Remembering Andy Rooney
"Always keep your words soft and sweet, just in case you have to eat them."
Andy Rooney was my favorite 60 minutes personality. He was one of a kind, a self-proclaimed curmudgeon, a really good writer and an American through and through. Heck, he wrote for The Stars and Stripes early in his career; nothing more American than that.
Rooney was a pacifist who flew on bombers over Germany at the end of the war and one of the first reporters to enter a concentration camp. He wrote compellingly about those experiences that changed his life— things that really mattered. He wasn’t a pacifist when the war was finally over. He changed his tune.
His specialty was just being honest and true to himself. The writer of witticism, the very definition of a dogged, tireless reporter, he was always genuine and striving to be truthful. A humorist and a satirist sometimes, when he needed to be, but never contrived.
Eventually Rooney evolved into the original grumpy old man, long before Walter Matthau and Jack Lemon dreamed up the Gustofson and Goldman thing. He took complaining about issues and the slights of old age to a fine art! Rooney was a trusted partner to Harry Reasoner and best friend to Walter Cronkite, the man who built the brand of CBS into the news juggernaut that it has been for half a century.
Being a lessor brand name, of the biggest brand in news, did not bother him; Rooney was less ego driven than most at CBS news where he excelled at writing, not talking. You got the sense, listening to him, that Rooney had endured a number of slights over the duration of his long career, but that they never got to him. He didn’t have to be the center of attention.
Rooney joined the 60 Minutes Team in 1978, when he was first introduced in a short segment “A Few Minutes with Andy Rooney” at the very end of 60 Minutes. It was a replacement for the point-counterpoint segment which CBS abandoned after a decade. There was no need for an opposing viewpoint on the popular show they surmised, what they needed was a light and different finish.
One of my professors at UNH, Donald M. Murray, implied the 60 Minutes was required viewing— not the whole thing, just Andy Rooney. I tried to tune in as often as I could to catch Rooney’s act. It was typically a fun way to end the show; the cherry on top so to speak. He never painted a rosy picture, but Rooney had a way of convincing viewers that things would be all right in the end. He was credible.
There was nothing else like Rooney on TV and there hasn’t been anything like him since. He did his final regular appearance on October 2, 2011, at the age of 92 and died three months later. He was not replaced; he couldn’t be. Unfortunately for CBS and America, Andy Rooney never had an understudy. 60 Minutes just let that tradition end with Rooney.
I think about Rooney most often when I trim my eyebrows! His were big and bushy; mine are unruly but not built like caterpillars. The fact that we would write eloquently about that: “I try to look nice. I comb my hair, I tie my tie, I put on a jacket, but I draw the line when it comes to trimming my eyebrows. You work with what you got.” I can still hear him saying that right now, nearly twenty years later. His delivery was hilarious. He made no excuses for getting old.
Rooney was making old age cool. Always complaining about things, like old men do, in a hoarse, exasperated voice. He could care less about what young people said about how he looked or sounded on TV. Rooney always thought of himself as a writer and not a television or radio personality. How refreshing. He wasn’t the news; he was just reporting— usually from his small universe, his library.
Andy often admitted that he could go on and on, but he never did. He mastered the short form. In his last commentary for 6o minutes he said only a few things that really mattered to him in the end:
I believe that if all the truth were known about everything in the world, it would be a better place to live.
I know I've been terribly wrong sometimes, but I do care. I care a lot.
I have always hoped that people will like what I've written. Being liked is nice but is not my intent.
It wasn’t all smooth sailing for Rooney at 60 Minutes. He made a controversial observation about inner-city African American culture, and he almost got fired. Then he said it was silly that people complained about the Native American names of sports teams, and he got suspended.
Rooney admitted to being puzzled by the younger generation. He had to apologize over comments that he made about same sex marriage and Curt Kobain’s suicide. Who kills themselves at the beginning of a promising career he asked rhetorically. Depressed people everywhere in America were outraged!
It wasn’t like he was confused as he got older. No, it was more like the world was moving on without him, which is the way that old age transpires. It gets harder and harder to keep up, and then you wonder why you try? Is it really worth it? Doesn’t always seem to be going in the right direction.
Rooney could have given up right then, when they forced him to say that he was sorry for writing things that he wasn’t sorry about saying, but he didn’t. Still getting paid to write at ninety-two, imagine that! He was very proud of his accomplishment. His relevance was never the issue; his pearls of wisdom were what viewers tuned in to hear. That and his clever and original observations.
Scott Pelley is, by contrast, everything that Andy Rooney was not: slick, smug, professorial, ego driven, and conceited. A coward essentially. What kind of spine does it take to criticize your boss — to your customers? In the real world, Pelley would be gone by Sunday but instead, he will be hosting another 60 Minutes show dedicated to the evils of Donald J. Trump and the current administration. Getting paid to do so by the people that he is feuding with, who have serious money on the line.
The situation is like when you call your cable company to complain about the black out of a game that you want to watch in your market and it’s not on free tv. Then an agent comes on the phone and admits that the people in charge are greedy mother fuckers, and this decision is all about profits and they could care less about you, the fans.
That doesn’t make you feel very good about the company, the complicit employee, your favorite sports team, or the black out when you hang up. You are still driving to a sports bar that sells bad wings to watch the game after all. It totally sucks.
When Bill Owens quit a few weeks ago due to oversight from Paramount, the parent company, the story made sense. He was only the third producer in the history of the show; he made a difficult decision to leave rather than compromise with CBS. “A slippery slope” he said when you start censoring your own reporting instincts in order to consummate a deal. He was making a fair point in an honest way.
“Bill made sure they were accurate and fair,” Pelley told viewers last Sunday referring to the 60 Minute show. “He was tough that way, but our parent company Paramount is trying to complete a merger. The Trump administration must approve it. Paramount began to supervise our content in new ways. None of our stories has been blocked, but Bill felt he had lost the independence that honest journalism requires.”
Evidently Scott Pelley did not take the advice of the old curmudgeon Andy Rooney who once said, “the best classroom in the world is at the feet of an elderly person.” Rooney knew when it was time to take the medicine; we all have to answer to someone. Everyone has a boss. Take a knee and live to fight another day.
Rooney knew something about eating his own words. It takes courage to do so. This very public fight between the 60 Minutes Team and the parent company Paramount is not a good look; it’s unprofessional and not the role of journalism to make itself the story. It seems like a giant, high stakes showdown over nothing, unless you believe the 60 Minutes narrative that Trump must be stopped at all costs, and anything short of that is treason.
In his quest to report the news, Pelley is trying to become the news. He appears to be begging Shari Redstone to fire him to make a point. If that happens, his firing will be pinned on Trump he hopes. I’m sure that there are those at CBS that actually fantasize that this will be the cause that America will finally rally around in order to topple the current regime in the US.
Pelley may get what he wants, but in the process, he will have sounded the final death knell for 60 Minutes, one of the longest running and most successful television shows of all time. He will be remembered for being the person to undo the network that the great and influential Walter Cronkite created.
Investors and viewers will not put up with this type of self-destructive and adolescent behavior. Bill Owens, Scott Pelley and anyone else that wants to join them are free to raise the funds to distribute their own content on any number of platforms available these days. Quit and do something else. Good luck!
Thank goodness that Andy Rooney wasn’t alive to hear that “Last Minute” segment from Pelley last week. Rule number one in journalism, Rooney would have reminded him, is that you never pick a fight, with the people who buy the ink for you, in barrels.