Why Whoopi Goldberg must be fired to save The View’s ‘crisis’

Whoopi Goldberg’s shocking comments have thrown her TV show into a crisis – and there’s only one way out of it.

OPINION

The View is sounding the alarm. It is in crisis mode. The moderator has fallen, and to make matters worse, the show is already down one conservative host and struggling to fill the seat.

Will The View give Whoopi Goldberg two weeks to let her Holocaust comments blow over or are they about to fire her after 15 years on the show? Neither option feels right.

Instead of seeing this controversy as a major issue, The View should instead seize the opportunity to breathe some new air into the panel. The show has already lost Meghan McCain, so wouldn’t losing Whoopi Goldberg make matters even worse, leaving a skeleton three-person panel? No. Amid plenty of turbulence within the US Republican Party and a major dilemma thanks to Goldberg’s offensive statements, the US talk show should actually jump at the opportunity to reconfigure the table with two new players in key roles.

Goldberg has been suspended from The View over her recent comments on the Holocaust.

Whoopi Goldberg, an Oscar winner, A-list celebrity and household name, will survive without The View. She can resign in peace, as she once teased back in 2016, or quit in righteous fury. Either way, it opens up the opportunity for a new moderator to make it big.

This goes hand-in-hand with The View’s empty conservative seat: With the right pairing, between usually even-tempered moderator and conservative co-host, perhaps the fights wouldn’t be as big.

The producers would have to put a lot of work in to find these specific personalities – there’s definitely a wrong way of replacing both McCain and Goldberg – but, thinking idealistically, big change at The View could be for the better.

The View works in cycles, anyway. Seasons 1-10 featured Meredith Vieira as moderator, and when Goldberg replaced her, the show entered a new era. When Joy Behar left in 2013, a new era began as soon as she returned in 2015, with a revolving door of new hosts filling the panel. Minus the conservative host, The View has been fairly stagnant for the past six years, and the show is growing stale. Announcing both a new moderator and a new conservative at the same time would revamp The View, hopefully attracting new and old audiences alike.

The current scandal could be an opportunity to breathe new life into the panel – seen here back in 2012 with Barack Obama.

Controversies like this at The View have led to co-hosts departures in the past. Goldberg getting the axe from the show would be a big deal, sure, but there’s a certain rhythm of wear and tear The View implements, usually resulting in blow-ups, arguments, controversial statements, and at the end, one less co-host. This has happened before with Rosie O’Donnell, who moderated the show for one season, making a handful of controversial comments before exiting. Jenny McCarthy’s time on The View was over before it even started, thanks to her stance on vaccines. The list goes on. Goldberg would not be the first cut made due to controversy.

The View has never been keen on touchy subjects. The talk show has their “hot topics” segment, but they’re never “scalding topics” – like those about anti-vaxxers, about the cavernous disconnect between right-wing America and left-wing America, and now, about the Holocaust.

The panel has a way of glossing over these subjects – with music and commercial breaks. When former co-host Jedediah Bila visited last year, giving her inaccurate anti-vax views, the panel immediately shut her down.

And yet, The View had her visit, knowing full well that she would go on such a tangent, even going so far as to ask her about being anti-vax. And what happened after this – the show swept the whole thing under the rug, moving onto the next segment – surely didn’t inspire anti-vaxxers watching the show to actually go get a vaccine; rather, it probably turned them off entirely. In order to confront America’s big issues, The View needs to allow people to be wrong, so that there is room to correct and grow.

Whoopi later apologised for her comments on-air.

Unfortunately, this has never quite been the goal of The View. The show, which is owned by the US network ABC, which is owned by Disney, has instead cast their panellists like their animated princesses. They have to boast a unique personality, with a dusting of sass. They must present conflict, like any good Disney princess, but not so much that viewers will race out of the room in fear. The co-hosts are there to debate themes sweeping the nation, they are there to rile up a crowd, but leave them with a peppy song, smiles, and laughter. This is a routine to make audiences have both a favourite and a least favourite View host, to inspire them to keep watching, but never to brew any sort of animosity in the belly of the beloved viewer. If The View wants to maintain this base-level take on conversations about politics, hot topics, and other pressing matters, it’s time to quit beating around the bush. They’d ought to fire Whoopi Goldberg.

The View once operated without Whoopi Goldberg. They can do it again. The talk show has already seen plenty of shake-ups, from the departure of Barbara Walters to the Rosie O’Donnell fiasco. While it may not feel right for such a revered talk show personality such as Goldberg to go out like this, The View does not need her anymore.

The show can lob damage control at the situation; still, the controversy that now lingers over the beloved actress will only get worse if she remains as moderator. Instead of an attempt to soften the blow, the show should tighten up, start on a clean slate, and find new hosts to reinvigorate the conversation both on and about The View.

This story originally appeared on Decider and is republished here with permission