Former Houstonian Dan Rather‘s mercurial 44-year career at CBS News came to an end yesterday. The departure had been long anticipated after he stepped down as “CBS Evening News” anchor last year in the wake of a scandal over a report about President Bush’s Vietnam-era military service. Rather pulled no punches in publicly stating the reason for his resignation from CBS News: “[A]fter a protracted struggle, [CBS News] had not lived up to their obligation to allow me to do substantive work there.” The 74 year-old Rather is currently negotiating a deal to handle a weekly news program for Mark Cuban’s HDNet cable channel.
Meanwhile, on a less significant note, Rather’s former co-anchor at CBS News, Connie Chung, just had her dreadful show — “Weekend with Connie and Maury,” the MSNBC show with Chung and her husband, Maury Povich — mercifully terminated, but not before Chung gave this “Thanks for the Memories” musical number in farewell. Suffice it to say that I hope never to be caught in a karaoke bar with Chung.