Rielle Hunter, John Edwards’s mistress, is grilled on ‘The View’

After sailing through interviews with ABC News’s Chris Cuomo and George Stephanopoulos, John Edwards’s mistress, Rielle Hunter, got the scorching that some people thought she so richly deserved on Tuesday’s “The View” — demonstrating why ABC should never send men to do women’s work.

Barbara Walters, “The View’s” Den Mom, kicked things off by repeating the story “broken” by Stephanopoulos on “Good Morning America” earlier in the day: The couple had just broken up.

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Pulitzer Prize winner, Peabody recipient, Medal of Freedom honoree -- Lisa de Moraes is none of these, but she is an authority on the bad direction, over-acting, and muddled plot lines being played out in the TV industry's executive suites.

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(Lou Rocco/ABC) - Barbara Walters interviews Rielle Hunter on “The View.”

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Raise your hand if you actually thought they were a “couple” on Friday, when Rielle was seen breaking her silence and talking about her relationship with Edwards, to Cuomo, on ABC’s “20/20.”

Yeah, me neither.

“Today, we hear you’ve broken up,” Babs began.

“Yes,” said Rielle, wearing black slacks, a ruffled pink blouse (with the cleavage modestly pinned shut) and her Sad Face as she sat on the couch with The Ladies of “The View.”

“It’s very painful, and I have mixed emotions,” she added.

Babs wondered — hopefully, we think — if anything Rielle said in that “20/20” interview caused the “breakup.”

But Rielle, determined that this interview would be all about her, explained that she had decided that she does not want to “hide” any more.

All this media attention was “very hard” on a woman trying to have an affair with a married man who was running for president of the United States while his wife was slowly expiring of terminal cancer, Rielle explained.

“For me, it’s taken a toll,” she said piteously. “I’m not a mistress — I’m a mom.”

Elisabeth Hasselbeck explained to Rielle that, according to the commonly accepted definition of “mistress,” Rielle is one.

Hasselbeck went on to ask her whether she felt bad for having described Edwards’s wife as “crazy,” “venomous” and “in denial” now that she’s, you know, dead. Hasselbeck also wondered whether Rielle still thought Elizabeth Edwards’s “behavior pushed him out the door.”

“I believe that their problems in their marriage . . . helped him to find another way,” Rielle answered carefully. Sensing hostility on the couch, Rielle threw in, “I don’t think it’s right to do that.”

“What’s not right?” Joy Behar interrupted.

“Infidelity,” Rielle said. “I’m not a big believer in infidelity.”

“I fell in love with him, which was a surprise to me, and I became that [his mistress], in order to be with him,” Rielle explained, thinking that would go over well with the show’s female crowd.

Whoopi Goldberg was having none of it.

“I got to say this . . . in your book, you trash a dead lady whose husband you had an affair, and a baby, with. Did it not occur to you that maybe that might not be the right tone to take, particularly if you’re trying to get people to see you as part of this sort of new couple? I mean, it’s kind of a [lousy] thing to do!”

“I wrote the book to tell the truth,” responded the well-rehearsed Rielle.

Horseradish, Whoopi responded. Like this: “Yeah, but you could have the truth and know it, but to then put it out there, it makes you look bad. It makes you look schemey and kind of heartless.”