"I don't like food that's too carefully arranged; it makes me think that the chef is spending too much time arranging and not enough time cooking. If I wanted a picture I'd buy a painting." -- Andy Rooney
Andrew Aitken "Andy" Rooney (born January 14, 1919) is an American radio and television writer. He is most notable for his weekly broadcast "A Few Minutes with Andy Rooney", a part of the CBS News program 60 Minutes since 1978.
"All men are not created equal but should be treated as though they were under the law.""Anyone who watches golf on television would enjoy watching the grass grow on the greens.""As an old reporter, we have a few secrets, and the first thing is we try the phone book.""Computers make it easier to do a lot of things, but most of the things they make it easier to do don't need to be done.""Computers may save time but they sure waste a lot of paper. About 98 percent of everything printed out by a computer is garbage that no one ever reads.""Death is a distant rumor to the young.""Don't rule out working with your hands. It does not preclude using your head.""Elephants and grandchildren never forget.""Figure skating is an unlikely Olympic event but its good television. It's sort of a combination of gymnastics and ballet. A little sexy too which doesn't hurt.""Happiness depends more on how life strikes you than on what happens.""I didn't get old on purpose, it just happened. If you're lucky, it could happen to you.""I don't pick subjects as much as they pick me.""I don't think the government is out to get me or help someone else get me but it wouldn't surprise me if they were out to sell me something or help someone else sell me something. I mean, why else would the Census Bureau want to know my telephone number?""I hope all of you are going to fill out your census form when it comes in the mail next month. If you don't return the form the area you live in might get less government money and you wouldn't want that to happen, would you.""I just wish we knew a little less about his urethra and a little more about his arms sales to Iran.""I like ice hockey, but it's a frustrating game to watch. It's hard to keep your eyes on both the puck and the players and too much time passes between scoring in hockey. There are usually more fights than there are points.""If dogs could talk it would take a lot of the fun out of owning one.""If you smile when no one else is around, you really mean it.""Making duplicate copies and computer printouts of things no one wanted even one of in the first place is giving America a new sense of purpose.""Most of us end up with no more than five or six people who remember us. Teachers have thousands of people who remember them for the rest of their lives.""Nothing in fine print is ever good news.""Obscenities... I think a lot of dumb people do it because they can't think of what they want to say and they're frustrated. A lot of smart people do it to pretend they aren't very smart - want to be just one of the boys.""People will generally accept facts as truth only if the facts agree with what they already believe.""Taxes are important. President Bush's tax proposals leave no rich person behind. Voters approve of President Bush helping the kind of people they wish they were one of.""The 50-50-90 rule: Anytime you have a 50-50 chance of getting something right, there's a 90% probability you'll get it wrong.""The average bright young man who is drafted hates the whole business because an army always tries to eliminate the individual differences in men.""The average dog is a nicer person than the average person.""The closing of a door can bring blessed privacy and comfort - the opening, terror. Conversely, the closing of a door can be a sad and final thing - the opening a wonderfully joyous moment.""The dullest Olympic sport is curling, whatever 'curling' means.""The federal government has sponsored research that has produced a tomato that is perfect in every respect, except that you can't eat it. We should make every effort to make sure this disease, often referred to as 'progress', doesn't spread.""The only people who say worse things about politicians that reporters do are other politicians.""The Super Bowl isn't for kids, I had a great time though and it was worth every nickel of it because by doing this lame piece about the game I can put it on my expense account.""The world must be filled with unsuccessful musical careers like mine, and it's probably a good thing. We don't need a lot of bad musicians filling the air with unnecessary sounds. Some of the professionals are bad enough.""Vegetarian - that's an old Indian word meaning lousy hunter.""We're all proud of making little mistakes. It gives us the feeling we don't make any big ones.""When those waiters ask me if I want some fresh ground pepper, I ask if they have any aged pepper."
Andrew Rooney was born in Albany, New York, the son of Walter Scott Rooney (1888—1959) and Ellinor (née Reynolds) Rooney (1886—1980). He attended The Albany Academy, and later attended Colgate University in Hamilton in Upstate New York, where he was initiated into the Sigma Chi fraternity, until he was drafted into the U.S. Army in August 1941. Rooney began his career in newspapers while in the Army when, in 1942, he began writing for Stars and Stripes in London during World War II. He later published a memoir, My War (1995) about his war reporting. In addition to recounting firsthand several notable historical events and people (like the entry into Paris, the concentration camps, etc.), Rooney describes how it shaped his experience both as a writer and reporter.
In February 1943, flying with the Eighth Air Force, he was one of six correspondents who flew on the first American bombing raid over Germany. Later, he was one of the first American journalists to visit the Nazi concentration camps as World War II wound down, and one of the first to write about them. During a segment on Tom Brokaw's "The Greatest Generation," Rooney confessed that he had been opposed to World War II because he was a pacifist. He recounted that what he saw in those concentration camps made him ashamed that he had opposed the war and permanently changed his opinions about whether "just wars" exist.
Rooney joined CBS in 1949, as a writer for Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts, when Godfrey was at his peak on CBS radio and TV. The program was a hit, reaching number one in 1952, during Rooney's tenure with the program. It was also the beginning of a close life-long friendship between Rooney and Godfrey. He also wrote for Godfrey's daytime radio and TV show Arthur Godfrey Time. He later moved on to The Garry Moore Show, which also became a hit program. During the same period, he also wrote for CBS News public affairs programs such as The 20th Century.
According to CBS News's biography of him, "Rooney wrote his first television essay, a longer-length precursor of the type he does on 60 Minutes, in 1964, 'An Essay on Doors.' From 1962 to 1968, he collaborated with another close friend, the late CBS News correspondent Harry Reasoner ... Rooney writing and producing, Reasoner narrating ... on such notable CBS News specials as 'An Essay on Bridges' (1965), 'An Essay on Hotels' (1966), 'An Essay on Women' (1967), and 'The Strange Case of the English Language' (1968). 'An Essay on War' (1971) won Rooney his third Writers Guild Award. In 1968, he wrote two CBS News specials in the series 'Of Black America', and his script for 'Black History: Lost, Stolen, or Strayed' won him his first Emmy." Rooney also wrote the script for the 1975 documentary FDR: The Man Who Changed America.
In the 1970s, Rooney wrote and appeared in several prime-time specials for CBS, including In Praise of New York City (1974), the Peabody Award-winning Mr. Rooney Goes to Washington (1975), Mr. Rooney Goes to Dinner (1976), and Mr. Rooney Goes to Work (1977). Transcripts of these specials, as well as of some of the earlier collaborations with Reasoner, are contained in the book A Few Minutes with Andy Rooney. Another special, Andy Rooney Takes Off, followed in 1984.
A Few Minutes with Andy Rooney
Rooney's "end-of-show" segment on 60 Minutes, "A Few Minutes with Andy Rooney" (originally "Three Minutes or So With Andy Rooney"), began in 1978 as a summer replacement for the debate segment "Point/Counterpoint" featuring Shana Alexander and James Kilpatrick. The segment proved popular enough with viewers that beginning in the fall of 1978, it was seen in alternate weeks with the debate segment. At the end of the 1978-79 season, "Point/Counterpoint" was dropped altogether.
In the segment, Rooney typically offers satire on a trivial everyday issue, such as the cost of groceries, annoying relatives, or faulty Christmas presents. Rooney's appearances on "A Few Minutes with Andy Rooney" often include whimsical lists (e.g., types of milk, bottled water brands, car brands, sports mascots, etc.). In recent years, his segments have become more political as well. Despite being best known for his television presence on 60 Minutes, Rooney has always considered himself a writer who incidentally appears on television behind his famous walnut table, which he made himself.
Rooney's shorter television essays have been archived in numerous books, such as Common Nonsense, which came out in 2002, and Years of Minutes, released in 2003. He also pens a regular syndicated column for Tribune Media Services that runs in many newspapers in the United States, and which has also been collected in book form. He has won three Emmy Awards for his essays, which now number close to 1,000. He was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Emmy in 2003. Rooney's renown has made him a frequent target of parodies and impersonations by a diverse group of comedic figures, including Frank Caliendo, Rich Little and Beavis.
He has claimed on Larry King Live to have a liberal bias, stating, "There is just no question that I, among others, have a liberal bias. I mean, I'm consistently liberal in my opinions." Though in a controversial 1999 book Rooney self-identified as agnostic, Rooney has, as of 2008, come out as an atheist. Over the years many of his editorials have poked fun at the concept of God and organized religion. Increased speculation on this was brought to a head by a series of comments he made regarding Mel Gibson's film The Passion of the Christ (2004).
Though Rooney has been called Irish-American, he once said "I'm proud of my Irish heritage, but I'm not Irish. I'm not even Irish-American. I am American, period."
In 2005, when four people were fired at CBS News perhaps because of the Killian documents controversy, Rooney said, "The people on the front lines got fired while the people most instrumental in getting the broadcast on escaped." Others at CBS had "kept mum" about the controversy.
Andy Rooney was briefly interviewed on HBO's Da Ali G Show, where he became one of the only guests to be so annoyed by Ali G that he furiously ended the interview several minutes into it. Before ending the interview, he repeatedly corrected Ali G when he used "does" as the conjugation of the verb "to do" in the second-person singular when addressing Rooney. When Ali G said, "I think that's an English/American thing going on," Rooney replied, "No, no. That's English. The English language is very clear. I have fifty books on the English language if you'd like to borrow one." Near the beginning of the interview, Rooney misspelled his own last name as Runey when Ali G asked him how it was spelled.
Racial remarks
Andy Rooney wrote a column in 1992 that it was "silly" for Native-Americans to complain about team names like the Redskins saying, "The real problem is, we took the country away from the Indians, they want it back and we're not going to give it to them. We feel guilty and we'll do what we can for them within reason, but they can't have their country back. Next question."
In a recent column for Tribune media services, he wrote, "I know all about Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig, but today's baseball stars are all guys named Rodriguez to me." Rooney later commented, "Yeah, I probably shouldn't have said it, [but] it's a name that seems common in baseball now. I certainly didn't think of it in any derogatory sense."
Rooney has always denied that he is a racist. In the 1940s, he was arrested after sitting in the back of a segregated bus in protest. Also, in 2008, Rooney applauded the fact that "the citizens of this country, 80 percent of whom are white, freely chose to elect a black man as their leader simply because they thought he was the best choice." He said that makes him proud, and that it proves that the country has "come a long way - a good way."
Suspension by CBS
In 1990, Rooney was suspended without pay for three months. This punishment was for saying that "too much alcohol, too much food, drugs, homosexual unions, cigarettes [are] all known to lead... to premature death." Also, he wrote an explanatory letter to a gay organization after being ordered not to do so. After only four weeks without Rooney, 60 Minutes lost 20 percent of its audience. CBS management then decided that it was in the best interest of the network to have Rooney return immediately.
After Rooney's reinstatement, he made his remorse public:
Remarks on Kurt Cobain's suicide
In a 1994 segment, Rooney attracted controversy with his remarks on Kurt Cobain's suicide. He expressed his dismay that the death of Richard Nixon was overshadowed by Cobain's suicide, stating that he had never heard of Cobain or his band, Nirvana. He went on to say that Cobain's suicide made him angry. "A lot of people would like to have the years left that he threw away," Rooney said. "What's all this nonsense about how terrible life is?" he asked, and he added, speaking rhetorically to a young woman who had wept at the suicide, "I'd love to relieve the pain you're going through by switching my age for yours." "What would all these young people be doing if they had real problems like a Depression, World War II or Vietnam?" "If he applied the same brain to his music that he applied to his drug-infested life, it's reasonable to think that his music may not have made much sense either." Later, Rooney admitted that he might have been "unfair" and apologized on air
His wife of 62 years, Marguerite "Margie" Rooney (née Howard), died in 2004 of heart failure. Rooney later wrote, "her name does not appear as often as it originally did [in my essays] because it hurts too much to write it." He has four children, including a daughter, Emily Rooney, who is a TV talk show host and former ABC News producer; she currently hosts a nightly Boston-area public affairs program, Greater Boston, on WGBH. Emily's identical twin, Martha, is Chief of the Public Services Division at the National Library of Medicine in Bethesda, Maryland. The third daughter, Ellen, is a photographer based in London. His son, Brian Rooney, has been a correspondent for ABC since the 1980s.
Rooney currently lives in the Rowayton section of Norwalk, Connecticut and in Rensselaerville, New York, and is a longtime season ticket holder for the New York Giants.
