Tuesday, November 23, 2004

The Fat Lady Sings

It took a while, but the forged memos fiasco has finally cost Dan Rather his anchor chair at CBS.

Of course, they waited a respectable interval so that all parties could unconvincingly claim Rather’s exit had nothing to do with the scandal. Why, Dan was just waiting for that benchmark standard which we all aim for: the vaunted 24th anniversary.

My guess is that it went down like this: Rather planned to stay through his silver anniversary. After the memo disaster, CBS executives told him “No way. We won’t bounce you out now because you’ve been here since Murrow was a teenager. We’ll let you keep some dignity. But as soon as the furor dies down, you’re announcing your departure from the ‘Evening News.’”

Of course, the fact that they thought Rather still has some dignity means they haven’t watched any of his recent election night performances, where he’s been crazier than Aunt Minnie at midnight drinking mason jars of Kentucky moonshine on the back porch during a full moon.

(P.S. How fascinating that CNN.com chose to categorize this story under the "Showbiz" section of their website. It's unusually perceptive and revealing on their part.)

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