They didn’t fi-re her. They didn’t can-cel her. They didn’t even can-cel her show. What ABC did instead, to de-al with its neverending Whoopi Goldberg pro-blem, was to simply dec-line to re-sign her to a new contract.

The move will cost Goldberg her lead on a popular show and upwards of $36 million per year in salary and endorsements.

“It’s time to move on,” said Programming Director Joe Barron, “she had a good run, but now she’s just so angry all the time.” Barron said the network is constantly in-undated with complaints from people who find her hat-eful, div-isive, and un-Am-erican. “Most of them can’t explain why, but it’s their right not to,” he commented.

Goldberg’s manager, Art Tubolls, says the negotiations are far from over and that he expects ABC to offer his client a new contract through 2029. “She is the show,” he said, “who’s gonna run nit, Joy Behar? She doesn’t have the starpower to do what Whoopi does.”

Barron says Behar isn’t the only option, as freeing up all that cash could net the show two new hosts. “I’ll bet we could get both Alyssa Milano and Kathy Griffin for half of that,” he chuckled. Alyssa Milano ig-nored our request for comment. Again.

Hopefully this new trend away from libe-ralism will continue so America can get back to the glory days.