TVSquad

If you watch ESPN's daily round table sport talk show, Around the Horn, you know that Jay Mariotti is a columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times. Or I should say, he was a columnist. Right after the Beijing Olympics, Mariotti returned to the show and all the other reporters -- and host Tony Reali -- kept zinging Jay about not being with the Chicago Sun-Times anymore. At no point did they explain that Mariotti was not fired from his post, he quit.

Then I discovered that a fellow Sun-Times employee, and former TV star himself (At the Movies with Ebert & Roeper), film critic Roger Ebert, was ticked off with Mariotti. Specifically, Ebert reviewed the way Jay chose to walk away from his job. Ebert pointed out that Mariotti had screwed his editors at the Sun-Times by signing a new contract, going to China on their dime (which was actually thousands of dollars), then left the job with a cold e-mail that said simply, "I quit."

I guess Mariotti felt like the newspaper could dump him with an equally cold, "You're fired," but common courtesy suggests that he should have given two-week notice. Or maybe that kind of courtesy is as outmoded a concept as saying thank you for service or holding the door for someone else?

Film critic Roger Ebert was reported hospitalized in serious condition Sunday after emergency surgery was performed on him Saturday evening.

The operation was needed to correct damage that was caused by an earlier procedure that took place back on June 16th to remove a cancerous growth on his salivary gland. Repaired was a blood vessel that broke near the area where the June operation took place. Ebert has had a series of operations to remove cancers. Back in 2002 he underwent surgery for papillary thyroid cancer. One year later he went under the knife to remove an earlier growth on his salivary gland.

Richard Roeper, Ebert's current co-host on their nationally syndicated movie-review show, told the Chicago Sun-Times that Roger was stable after the emergency procedure and that he was expected to make a full recovery. Roeper replaced Ebert's former partner, Gene Siskel, back in 2000 after Siskel passed away a year earlier.