Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau for November 27, 1977

Transcript:

Voice from television: From New York it's the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite... substituting for Roger Mudd. As French crooner Maurice Chevalier once observed, "growing old isn't so bad when you consider the alternative." His own forced retirement provides the libretto for Eric Sevareid's swan song. Men come and go. And so, if we are to heed the historians, do reputations. In this respect, these times are like all others. In the slag that is corporate policy, reverence for sagacity clearly has its limits. Never mind that one man's mandatory retirement age is another's intellectual apogee! "to retire," Pablo Cagais said, "is the beginning of death". No matter. To accept what we cannot change will always be the better part of grace. And yet, becalmed as he is on an open sea of neglect, this opining pilgrim must raise his hoary head and wonder aloud, "Why?" Because that's the way it is, Eric... Hey, no, wait a minute, Walter! I'm not ready yet!