Counting down to the fatwa now…

But go ahead and try. As usual, we’re open all night.

In his 13 years at the network, Westin, a lawyer, has fought against the inextricable decline of the broadcast television news business. When he took over for the legendary Roone Arledge in 1997, he inherited an organization filled with stars—Peter Jennings, Ted Koppel, Barbara Walters, Diane Sawyer, Charles Gibson—and lucrative, top-rated news broadcasts, including World News Tonight and Nightline.

Now, on the eve of his departure, ABC News is a very different place. The ratings are mostly down, the stars are mostly gone, the foreign bureaus are mostly closed, and the advertising dollars that once poured in have slowed to a geriatric limp. Since Disney isn’t exactly running a charity, something finally had to go, and this February, it did: Westin announced ABC News would cut 25 percent of its work force, or roughly 400 jobs.

But if the news division is ever going to turn out healthy profits again, it will need a lot of work. Whoever takes over for Westin must have news judgment, business sense, and also a certain je ne sais quoi—literally, since no one seems to have any clue how to rescue the foundering broadcast TV news business. There are, of course, all the usual suspects: internal candidates who’ve worked their way up through the ranks; rising stars at other networks. But given the obstacles the next president of ABC News must face, the usual suspects may not be good enough.

The Beast then proceeds to throw a few names in the hopper, including Barbara Walters, NBC chief Jeff Zucker, former New York Times editor Howell Raines and — wait for it — Andrew Breitbart:

It worked in cable news—why not bring a little partisan bickering to the broadcast networks? In the last 15 years, Fox News has managed to marginalize its competition, leading MSNBC to tack left and CNN to throw its hands up in desperation. Disney could stake a bold claim on the right by bringing in Breitbart, owner of a suite of righty news sites, creator of the Shirley Sherrod scandal, and enfant terrible of online news. Breitbart’s friendship with Matt Drudge alone would mean miracles for ABCNews.com. Reporters at the network have been known to complain privately that MSNBC’s coziness with the left gives NBC an unfair edge. Breitbart would take that brawl into the streets.

Ick. We liked this Spitzer show better:

That would be the good doctor of East Hampton and Vermont, Howard Brush Dean III. The look in his eyes alone tells you all you need to know about him.

Forget that Beck made his “racist” remark on Fox & Friends in the early morning, not on his own show.  Forget the fact that he’s since apologized for it.  This is a classic Media Matters smear, with a kernel of truth buried in a large steaming pile of leftist claptrap that would be heartbreakingly juvenile were it not so nakedly malevolent.

By the way, don’t you love the way Matthews mangles what sounds like Ari Rabin-Havt’s name, as if he’d never heard of the MMFA “vice president of research and communications”?

That’s all right, Chris — we hadn’t either.  Which is why it’s simpler to refer to them all as hacks and non-entities.

Meanwhile, for Media Matters’ future “research,” here’s Beck’s apology on Fox News Sunday, in an interview with Chris Wallace.

The sneering face of the modern American left: Markos Moulitsas in all his metrosexual glory:

The sad part is that many on the left still don’t understand why this is happening to them.

Do they, Mr. President?

One of the unintended results of the redecoration of the Oval Office was the downsizing of Barack Obama. In last week’s prime-time address to the nation, the president sat behind a massive and capaciously empty desk, looking somehow smaller than he ever has — a man physically reduced by sinking polls, a lousy economy and the prospect that his party might lose control of Congress. Behold something we never thought we’d see with Obama: The Incredible Shrinking Presidency.

This is an amazing and, to me, somewhat frightening, turn of events. The folks who ran a very smart presidential campaign in 2008 have left the defining of the Obama presidency to others, in this case people on the edge of insanity. For example, a recent Pew poll reported that “nearly one in five Americans (18 percent) now say Obama is a Muslim, up from 11 percent in March 2009.” In other words, the longer Obama has been in office, the more ignorant people have become about him.

Luckily, there’s still hope for these crazy kids yet, and Cohen has the solution:

The president needs better speechwriters. The president needs a staff to tell him not to give an Oval Office address unless he has something worthy of the Oval Office to say. The president needs someone to look into the camera so that, when the light goes on and he says, “Good evening,” he looks commander in chiefish: big. In other words, the president needs to fire some key people. Either that, or the way things are going, the American people are going to fire him.

Yes, that’s it!  Better speechwriters!  Because if there’s one thing America is clamoring for, it’s yet another Obama speech! You see, the problem with Obama’s plummeting poll numbers isn’t Obama himself; it simply can’t be.  So it must be that the American people just haven’t gotten the message yet. As Bert Brecht famously wrote:

After the uprising of the 17th of June

The Secretary of the Writers Union

Had leaflets distributed in the Stalinallee

Stating that the people

Had thrown away the confidence of the government

And could win it back only

By redoubled efforts. Would it not be easier

In that case for the government

To dissolve the people

And elect another?

Meanwhile, over at Chris Matthews’s increasingly desperate leftist asylum, bigdomes like Howard Fineman, Norah O’Donnell, Mike Duffy and Cynthia Tucker — all of whom pretty much agree on everything — debated the looming disaster. Echoing something she’s written previously, Tucker declared that… well, let her speak, right after some mandatory fulsome praise of Obama’s formidable intellect by the host:

Obama smarter than anybody on the panel?  For once, Chris Matthews may have gotten something right.

So that’s why they should watch this:

Col White is right: the best and brightest really are in the armed services, not prancing around the Harvard campus.

And maybe Robert A. Heinlein was right, too.