Quote of the Day (Andy Rooney, on Designing a Chair)

“Last summer I made a chair. The wood was maple and cherry, and I invented what kind of a chair it was as I went along. When I finished, the chair looked great, but it has one shortcoming. It tips over backwards when anyone sits in it. My design was better than my engineering.” — CBS journalist and humorist Andy Rooney (1919-2011), “Design,” originally published in The Huntington (KS) News, Apr. 2, 1980, reprinted in And More by Andy Rooney (1982)

Fifteen years ago today, Andy Rooney delivered his last of 1,097 short, 60 Minutes segments. “I wish I could do this forever. I can’t, though,” he said, acknowledging that, at age 92, his career had come to an end. He died less than five weeks later, after developing postoperative complications from an undisclosed surgical procedure.

He served as a WWII correspondent for Stars and Stripes, but made his most significant mark at CBS—first as writing and producing partner of Harry Reasoner, then as a familiar droll on-screen commentator in his own right in 33 years on 60 Minutes. 

His presence became so vivid that he was parodied by SNL’s Joe Piscopo (see this hilarious YouTube clip on “Shoes”) and Norm Macdonald, as well as Frank Caliendo (on MAD TV).

When you google Rooney’s name, there’s a good chance you will come up with some low-lights from his career, too, such as insensitive remarks on Kurt Cobain’s death or “homosexual unions.” After his death, Time Magazine weighed in on his “most ridiculous complaints” in “Top 10 Grumpiest Andy Rooney Segments.”  (One sample: “What’s a Lady Gaga?”)

Still, for someone appearing on camera every week for so long, it’s surprising that more embarrassing examples don’t turn up. (Commentators on at least one “news” channel I can think of come up with that many in just five minutes, let alone three decades.) In any case, Rooney could be rightly proud for picking up Peabody and Emmy Awards for his work.

At the height of a 1986 corporate bloodletting at his longtime network, Rooney bluntly observed, in his syndicated news column, “CBS . . . no longer stands for anything. They’re just corporate initials now.” It’s easy to imagine what he would have thought of the recent turmoil at the news division and Sunday evening institution where he labored for so long.

In fact, one person who has done so is his grandson, Ben Fishel, in a Los Angeles Times piece from June:

“Sometimes I miss the era when my grandfather could devote an entire television segment to the mysteries of his junk drawer. Those trivial subjects only seemed trivial because the foundations of democracy felt secure enough to take for granted.

“Rooney rarely made himself the story, and he was not known as a particularly political commentator. But he believed deeply in journalism and in the responsibility that comes with informing the public.

“On that issue, I do not think he would be silent today.”

Quote of the Day (Andy Rooney, on the Dismal Art of Hunting for Parking)

“Hunting for a parking place is an art in itself. You have to size up the people coming out of a store. You have to be a good judge of where they're going and how far their car is so you can position yourself to take their place when they drive off.

“Parking spaces are an endangered species in America.”— CBS commentator-producer and syndicated columnist Andy Rooney, “Why Can’t People Learn to Park?”, The Register (Monmouth, NJ), Feb. 10, 1986

This problem became especially acute, as it always does, in malls during this past holiday season. During these moments of endless existential frustration, the words of the Sisters of Charity who taught me for 12 years often come to mind: “Offer it up!”

Quote of the Day (Andy Rooney, on the Joy of Easy Questions)

“There's nothing people like better than being asked an easy question. For some reason, we're flattered when a stranger asks us where Maple Street is in our hometown and we can tell him.” — CBS journalist and humorist (1919-2011), “If Not JFK, Why Not RWR?” Chicago Tribune, Dec. 1, 1981

Quote of the Day (Andy Rooney, on Two Kinds of Clothes in His Closet)

“The back of my closet is filled with clothes that I'll be able to wear again just as soon as I lose 10 pounds. On the other side of those on the pole is another, older bunch of clothes. I'll be able to wear those again just as soon as I lose about twenty pounds.”—Journalist Andy Rooney (1919-2011), On Second Thought (1984)

Quote of the Day (Andy Rooney, on Coffee Types)

“Someone sent us a box with five bags of assorted coffee flavors. They were almond, cinnamon, hazelnut, French vanilla and amaretto. If I want the taste of hazelnut, I’ll have a hazelnut. If I want coffee, I want coffee.”—Former 60 Minutes commentator Andy Rooney (1919-2011), Common Nonsense (2003)

Quote of the Day (Hutton and Rooney, on G.I. Joe’s Paper)

“The Stars and Stripes, from the day it began publication as an eight-page weekly in London, was mad, unreasonable, implausible of behavior in the midst of an army's orderliness, a refuge for eccentrics.

“But at the same time it was a well-written, well-edited, colorful, accurate, professional newspaper with (whether or no you wanted to admit it) higher editorial and moral standards than a great many civilian papers.

“It was, on the authority of the army's high command, ‘the most important single factor’ affecting the morale of the men who smashed and conquered Axis Europe.”—Bud Hutton and Andy Rooney, The Story of the Stars and Stripes (1946)

The armed-forces newspaper Stars and Stripes had actually been around, in other incarnations, dating back to the Civil War. But when it was revived on this date in 1942, its reappearance was stunning. The tabloid was announcing to Europe—many of whose countries still fell under the dark shadow of totalitarianism—that one of the freedoms for which the American soldier was fighting was embodied in the product they read.

In many ways, working on Stars and Stripes was the formative experience of future CBS veteran Andy Rooney. It wasn’t only that, as a 22-year-old sergeant assigned to this unit, he learned his trade in proximity to pros such as Homer Bigart, Ernie Pyle and Walter Cronkite, but that he came by attitudes that informed much of the rest of his life. He found Ernest Hemingway and General George Patton, for instance, to be poseurs—and resented the latter, in particular, for trying to make the newspaper into a mere mouthpiece of the military. The future 60 Minutes curmudgeon-at-large was in embryo.

On the other hand, while many American intellectuals of the Fifties unfavorably compared Dwight Eisenhower to their favorite, Adlai Stevenson, as an out-of-touch figurehead addicted to wandering prose, Rooney remembered gratefully the commander who allowed him and his compatriots to report honestly and largely without censorship on the conflict that broke the backs of Fascism and liberated a continent.

Quote of the Day (Andy Rooney, on “The Strange Thing About Speaking”)

“The strange thing about speaking is that you only know for sure that you've made a point with an audience when you say something funny and they laugh. If you make what you hope is a good, serious point, there's no way for them to let you know.”—Pieces of My Mind, by Andy Rooney (1987)

Somehow, his listening audience found enough in Andy Rooney’s  short, on-air essays to want the longtime 60 Minutes mainstay around for more than three decades. It might have taken longer than the instant response the network curmudgeon craved, but eventually they certainly did let him know what they thought.

It’s hard to believe that, after so much time, the 92-year-old journalist has stepped down from his regular perch. He strikes me as the type who values short, unsentimental expression, so here it is: Thanks for the years of laughter, Andy.