barbara Walters, in the sunset of her life, is reduced to publicly branding herself as an adulterer, humiliating an innocent family with accounts of her illicit affair and speaking negatively against me all for the sake of selling a book," Jones told a tabloid.. "It speaks to her true character."

Walters, however, has taken somewhat of the high road wit her response to Jones, who it was recently revealed is divorcing Al Scales Reynolds after four years of marriage."Star is going through a very difficult time right now, and I'm going to have very happy memories of how wonderful she was on the program," the twice-divorced Walters told 'AP Radio' on May 9. "I don't want to add to her difficulties."
Elsewhere in 'Audition,' Walters talks about how the women of 'The View' were forced to cover up Jones' gastric bypass surgery as she swiftly lost weight ahead of her wedding.

Unbelievable to many, Jones maintained at the time that she was eating less and doing Pilates.

"We lied for Star," Walters said in the interview. "She was our colleague. She didn't want to discuss it, we didn't force her to. Was that a mistake? I don't know. ... It was Star's decision."

And regarding that affair, she added: "I put it in to show in great part how race relations have changed. This was 30 years ago, it was an African-American prominent man. And it would've destroyed his career, and mine. Today it would have almost no impact."