The sanctimonious behavior continued to spew from the hallways of CBS News this week as longtime 60 Minutes correspondent Lesley Stahl told Puck on Sunday the past few weeks have been “awful,” “the hardest chapter of my career,” and “by far the worst experience I’ve been involved in, or even witnessed.” She also supposedly, as per the creeps at Status, “convened a champagne toast on Monday for” 60 Minutes staff to celebrate her decision to stay and that, as first reported by fellow anti-CBS-obsessed Guardian reporter Jeremy Barr, Paramount Skydance boss David Ellison “called her and pledged that the show would be independent and also apologized for some of the recent turmoil and said things would get back on the right track.” Just like with former colleague Scott Pelley comparing the turnover to a spouse and immediate family being “murdered” in one swoop, Stahl showed how dense and pampered her multi-million dollar ego is and a remarkably offensive world view compared to those who have actually lost everything. Stahl spoke to Puck’s William Cohan and said, “oh, god, this was awful” in reaction to having to decide whether to board a flight to Madrid (the horror!) for a story even though the segment producer assigned to the unidentified story had just been let go. Talk about First World problems: Lesley told me she had to make a snap decision. And while it was just about one particular story for the historic TV newsmagazine, now entering its 59th season, it was also suddenly imbued with fraught significance pertaining to the institution itself. “I had to make a decision to go forward with the story, without knowing if I was going to stay or not,” she told me. In the end, she decided to get on the flight, “not knowing where I was headed.” (Stahl declined to say what the segment is going to be about. I know, but out of respect for her and the show’s process, I’ll keep that under wraps.) She defended Pelley’s I-Am-Spartacus-like attacks from June 1 on new 60 Minutes boss Nick Bilton, saying all he was doing was voicing how “agitated” he was about colleagues such as executive producer Tanya Simon and correspondents Sharyn Alfonsi and Cecilia Vega being let go. “Tell us why they were fired. That was his question. He never got an answer. They felt he was insubordinate for asking that question,” Stahl explained. Explaining why she and fellow remaining correspondents Bill Whitaker and Jon Wertheim chose to stay, Stahl said they knew “we were going to do it together...no matter what” and “[t]hat was difficult.” She also said she had to explain to Bilton “what the procedures are—all the layers of fact-checking and screenings, just layer upon layer of resh eyes, always fresh eyes, looking over and over and over.” As we’ve shown since our inception as the Media Research Center in 1987, 60 Minutes is anything but straightforward journalism. Along with boasting how “overwhelming” the response has been to her decision, Stahal said “[i]t’s been a gush of lovely thank-you notes, just a flood” that “feels very good” from staff who’ve felt “paralyzed” by the changes. It was here Cohan dropped in Stahl’s tone-deaf, woe-is-me shtick: [S]till, she said, it’s been “the hardest chapter of my career, and it’s been a long career. It’s been over 50 years. This was by far the worst experience I’ve been involved in, or even witnessed. I mean, firing seven people, including the entire management team over here, plus reporters and producers…” Her voice trailed off, as if she was still having trouble processing what had happened during the past week or so. Tuesday over at Status, founder Oliver Darcy boasted CBS News editor-in-chief has “instigated” “unprecedented turmoil” while remaining “bunkered down in her suite on the sixth floor of CBS News’ Manhattan headquarters” that’s “not accessible to the vast majority of CBS News personnel.” He also framed Ellison’s call to Stahl as proof “Paramount brass is becoming more involved in helping clean up [Weiss’s] mess,” which Darcy also described as an “abysmally handled attempt to remake ‘60 Minutes.’” Using anonymous sources to again shiv their boss, Darcy gloated (click “expand”): Of course, Ellison personally stepping in on the “60 Minutes” front suggests he did not believe Weiss was capable of cleaning up the mess on her own. Instead, it signals that he believed the situation had spiraled far enough out of control that he needed to divert his attention way from Paramount’s proposed $110 billion merger with Warners to help extinguish the raging fire himself. Ellison’s hands-on involvement was welcome news to some inside CBS News, who have been hoping the Oracle scion will eventually rein Weiss in. As one CBS News staffer told me Tuesday, “The problem is clearly Bari. We are all trying to clean this up, but we need Ellison’s help.” To be sure, inside CBS News, staffers are increasingly wondering whether Ellison has finally lost confidence in Weiss’ ability to lead the network... (....) Indeed, it is my understanding that in some of these conversations, it has been made clear that the plan is for Weiss to oversee editorial and creative across both networks—an arrangement executives of that caliber are unlikely to accept. (....) “Why would anyone in their right mind take that job without the authority to hire and fire? I can’t think of an executive in the bucket of qualified candidates that can save them who would take that job,” one veteran media executive told Status. “If she remains in charge, I don’t know why anyone with any reputation to preserve would go anywhere near it.” A CNN executive was even more blunt, telling Status: “The notion that someone who is openly failing at running editorial for seven U.S. shows can add 50 more global ones and 150 hours of live news programming a week, not to mention a massive global website, is absurd.” Hilariously, Darcy reported back last Thursday that Weiss being in charge of CBS News has led to “CBS Entertainment chief Amy Reisenbach [having] privately told associates that creatives in Hollywood have expressed disdain over Weiss’ efforts to remake the network” and it’s “inflict[ed] significant damage on the broader CBS brand” with “showrunners” left “in a panic. Yes, Darcy wants us to believe Weiss moving CBS two ticks to the center is going to cause NCIS and George and Mandy’s First Marriage or even The Bold and the Beautiful to collapse. And on Saturday, Status’s Jon Passantino whined Weiss’s “chaotic” cleaning house of Alfonsi, Pelley, Simon, Vega, and others was “a sledgehammer to one of the most storied and successful news brands in American television history” that, without Stahl, Whitaker, and Wertheim staying, could have ushered in “an existential collapse” of 60 Minutes. Absolute children. All of them. As Jay Caruso wrote at the Washington Examiner, no one has a divine right to work at CBS News.