Andrew Aitken "
Andy"
Rooney was an American radio and television writer died he was 92. He was
most notable for his weekly broadcast "A Few Minutes with Andy Rooney," a
part of the
CBS News program
60 Minutes from 1978 to 2011. His final regular appearance on
60 Minutes aired October 2, 2011. He died one month later, on November 4, 2011, at age 92.
(January 14, 1919 –
November 4, 2011)
Early life
Andrew Rooney was born in
Albany, the son of Walter Scott Rooney (1888–1959) and Ellinor (Reynolds) Rooney (1886–1980). He attended
The Albany Academy,
[2] and later attended
Colgate University in Hamilton in Central New York,
[3] where he was initiated into the
Sigma Chi fraternity, before he was drafted into the
United States Army in August 1941.
World War II
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.
[4]
In February 1943, flying with the
Eighth Air Force, he was one of six correspondents who flew on the second American bombing raid over Germany.
[5] Later, he was one of the first American journalists to visit the
Nazi concentration camps near the end of World War II, and one of the first to write about them. During a segment on
Tom Brokaw's
The Greatest Generation, Rooney stated 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.
For his service as a war correspondent in combat zones during the war Rooney was decorated with the
Bronze Star Medal and
Air Medal.
[6]
Rooney's 1995 memoir,
My War, chronicles his war reporting. In
addition to recounting firsthand several notable historical events and
people (including the entry into Paris and the Nazi concentration
camps), Rooney describes how it shaped his experience both as a writer
and reporter.
[5]
Career
Rooney joined
CBS in 1949, as a writer for
Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts,
[5] when
Godfrey
was at his peak on CBS radio and TV. It opened the show up to a variety
of viewers. The program was a hit, reaching number one in 1952, during
Rooney's tenure with the program. It was the beginning of a close
lifelong friendship between Rooney and Godfrey. He wrote for Godfrey's
daytime radio and TV show
Arthur Godfrey Time. He later moved on to
The Garry Moore Show,
[7] which became a hit program. During the same period, he wrote for
CBS News public affairs programs such as
The Twentieth 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."
[8] 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),
[8] "An Essay on Hotels" (1966),
[8] "An Essay on Women" (1967),
[8] and "The Strange Case of the English Language" (1968).
[8] In 1968, he wrote two CBS News specials in the series "Of Black America,"
[8] and his script for "Black History: Lost, Stolen, or Strayed" won him his first Emmy."
[9]
When CBS declined to broadcast "An Essay on War" in 1970, Rooney quit
CBS and read the opinion himself on PBS — his first appearance on
television.
[10] That show in 1971 won Rooney his third Writers Guild Award.
[8] Rooney re-joined CBS in 1973, to write and produce special programs.
[10] He also wrote the script for the 1975 documentary
FDR: The Man Who Changed America.
After his return to the network, Rooney wrote and appeared in several prime-time specials for CBS, including
In Praise of New York City (1974),
[7] the
Peabody Award-winning
Mr. Rooney Goes to Washington (1975),
[7] Mr. Rooney Goes to Dinner (1978),
[7] and
Mr. Rooney Goes to Work (1977).
[7] 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"
[5]), began in 1978, as a summer replacement for the debate segment "Point/Counterpoint"
[5] 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 1978–1979 season, "Point/Counterpoint" was dropped
altogether.
[5]
In the segment, Rooney typically offered 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 included whimsical lists, e.g., types of milk,
[11] bottled water brands,
[12] car brands,
[13] sports
mascots,
[14] etc. In later years, his segments became more political as well. Despite being best known for his television presence on
60 Minutes,
Rooney always considered himself a writer who incidentally appeared on
television behind his famous walnut table, which he made himself.
Controversies
Rooney made a number of comments which elicited strong reactions from fans and producers alike.
Rooney wrote a column in 1992 that posited that it was "silly" for
Native Americans to complain about team names like the
Redskins,
in which he wrote in part, "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."
[15]
In a 2007 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."
[15]
In 1990, Rooney was suspended without pay for three months by
then-CBS News President David Burke, because of the negative publicity
around his saying that "too much
alcohol, too much food, drugs, homosexual unions,
cigarettes [are] all known to lead to premature death."
[16] 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.
[17]
After Rooney's reinstatement, he made his remorse public:
[18]
There was never a writer who didn't hope that in
some small way he was doing good with the words he put down on paper
and, while I know it's presumptuous, I've always had in my mind that I
was doing some little bit of good. Now, I was to be known for having
done, not good, but bad. I'd be known for the rest of my life as a
racist
bigot and as someone who had made life a little more difficult for
homosexuals. I felt terrible about that and I've learned a lot.
—Andy Rooney, Years of Minutes
Rooney always denied that he was a racist. In the 1940s, he was
arrested after sitting in the back of a segregated bus in protest.
[19] Also, in 2008, when
Barack Obama was elected
president of the United States, 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."
[20]
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 nor 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,
adding 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." In addition, he asked "What would all these young people be
doing if they had real problems like a
Depression,
World War II or
Vietnam?"
and commented that "If [Cobain] 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."
[21]
On the following Sunday's show, he apologized on the air, saying he
should have taken Cobain's depression into account. He also read only
critical feedback from listeners without interjecting any commentary of
his own.
[22][23]
Collections and retirement
Rooney's shorter television essays have been archived in numerous books, such as
Common Nonsense, which came out in 2002,
[24] and
Years of Minutes, probably his best-known work, released in 2003.
[25] He penned a regular syndicated column for
Tribune Media Services that ran in many newspapers in the United States, and which has been collected in book form. He won three
Emmy Awards for his essays,
[26] which numbered over 1,000. He was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Emmy in 2003.
[27] Rooney's renown made him a frequent target of parodies and impersonations by a diverse group of comedic figures, including
Frank Caliendo,
Rich Little and
Beavis.
In 1993, CBS released a two-volume VHS tape set of the best of
Rooney's commentaries and field reports, called "The Andy Rooney
Television Collection — His Best Minutes." In 2006, CBS released three
DVDs of his more recent commentaries, "Andy Rooney On Almost
Everything," "Things That Bother Andy Rooney," and "Andy Rooney's
Solutions."
[citation needed]
Rooney's final regular appearance on
60 Minutes was on October 2, 2011,
[28] after 33 years on the show.
[29] It was his 1,097th commentary.
[30]
Views
He 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."
[31] In a controversial 1999 book Rooney self-identified as
agnostic,
[32] but by 2004 he was calling himself an atheist.
[33] He reaffirmed this in 2008.
[34] Over the years, many of his editorials 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).
[35]
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.
[36]
Personal life
Rooney was married to Marguerite "Margie" Rooney (née Howard) for 62
years, until she died of heart failure in 2004. He later wrote, "her
name does not appear as often as it originally did [in my essays]
because it hurts too much to write it."
[37] They had four children; Brian, Emily, Martha and Ellen. His daughter
Emily Rooney is a TV talk show host and former
ABC News producer who went on to host a nightly
Boston-area public affairs program,
Greater Boston, on
WGBH.
Emily's identical twin, Martha, became 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 also had a sister, Nancy Reynolds Rooney (1915–2008).
Rooney lived in the
Rowayton section of
Norwalk, Connecticut,
[38] and in
Rensselaerville, New York,
[39] and was a longtime
season ticket holder for the
New York Giants.
[40]
Death
Rooney was hospitalized on October 25, 2011, after developing postoperative complications from an undisclosed surgery,
[41] and died on November 4, 2011, at the age of 92, less than five weeks after his last appearance on
60 Minutes.
[42][43]
Awards
Books
Books written by Rooney:
- Conquerors' Peace; report to the American stockholders, by Oram C. Hutton and Andrew A. Rooney. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1947.
- A Few Minutes With Andy Rooney, 1981 (ISBN 0-689-11194-0)
- And More by Andy Rooney, 1985 (ISBN 0-517-40622-5)
- Pieces of My Mind, 1986 (ISBN 0-689-11492-3)
- The Most of Andy Rooney, 1986 (ISBN 0-689-11864-3)
- Word for Word, 1988 (ISBN 0-399-13200-7)
- Not That You Asked ..., 1989 (ISBN 0-394-57837-6)
- Most of Andy Rooney, 1990 (ISBN 0-88365-765-1)
- Sweet and Sour, 1992 (ISBN 0-399-13774-2)
- My War, 1997 (ISBN 0-517-17986-5)
- Sincerely, Andy Rooney, 1999 (ISBN 1-891620-34-7)
- The Complete Andy Rooney, 2000 (ISBN 0-446-11219-4)
- Common Nonsense, 2002, (ISBN 1-586482-00-9)
- Years of Minutes, 2003 (ISBN 1-58648-211-4)
- Out of My Mind, 2006 (ISBN 1-58648-416-8)
- 60 Years of Wisdom and Wit, 2009 (ISBN 1-58648-773-6)
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