Mike Tyson is the candyman of awkward interviews: plenty of flavors and varieties of uncomfortable! Look what our makeshift Wonka offers: A grim history with Barbara Walters interviews. Hostility. A grimmer history of domestic violence. Family tragedy. Drug issues. The cavalier admission that he's "destitute." All are everlasting jawdroppers in the land of The View, and Tyson pimped them all in promotion of his VH1 pigeon-racing show and the James Toback documentary Tyson, which will not go away. Let's count up the worst moments in his View spot and get back to letting basic cable swallow him up like a Scrumdiddlyumptious morsel.
· The worst moment is definitely when he declares that Barbara Walters "shanghaied" him during his 1988 interview alongside then-wife Robin Givens. Because she should've been more careful with her line of questioning around the flagrant wife-beater.
· After Tyson brings up the non-word "destituted," Joy Behar corners him into admitting he's flat broke. That's not refreshing candor after we've been acquainted with new wife LaKiha Spicer and seen photos of his six children.
· The tragic death of Tyson's 4-year-old daughter Exodus last year goes unmentioned, which is understandable. But after we're shopped those photos of his smiling family, the oversight becomes a palpable presence.
· I feel like if you're Mike Tyson, and even after you ask permission to be candid about your boxing career, it's wrong to say, "My objective is to destroy anybody, 200 pounds -- in the ring or out."
· Lastly, I will say, his moment where he talks about teaching his son nonviolence is a bit touching. But that follows a depressed, self-defeating admission that he doesn't know how to raise his kids. Oh, Whoopi, throw to commercial already.