Cathie Black, the now ex-Schools Chancellor, took her public humiliation gracefully yesterday. Though it appears that Black was somewhat blindsided when Mayor Bloomberg called her into his office early yesterday morning to tell her she was out, she still spent the afternoon celebrating her emancipation by shoe shopping, and she already may have new job prospects which have nothing to do with children.

But while her public face was sturdy—"I'm fine, I'm fine," she told reporters waiting outside her apartment before elaborating that "I went out a bought a new pair of running shoes today, so I'm off."—privately she is "very disappointed," her friend Valerie Salembier, publisher of Harper's Bazaar, told the Times. It certainly didn't help that Black was reportedly one of the last around City Hall to know about the change (though the Post quotes a source that "Black felt she was doomed from the start because she never got Klein's support").

Reportedly Black really thought that she still had a chance to win over the people and was planning "a major address at Columbia Teachers College as an effort to reintroduce herself" before she Bloomberg “[threw] Cathie under the school bus,” in the words of another of her friends, Patricia Carbine.

But instead of being petulant she chose to go gracefully, not fighting with the mayor and telling reporters that her successor Deputy Mayor "Dennis Walcott is a great guy. We have a wonderful relationship and I wish everybody the best."

And why wouldn't she try not to burn bridges. Keith Kelly at the Post is reporting that already speculation is swirling that the former Hearst executive might take a job running either NPR (to replace Vivian Schiller) or Time Inc. (to replace Jack Griffin). Though probably not Time. One source tells Kelly, "They [Time Inc.] want someone with digital chops, and that person is not Cathie." Jeez, why do people always have to complain about her lack of credentials?