Dan Rather finally left CBS after 44 years, 24 of which were spent in the anchor chair. It was an acrimonious divorce. Dan the Discredited was forced out of the anchor position after the story he did on Bush shirking his military duty based on forged documents. CBS basically pushed him aside and gave him little to do.

Susan Estrich, she of the Carol Channing voice, wrote a puff piece for FoxNews.com bemoaning the fact that CBS treated him badly after so many years with the company, calling it no less than age discrimination. How could they possibly do that to her kindred spirit buddy who treated her nicely when she was running the Dukakis campaign, and took such delight in covering the downfall of Nixon. I have news for you, Ms. Estrich: companies do stuff like that all the time, and age has nothing to do with it if the employee is prominent enough. Charles Gibson would never have been given an anchor news job, moving from "GMA" if youthe were the key. They do it to middle management and upper management alike. They outright fire lower level folks, instead of trying to force them to leave on their own.

If Dan the Discgraced had been a cub reporter, you can bet he probably wouldn't have been allowed to run the story without more thorough checking by the news division, but if he had, he would have been fired the moment the story was revealed to be phony. Estrich runs on and on about his loyalty to CBS going unrewarded. Gee--that sounds an awful lot like Corporate America. Oh, wait--CBS is Corporate America.

Estrich is missing the entire crux of the matter. Dan the Discgraced had become a liability to CBS after that reporting scandal. Further, network news in general has been moving away from the format that has a single authority figure, in the mold of Walter Cronkite, as anchor, for a long time now, but Rather was stuck in that era. His insistence on doing the news his way and being left alone to go do it didn't sit well with his new boss. We all know that newscasts have become a bit more folksy and filled with opinion, but the opinion isn't disguised and presented as hard news. Facts are given, and possibly some personal opinion, but it's presented as such. That wasn't Dan the Disgraced's way at all, and he'd have none of it. He didn't take direction well, so CBS left him to rot. Welcome to Corporate America, Susan! You completely missed the point with your serving of tea and sympathy. I wouldn't have expected any less of you.