Former Merrill Lynch CEO John Thain resigned from Bank of America on Jan. 22, mostly due to Merrill's posting of an unexpected $15 billion loss. But if the early media coverage of the event is any judge, Thain's departure will most likely be associated with something else: a $35,115 commode. On legs.

Shortly before breaking the news that Thain was out at BofA, CNBC provided a list of the items purchased for a $1.22 million revamp of Thain's Merrill office suite shortly after he joined the firm early last year. Let's put it this way: Dennis Kozlowski's got nothing on this guy. In addition to the fancy commode, there's an $87,784 area rug as well as a pair of guest chairs for, strangely enough, the exact same amount. And let's not forget the parchment waste can for a mere $1,405. Hey, we'll take two.

But it's that commode that's likely to live in infamy, right next to Kozlowksi's $15,000 dog umbrella stand and $6,000 shower curtain. As CNBC's Charlie Gasparino told his on-air colleagues as they argued that Thain provided good returns to Merrill shareholders at a difficult time, "Anybody who spends $35,000 on a commode should not be CEO."

Thain's decorating expenses were conspiculously absent from The Wall Street Journal's earliest online report about his departure. Instead, the paper advanced a theory that it first floated back on Jan. 20: that Thain's decision to fly off to Vail, Colo., for a vacation shortly after Merrill's massive losses were discovered in December showed "poor judgment." Moreover, the Journal added, "Mr. Thain had planned to fly this week to Davos, Switzerland, even though Bank of America had signaled that such a trip was not a good idea."

For CEOs, being out of the office at inopportune times is emerging as one of the cardinal sins of the banking crisis. A few days before it first took Thain to task for visiting Vail, the Journal reported that Citigroup Inc. chief Vikram Pandit flew off for a one-day trip to Brazil in November as the bank's stock dipped below $10 a share. "A lot of people thought [it] was really a lack of judgment to leave New York during a time of so much pressure on the bank," the paper quoted a Citi executive in São Paulo as saying.

OK, but has he redecorated lately?

In all seriousness, this obsession with CEOs staying put has us scratching our heads. Not to defend Thain, who has proven to be regularly wrong on his forecasts and ridiculous in his spending, but in these days of BlackBerries, video conference calls, tweets and links, just how out of touch could he have been while vacationing in Vail? It's not like Thain was in some faraway land that time forgot; he was in a town that went wireless in 2006. So what did Thain do? Send all incoming calls from BofA chief Ken Lewis to voice mail and then delete them? Better yet, if he hadn't gone skiing, would he still be employed? Would the $15 billion loss have been any easier to swallow? Would the commode not have mattered?

Reading this piece, we couldn't help but contrast it with the Journal's take-down of then-Bear Stearns Cos. CEO Jimmy Cayne in November 2007. That story discussed Cayne's absence during 10 days of crisis for the firm, which he spent at a bridge tournament in Nashville "without a cell phone or e-mail device." It chronicled Cayne's summer weekend golf outings, which began on Thursday afternoons. "Mr. Cayne doesn't carry a cell phone or e-mail device while golfing," the story informed. That's a lot more specific than the vague "pretty much out of touch" charge levied against the vacationing Thain.

The Cayne story added that his actions "contrast with the hands-on roles of peers" including J.P. Morgan Chase & Co.'s Jamie Dimon, Goldman, Sachs & Co.'s Lloyd Blankfein and -- wait for it -- Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.'s Dick Fuld, who, along with Dimon, "got personally involved in negotiations for new financing terms" on the sale of a Home Depot Inc. unit.

Well, a lot of good that did Fuld when Lehman started to go down. Indeed, Fuld was so fully engaged at Lehman, so attached to the place, that he couldn't bear to sell the firm when he had the chance. Maybe a little time away from the office would have helped.

Yvette Kantrow is executive editor of The Deal.