Lesson From “60 Minutes”: Don’t Bash The Boss.

I wrote for The Virginian-Pilot for 34 years. In that time I worked with many brilliant colleagues, masterful editors and management types who loved the news business and the written word.

During those three plus decades I also worked for one of the worst editors to ever run a newspaper and several other journalists that were uniquely unqualified for their jobs.

Privately, over drinks with close friends, I griped about the mouth-breathing idiots at the newspaper.

You know what I never did? I never publicly bashed anyone who signed my paycheck or who had the power to fire me. I never insulted or embarrassed them in staff meetings. I gritted my teeth and did what they were paying me to do.

Not because I’m a virtuous person who always says nice things about people.

I shut up because I am not a moron.

Like Scott Pelley at “60 Minutes.”

This arrogant, preening TV journalist went to war with the new management of CBS News, made no secret of his differences with Editor-In-Chief Bari Weiss and her new management team. Pelley apparently thought he could bash his new boss in front of the entire staff, insult his immediate superior and criticize the changes that were being initiated and escape unscathed.

Weiss fired him. As was her right.

Here’s an account of what happened this week from The New York Times, where Bari Weiss once worked.

At an explosive staff meeting on Monday, Mr. Pelley told Mr. Bilton (Nick Bilton, “60 Minutes” producer) that he had “slender qualifications for this job” and accused Ms. Weiss of “murdering ‘60 Minutes.’”

At the meeting, which Ms. Weiss did not attend, Mr. Pelley said that the editor in chief had been “brought in to kill” the program, and that “she’s been doing exactly that.”

The next day, CBS News fired Mr. Pelley. In a letter to Mr. Pelley, which was obtained by The Times, Mr. Bilton expressed his frustration with the correspondent’s remarks. “You hijacked my first meeting with staff to disparage me, my qualifications and my intentions with remarkable incivility and contempt,” he wrote.

With that one act of profound stupidity, Pelley lost his reportedly $7 million a year gig as a “60 Minutes” correspondent. He was reportedly paid that fat salary to produce an estimated 10 to 12 pieces a year that aired for about 15 minutes each.

That works out to about $39,000 per minute of airtime. Who else makes that kind of dough?

Maybe Pelley believed he was standing on principle. Maybe he really believed he had to speak out. Maybe he was so delusional that he thought he was so valuable the boss wouldn’t dare to sack him.

Well, he was wrong.

Pelley should stop whining about being fired. This is what happens when you bash the boss.

Even the kid flipping burgers as McDonald’s knows that.