After Rosie

With the departure of Rosie O'Donnell from the ABC daytime television program "The View," the question arises as to who will succeed her. Ms. O'Donnell won a reputation for Catholic-bashing. She called President Bush a "war criminal." She has called for impeaching Mr. Bush and Vice President Cheney. According to the Media Research Center, a right-wing group, she has likened the Patriot Act to the tactics of the apartheid regime in South Africa and spread conspiracy theories about the September 11 attacks. The Chicago Sun-Times quoted an ABC source as saying, "She's so consistently anti-Bush and so clearly anti-Republican, it's beginning to turn off core audiences." On top of all this, she managed to be more vulgar than Donald Trump, with whom she had a well-publicized feud.

If the network is looking for a Rosie replacement, there are plenty of qualified ones with more sensible politics. Michelle Malkin is terrific on television, as is Monica Crowley. Our own Alicia Colon is an entertaining and provocative conservative voice worthy of wider exposure. Point is, if the ABC executives want to replace Rosie O'Donnell with someone who won't embarrass them and will connect better to their core audience, there are plenty of strong candidates on the center-right side of the political spectrum. As a privately owned network, ABC can do whatever it wants, of course. But we take Ms. O'Donnell's exit as just the latest sign in the emergence of a new civility that we find an encouraging cultural trend.