Andy Rooney, Mainstay on ‘60 Minutes’, Dead at 92

vstexas09 · Nov 5, 2011

Andy Rooney, whose prickly wit was long a mainstay of CBS News and whose homespun commentary on “60 Minutes,” delivered every week from 1978 until 2011, made him a household name, died Friday in New York City.

He was 92 and lived in Manhattan, though he kept a family vacation home in Rensselaerville, N.Y., and the first home he ever purchased, in Rowayton, Conn.

CBS News said in a statement that Mr. Rooney died after complications following minor surgery.

In late September, CBS announced that Mr. Rooney would be making his last regular weekly appearance on “60 Minutes” on Oct. 2. After that, said Jeff Fager, the chairman of CBS News and the program’s executive producer, he would “always have the ability to speak his mind on ‘60 Minutes’ when the urge hits him.”

But a little more than three weeks after that appearance, CBS announced that Mr. Rooney had been hospitalized after developing “serious complications” from an unspecified operation.

Mr. Rooney entered television shortly after World War II, writing material for entertainers like Arthur Godfrey, Victor Borge, Herb Shriner, Sam Levenson and Garry Moore. Beginning in 1962, he had a six-year association with the CBS News correspondent Harry Reasoner, who narrated a series of Everyman “essays” written by Mr. Rooney.

But it was “A Few Minutes With Andy Rooney,” his weekly segment on “60 Minutes,” that made him one of the most popular broadcast figures in the country. With his jowls, bushy eyebrows, deeply circled eyes and advancing years, he seemed every inch the homespun philosopher as he addressed mostly mundane subjects with varying degrees of befuddlement, vexation and sometimes even pleasure.

He admitted to loving football, Christmas, tennis, woodworking and Dwight D. Eisenhower, one of the few politicians who won his approval because, as an Army general during World War II, he had refused to censor Stars and Stripes, the G.I. newspaper for which Mr. Rooney worked. He also claimed to like shined shoes and properly pressed pants and had machines in his office to take care of those functions, although somehow he always managed to look rumpled.

But he was better known for the things he didn’t like. He railed against “two-prong plugs in a three-prong society,” the incomprehensibility of road maps, wash-and-wear shirts “that you can wash but not wear,” the uselessness of keys and locks, and outsize cereal boxes that contained very little cereal.

“I don’t like any music I can’t hum,” he grumbled.

He observed that “there are more beauty parlors than there are beauties” and that “if dogs could talk, it would take a lot of the fun out of owning one.”

He made clear he thought that Gen. George S. Patton and Ernest Hemingway, both of whom he had known personally, were gasbags. He actively disliked New Year’s Eve, waiting in line for any reason, and the bursars at whatever colleges his children attended.

He once concluded that “it is possible to be dumb and be a college president,” but he acknowledged that “most college students are not as smart as most college presidents.”

On the subject of higher education, he declared that most college catalogs “rank among the great works of fiction of all time,” and that a student of lackluster intellect who could raise tuition money would find it “almost impossible to flunk out.”

Time magazine once called him “the most felicitous nonfiction writer in television.” But Mr. Rooney was decidedly not everyone’s cup of tea.

The New York Times columnist Anna Quindlen, for example, took strong issue with Mr. Rooney’s dismissive comments after Kurt Cobain of the band Nirvana committed suicide in 1994. It was not surprising, she wrote, that Mr. Rooney “brought to the issue of youthful despair a mixture of sarcasm and contempt,” but it was “worth noting because in 1994 that sort of attitude is as dated and foolish as believing that cancer is contagious.”

Mr. Rooney’s opinions sometimes landed him in trouble. In 1990 CBS News suspended him without pay in response to complaints that he had made remarks offensive to black and gay people.

The trigger was a December 1989 special, “A Year With Andy Rooney,” in which he said: “There was some recognition in 1989 of the fact that many of the ills which kill us are self-induced. Too much alcohol, too much food, drugs, homosexual unions, cigarettes. They’re all known to lead quite often to premature death.” He later apologized for the statement.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/06/us/andy-rooney-mainstay-on-60-minutes-dead-at-92.html?_r=1&hp

rocketsjudoka · Nov 5, 2011

Just heard about it. A true cultural icon and I will miss his cantankerous musings at the end of 60 Minutes.

The Captain · Nov 5, 2011

RIP, Andy

Outlier · Nov 5, 2011

For a second there, I thought this was Mr. Rooney from Ferris Bueller's Day Off.

ItsMyFault · Nov 5, 2011

RIP. A Legend.

Plowman · Nov 5, 2011

"Did you ever wonder" .....an institution...almost every Sunday since I was 12- 13....loved his sense of humor.

Jugdish · Nov 5, 2011

Found out about it on my mom's iPad, not a handwritten letter a week from now.

what · Nov 5, 2011

Wow, I didn't know he'd go so soon. RIP, Mr. Rooney

jdh008 · Nov 5, 2011

There was something comforting about watching his segments on 60 Minutes. It was just such a throwback to another era.

RedRedemption · Nov 5, 2011

Oh man.
I was distraught when he cancelled his 60 minutes segment... just like when Steve Jobs stepped down; I knew it would all lead to this.

RIP.

Jontro · Nov 5, 2011

At 92, at least we know he's lived a full life.

Oski2005 · Nov 5, 2011

Never liked him, enjoyed this "obituary":

Crotchety rambler Andy Rooney has passed away, just one month after his final “60 Minutes” appearance and slightly more than a week after suffering complications from minor surgery. In honor of his passing, I’ll be just as respectful about his death as he was about Kurt Cobain’s.

Rooney was an unremarkable, cranky bore whose b****ing about simple annoyances struck a nerve with other aging white people who were frightened by or opposed to change. His view of America was essentially a collection of Rockwell paintings, and he complained about any facet of life that strayed from that impossible vision. When technological developments improved commerce or people’s lives, Rooney only saw the inconvenience of learning something new. In every TV appearance of his that I saw, he came off to me as intellectually incurious, and he happily took a paycheck from CBS for 60 years while brushing away the fans who sent him letters or tried to approach him in public. I don’t understand why people who didn’t know him should stop and mourn a man who never cared for people he didn’t know.

Rest in peace, Andy Rooney. The world has moved on.

http://warmingglow.uproxx.com/2011/11/r-i-p-andy-rooney
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Dairy Ashford · Nov 5, 2011

Oski2005 said: ↑

Never liked him, enjoyed this "obituary":
Click to expand...

Rooney was a prolific enough journalist for this part of his life to be thought of as a semi-retirement, or just completely satirical. He was far more progressive, open-minded and cerebral than this particular segment needed him to be.

No Worries · Nov 5, 2011

Andy Rooney: "My Lucky Life"

KingCheetah · Nov 5, 2011

Wow, he knew when to quit -- RIP.

KingCheetah · Nov 5, 2011

Why do we have complications from surgery but never simplifications from surgery? You would think that surgery would make one's health a simpler matter, but this is not the case -- you ever wonder why?

Borrowed from Fark.

Jugdish · Nov 5, 2011

KingCheetah said: ↑

Why do we have complications from surgery but never simplifications from surgery? You would think that surgery would make one's health a simpler matter, but this is not the case -- you ever wonder why?

Borrowed from Fark.
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Why is Greenland ice amirite

Ziggy · Nov 6, 2011

"What's the deal with cell phones? Back in my day we wrote letters, now you've got these kids sending texts, blah, blah, blah"

ClutchCityReturns · Nov 6, 2011

One of my favorite quotes.

"I don't differentiate much, except in degree, between people who believe in religion from those who believe in astrology, magic or the supernatural.

We all ought to understand we're on our own. Believing in Santa Claus doesn't do kids any harm for a few years but it isn't smart for them to continue waiting all their lives for him to come down the chimney with something wonderful. Santa Claus and God are cousins.

I just wish this social institution [religion] wasn't based on what appears to me to be a monumental hoax built on an accumulation of customs and myths directed toward proving something that isn't true.

Christians talk as though goodness was their idea but good behavior doesn't have any religious origin. Our prisons are filled with the devout.

I'd be more willing to accept religion, even if I didn't believe it, if I thought it made people nicer to each other but I don't think it does."
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- Andy Rooney

Oski2005 · Nov 7, 2011

<iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/BMm4nSxPCOA" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

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Andy Rooney, Mainstay on ‘60 Minutes’, Dead at 92

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