Andy rooney 60 years of wisdom and wit drivers#

The quest to fill Rooneyís slot should begin and end with that fact. The worst thing they could do it try to find ěanother Andy Rooney.î There isnít one, just like there wasnít another Paul Harvey. What will CBS do now that Rooney is stepping down? Iím frightened of the thought of waking up one morning and realizing that waking up is probably the most exciting thing thatís going to happen to me that day.Įven if Iím not still actively engaged in the workforce, I hope at the age of 92, I still have something to do and something to say. Long after most men his age exchanged their work boots for bedroom slippers, Rooney kept churning out the wisdom. He apparently never believed in retirement. Thereís something else I like about Andy Rooney. And when he told us about it on TV, it seemed real. ĚThereís nothing magical about the process, no flashing lights.î Rooney never waited for a good idea to come along before he started writing. Trying to teach someone to be creative is as silly as a mother trying to teach her child to be a genius,î he wrote. ĚColleges teach courses in creative writing as if a course in just plain writing werenít enough. Rooneyís style has often been characterized as ěcreative.î Yet there was never anything creative about it as far as he was concerned. ĚIf you donít return your census form, the area you live in might get less government money, and you wouldnít want that to happen, would you.î ĚComputers make it easier to do a lot of things, but most of those things donít need to be done.î ĚAnyone who watches golf on television would enjoy watching grass grow on the greens.î We all like those things.Īnd when Andy Rooney didnít like something, he has his own unique way of telling you.

Andy rooney 60 years of wisdom and wit drivers#

Drivers who signal their intentions well in advance of an intersection instead of waiting till the last minute.

Candles that have a familiar, homey smell instead of an orgy of perfumes. The things that Andy liked were the things that most of us like: The only difference is, he wrote his down.î ěMozart and I basically do the same thing,î he told an audience while playing a classic Mozart piece. He simply lived his everyday life and wrote down what he experienced.Ĭomedian Victor Borge once said that about Mozart. Yet, there he sat nearly every Sunday night since July of 1978, dispensing his words of practical wisdom.Īnd somehow, in spite of his usual whiny delivery, we more than often found ourselves in total agreement with the kindly curmudgeon with a twinkle in his eye.Īndyís secret was, he had no secret. In an industry preoccupied with youth, Andy was a bit of an oddity.

2 Ö at the remarkable age of 92, after delivering his 1,097th commentary. He ended his long run on CBSís ě60 Minutesî Oct. Of course, it's easy to overlook that when he's lobbing politically incorrect grenades-about door-to-door census takers in Afghanistan, he writes, 'Some of them dont even have doors'-, while the late Kurt Cobain is dismissed thusly: if he 'applied the same brain to his music that he applied to his drug-infested life, its reasonable to think that his music may not have made much sense either.' That's mean-spirited, maybe but even at his most outrageous, there's usually a grain of truth in Rooney's taut and well-constructed musings. What will surprise readers is how thoughtful and well-constructed his opinions are, and that he is capable of sentimentality and bewilderment, and has a big and generous heart. Perhaps because Rooney's appearances at the tail end of 60 MinutesĪre so brief and often caustic, it's tempting to dismiss him as a small-minded whiner who gets paid big bucks to rant about whatever has just crossed his mind.

Anyone who's ever rolled their eyes at the absurdities of modern society will find a soul mate in the legendary curmudgeon, whose on-camera commentaries translate surprisingly well to the printed page (if you can get past his personalized punctuation, which he takes pains to explain in the foreword, but which will likely irritate grammatical purists). Rooney fans aren't the only readers who will appreciate this massive collection of missives.