Wednesday, March 09, 2005

Don't Let the Door Hit You....

Call me sentimental, but I watched the last minute of the CBS news tonight. It was the first time I'd watched Dan Rather in 20 years. But then, I had a box of chicken the day Colonel Sanders died too. Nothing dramatic happened. It was just chicken. Oh, and nothing dramatic happened on the CBS news tonight either. He didn't put a gun to his head, the staff didn't break out in a spontaneous rendition of "Ding Dong the Witch is Dead," not so much as a single tear slid down his cheek. The crew and staff surrounded him and applauded, which could have meant anything. I remember our staff doing that once when a particularly obnoxious program director left. We then had what was called a "wheels up" party as his jet took off. Wait till Rather finds out he can't get back into the building. The great thing is, I had time enough to switch over to the last minute of Britt Hume, which is sometimes pretty funny. It doesn't take much to break up journalists. The people I work with still laugh at Saturday Night Live. I will not be watching the one-hour tribute to Rather tonight because Smallville is on and my TiVO remote is just out of reach. He is being replaced temporarily by Bob Schieffer, who is just as liberal, but is not, so far as I can see, nuts. Lionel and Clark exchange bodies. That plotline never gets old. Some people will remember this day as the end of an era. I will remember it as the day I made corned beef and cabbage in the crock pot. Hey, the new season of South Park starts tonight.