It's very naive to pretend that the job of news anchor is going to be gender, race, or age blind. Ratings and demographics are everything in that business. How is hiring Katie Couric--because she is a woman--not a clear example of gender discrimination?

There is also no real truth to the argument that mothers need special workplace arrangements. After-all, dads are just as free to do the childcare thing, and many of them do. It's simply that more women make the choice to stay home, and many wives would not have it any other way.

God forbid a woman would want to spend a year with her two little children and then have a career to go back to. Career paths are so rigid now that if anyone takes more than six weeks off for their families they are not considered serious about their work and are out of the running.

The situation with her husband is probably difficult emotionally, if not physically. Her partner nearly died. Her job share turned into a full time job. She has another baby on the way. Sheesh. The woman needs some time off to tend to her LIFE. I mean, that is why we work? Right? To provide the stuff to have a life out side of it?

Career satisfaction is a great thing to have, but there is so much emphasis on work life in America, if you don't have a paying job, you are marginalized. Parents need a Union.

Mothers of the World Unite!

This feminist woman agrees with you. In this instance, it seems almost condescending to assume that Ms Vargas is not making her own choice here, using her own discernment.

While gender politics is more interesting, could it be that ABC News wasn't getting good enough ratings and viewer polling indicated that Vargas was the reason?

F*ck you, NOW, and f*ck you, Sandra M.

Maybe husbands should force their wives to quit being materialistic, free-spending leeches so that they can get more fathering time in with their children, wives' materialism be damned.

No wonder marriage rates are plummeting like a stone in this country.

...that not only was Vargas's on-screen partner nearly mortally wounded recently, so was her husband (singer-songwriter Marc Cohn) in a carjacking incident during which he was shot in the head last August. We don't know what sequelae he may be suffering as a result of that. Besides, having both of those things happen to you within a space of a few months might make anyone rethink their priorities in life, doncha think?

It's insulting for NOW to assume that the only possible reason for Vargas to want to spend more time at home is because she is being forced to. Some women, feminists even, choose to stay home because they actually WANT to.

When fathers wish to be full time fathers AND hold the power positions, then the workplace will change. Right now, it seems only (or mostly) mothers want that. Why should a business change the way it does business to please a subset of the workforce who 'wants to have it all?" Maybe the work place shouldn't change - maybe it's the family. Maybe women need to demand that their husbands spend the same amount of time as the wives do taking care of children, hearth and home. Then, single and/or child-free and/or marrieds who don't care about an unequal division of family labor are free to pursue the top jobs.

I read these stories about the workplace needing to change to suit the subset of women who wish to spend lots of time with their children AND rise to the top of their fields and I just don't get it. When is any goal that is worth pursuing accomplished without sacrifice? So the workplace should change so that women with kids can have it all? Even when there are plenty of people who want only one thing - that top job - standing in line, willing to do whatever it takes? How does this make sense?

I guess you can't post links; the Gibson interview is at http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12975027/site/newsweek/page/2/

a very interesting interview with Charles Gibson about his new job. "[P]eople do want to look to somebody who’s a little older to provide news," he says. Strange how it works out that female anchors are always young and cute. Then the interviewer says, "You’re certainly cut more from the Bob Schieffer cloth than the Katie Couric cloth—" Hmm. Now why could that be?

Maybe Vargas' choice to leave was truly her choice. But between this kind of talk and the criticism that Couric has met with (both for being "too perky" and "too bitchy") it's hard to avoid the impression that only older men are seen as having the "gravitas" to deliver the news.

There are so many real causes and issues impacting women in this country and throughout the world. Yet these groups are wasting their time complaining about why a woman of questionable talent may have been "forced" out of a job she didn't deserve in the first place?

Vargas lost my respect when she put her face to that shameful piece on Matthew Shepard's killers. Had Bob Woodruff or any other reporter done the same shitty job, they've have also lost my respect, regardless of their gender.

"But there are other women out there, far less famous, attractive and financially well-off than Vargas. They work crappy, low-pay jobs with no insurance, maternity leave or severence pay. They don't have husbands or families to support them. Where is NOW for them?"

Spot on. NOW does some good work, but this obsession with celebrity is depressing and infantile. It reminds me of this controversy over the all-male golf course at Augusta National. The outrage of the professional feminist class and the amount of time and energy spent on this issue was appalling. Essentially, it was about the right for rich women to join their rich husbands at an elite golf course where they could feel superior to the rest of society and contemplate how large a tax cut Mr Bush would give them this year. That's what NOW thinks people should care about? It's not easy to take the professional feminists seriously when they think that is the sort of work that needs doing around here.