Following weeks of auditions and negotiations, it's official: Whoopi Goldberg will be joining the cast of The View, taking over where Rosie O'Donnell and Meredith Vieira left off. The comedienne and actress will begin her new role after Labor Day, joining Joy Behar, Barbara Walters, and Elisabeth Hasslebeck to moderate guests and discuss the issues of the day.

Ms. Goldberg was selected from a pool of respectable competitors, including Kathy Griffin, Roseanne Barr, Oprah BFF Gayle King, and comedienne Sherri Shepherd.

One month before her contract was to expire, O'Donnell abruptly departed the show in late May, following the last of many heated flare-ups with conservative co-host Hasslebeck. According to People magazine, Whoopi has already told her co-hosts that she's too "mellow" to get involved in such feuds. Hasslebeck is optimistic, saying of her new co-host: "She is soulful, has a world of experience ... and I don't sense any sort of political agenda." But don't contrary views make the program interesting?

The program, aired each day on Walt Disney's (NYSE: DIS) ABC Networks, is on the cusp of its 11th season.

Beth Gaston Moon is an analyst at Schaeffer's Investment Research.

First Don Imus, now Rosie O'Donnell.

The yenta the right wing loved to hate said today that she's leaving ABC's The View in June. O'Donnell insists that she's left on her own accord because she wasn't able to reach a contract agreement with the Walt Disney Co. (NYSE: DIS) network. In an unsuccessful effort to counter the tabloid gossip to the contrary, the show's Queen Bee Barbara Walters insisted that she had nothing to do with O'Donnell's departure.

On her blog, the comic turned conspiracy theorist summed up her situation in verse. Seriously, Rose is -- among other things -- a poet. Here is a sample that I think speaks to her situation.

one on one
as it is done
without fanfare
or press

Will Rosie get a chance to again spout her ill-informed conspiracy theories on the nation's airwaves? You betcha. As I've argued before left wing wacko personalities such as O'Donnell have as much of a right to spout nonsense as the Bill O'Reillys and Rush Limbaughs of the world.

Don Imus is now officially unemployed having been dumped from CBS Corp. (NYSE: CBS) after losing his television gig on Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT) and General Electric Co.'s (NYSE: GE) joint venture, MSNBC.

My bet is that Imus will land another talk radio gig. The medium is starved for advertisers and needs all of the stars it can get -- even controversial ones. Plus, there are far bigger clowns on talk radio than Imus. But before he makes his triumphant return on either Sirius Satellite Radio Inc. (NASDAQ: SIRI) or XM Satellite Holdings Radio Inc. (NASDAQ: XMSR), Imus fans need to take a chill pill.

Imus got what he deserved. He didn't just cross a line, he pole-vaulted it. Yeah, people like the Reverends Jessie Jackson and Al Sharpton aren't without considerable faults of their own. AOL's Jason Whitlock, an African American, finds the pair embarrassing and recently wrote: "I'm calling for Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, the president and vice president of Black America, to step down."

This has nothing to do with political correctness -- which I detest as much as anybody -- either. There's just no way to defend what Imus said and how he said it. Sure, black comedians say similar sorts of things and get huge laughs. But context is everything.

The message is just as important as the messenger in this case. Free speech is never totally free. You can say quite a bit without fear of prosecution but you can't say anything you want. Some things are better left unsaid and unfortunately for Imus, he said them.