Andy Rooney, Mainstay on ‘60 Minutes’, Dead at 92 - The New York Times The New York Times U.S. |Andy Rooney, a Cranky Voice of CBS, Dies at 92 Search Andy Rooney, a Cranky Voice of CBS, Dies at 92 By RICHARD SEVERO and PETER KEEPNEWS NOV. 5, 2011 Continue reading the main story Photo Andy Rooney at his desk in 1978, his first year as a commentator on "60 Minutes.". Credit Carlos Rene Perez/Associated Press 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 on 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 bought, 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. Continue reading the main story 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. Advertisement Continue reading the main story 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 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 did not 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 that he thought Gen. George S. Patton and Ernest Hemingway, both of whom he had known personally, were gasbags. He 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. Advertisement Continue reading the main story 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.

But the gay newspaper The Advocate subsequently quoted him as saying in an interview: “I’ve believed all along that most people are born with equal intelligence, but blacks have watered down their genes because the less intelligent ones are the ones that have the most children. They drop out of school early, do drugs and get pregnant.” Photo Andy Rooney in 2005. Credit Bebeto Matthews/Associated Press Mr. Rooney denied that he had made such a statement, and because the interview had apparently not been taped, the reporter was unable to prove that he had. “It is a know-nothing statement, which I abhor,” Mr. Rooney said. He said that he had accepted the suspension rather than end his relationship with CBS News. He said that when he was an Army trainee, he had been arrested in the South because he insisted on riding in the back of a bus with some black soldiers who were friends of his. Many of his colleagues rushed to his defense. “I know he is not a racist,” Walter Cronkite said. Mr. Rooney was suspended for three months but was brought back after only one.

During his absence, the ratings for “60 Minutes” declined by 20 percent and the network received thousands of letters and telephone calls from viewers who missed his commentaries. Please verify you're not a robot by clicking the box. Invalid email address. Please re-enter. You must select a newsletter to subscribe to. Sign Up Privacy Policy Mr. Rooney generated more criticism in 2002, when he said in an interview on a cable sports show that women had “no business” being sideline television reporters at football games because they did not understand football. He did it again in 2007, with a newspaper column complaining about the current state of baseball. “I know all about Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig, but today’s baseball stars are all guys named Rodriguez to me,” he wrote. Advertisement Continue reading the main story He subsequently acknowledged that he “probably shouldn’t have said it,” but denied that his intent had been to denigrate Latin American players. Andrew Aitken Rooney was born on Jan. 14, 1919, in Albany, the son of Walter and Ellinor Rooney. His father was in the paper business.

After his graduation from Albany Academy, he worked as a copy boy for The Knickerbocker News before attending Colgate University in Hamilton, N.Y., where he played left guard on the football team (even though he was only 5-foot-9 and 185 pounds) and worked for the weekly newspaper, The Colgate Maroon. In 1941, three months before Pearl Harbor, he was drafted into the Army and used his powers of persuasion to get himself assigned to Stars and Stripes. He did not know much about reporting, but he learned his craft by working with journalists like Homer Bigart, Ernie Pyle and Mr. Cronkite. He became a sergeant, flew on some bombing missions, covered the invasion of France in 1944 and won a Bronze Star for reporting under fire during the battle of Saint-Lô in Normandy. A year later, he was among the first Americans to enter the concentration camps at Buchenwald and Thekla, Germany. In collaboration with Bud Hutton, a Stars and Stripes colleague, Mr.

Rooney wrote two books: “Air Gunner” (1944), a collection of sketches of Americans who had been stationed in Britain, and “The Story of the Stars and Stripes” (1946). After his discharge, Mr. Rooney returned to Albany and worked as a freelance writer. By 1949, he had persuaded Mr. Godfrey to hire him as a writer. He continued writing for several entertainers, but also became involved in news and public affairs when he was asked to write scripts for “The Twentieth Century,” a documentary series narrated by Mr. Cronkite. That led to his long-term association with Mr. Reasoner, which led to his involvement, initially as a writer, with “60 Minutes.” In the early 1970s, after briefly working for PBS, Mr. Rooney returned to CBS and began appearing on camera in a series of specials, one of which, “Mr. Rooney Goes to Washington,” won a Peabody Award. Mr. Rooney was as outspoken about CBS, his longtime employer, as he was about everything else. He made no secret of his dislike for Laurence A.

Tisch, the network’s chief executive from 1986 to 1995. Protesting Mr. Tisch’s cost efficiencies and job cuts in 1987, Mr. Rooney said CBS News “has been turned into primarily a business enterprise, and the moral enterprise has been lost,” and he threatened to quit if a writers strike against CBS News was not settled. Advertisement Continue reading the main story Although his commentary was mostly written for CBS News, he also had a syndicated newspaper column for three decades, for which he was given a lifetime achievement award in 2003 by the National Society of Newspaper Columnists. (That same year he received a similar award from the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.) He published a number of books, primarily collections of his commentaries, most recently “Out of My Mind” (2006), “And More by Andy Rooney” (2008) and “Andy Rooney: 60 Years of Wisdom and Wit” (2010). Mr. Rooney’s wife of 62 years, Marguerite Howard, died in 2004. Mr.

Rooney is survived by their four children, Ellen Rooney of London; Martha Fishel of Chevy Chase, Md.; Emily Rooney of Boston; and Brian Rooney of Los Angeles, along with five grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. Mr. Rooney frequently said he considered himself “one of the least important producers on television” because his specialty was light pieces. “I just wish insignificance had more stature,” he once said. But he put things in perspective in his 1,097th and last regularly scheduled “60 Minutes” appearance. “I’ve done a lot of complaining here,” he said then, “but of all the things I’ve complained about, I can’t complain about my life.” A version of this article appears in print on November 6, 2011, on Page A28 of the New York edition with the headline: Andy Rooney, a Cranky Voice of CBS, Dies at 92.

Order Reprints | Today's Paper | Subscribe A Few Minutes About Andy Rooney | The Huffington Post A Few Minutes About Andy Rooney 10/02/2011 01:01 am ET | Updated Dec 01, 2011 Joe Peyronnin Hofstra Journalism Professor Andy Rooney has been the voice of America for thirty-three years. He once described himself as, "a dead center normal average American." But the always modest Rooney is so much more. Rooney seemed to epitomize a curmudgeon -- however, he really just played one on television. And he willingly accepted this role, "I don't like to complain all the time, but that's what I do for a living, and I am lucky because there is so much to complain about." And complain he did, about everything from the way shoes are made to the way mixed nuts are packed. That is why his weekly 60 Minutes commentaries connected with viewers. He spoke for them. Born in Albany, New York, in 1919, Rooney experienced the Great Depression as a young boy. He attended Colgate University until he was drafted into the U.S. Army.

Rooney began writing for the Army publication Stars and Stripes in London and found himself on the frontlines of history. He reported and wrote about the allied entry into German occupied Paris and the concentration camps. He also was one of six correspondents who flew on the first U.S. bombing raid over Germany in 1943. These experiences had an important impact on his career. Following the war Rooney joined CBS in 1949 as a writer for Arthur Godfrey, whose shows were hits on television and radio. He later moved on to the Garry Moore Show, which also was a hit program. And, at the same time, he began writing for CBS News public affairs programs, including The 20th Century. Subsequently he collaborated with the late CBS News correspondent Harry Reasoner on many critically acclaimed specials. In 1968, he wrote two CBS News specials in the series Of Black America, and he won his first Emmy for his script for Black History: Lost, Stolen, or Strayed.

In 1978, 60 Minutes creator and executive producer Don Hewitt began including Andy Rooney's essays at the end of the program as a summer replacement for its "Point/Counterpoint" segments, with Shana Alexander and James Kilpatrick. Rooney's commentaries were so popular by the fall that Hewitt alternated Rooney with "Point/Counterpoint". By the end of the season Kilpatrick and Alexander were dropped in favor of "A Few Minutes with Andy Rooney". For nearly fifty years Rooney wrote his essays and scripts on a 1920 Underwood typewriter. His transition to computers was not smooth and the experience resulted in a commentary directed at Microsoft founder Bill Gates. "Someone screwed up the way computers work and I blame it on him," Rooney opined. "I had one typewriter for fifty years, but I bought seven computers in six years," he observed, "I suppose that is why Bill Gates in rich and Underwood is out of business." Rooney said the reason is, "They make computers so you have to buy a new one when there is a full moon." Rooney came up with the ideas for all his 60 Minutes commentaries.

He would write them in a modest office in the CBS Broadcast Center on New York City's Westside. He would then record them there, at his desk, at the end of the week. It was all very low-tech. Yet the commentaries almost always had an impact on millions of viewers. At 92 years of age Andy Rooney has decided to cut back on his work schedule. His final regular appearance Sunday will be his 1097th commentary for 60 Minutes. "A Few Minutes with Andy Rooney" was a unique fixture on American television that will never be replaced but will always be remembered. Thank you, Andy. Follow Joe Peyronnin on Twitter: More: Andy Rooney, wry '60 Minutes' commentator, dies Andy Rooney, wry '60 Minutes' commentator, dies DAVID BAUDER - AP Television Writer Share View photos FILE - In this Aug. 2, 1978 file photo, CBS News producer and correspondent Andrew Rooney poses for photos in his New York office. CBS says former "60 Minutes" commentator Andy Rooney died at age 92.

(AP Photo/Carlos Rene Perez, File) More NEW YORK (AP) — Andy Rooney so dreaded the day he had to end his signature "60 Minutes" commentaries about life's large and small absurdities that he kept going until he was 92 years old. Even then, he said he wasn't retiring. Writers never retire. But his life after the end of "A Few Minutes With Andy Rooney" was short: He died Friday night, according to CBS, only a month after delivering his 1,097th and final televised commentary. Rooney had gone to the hospital for an undisclosed surgery, but major complications developed and he never recovered. "Andy always said he wanted to work until the day he died, and he managed to do it, save the last few weeks in the hospital," said his "60 Minutes" colleague, correspondent Steve Kroft. Rooney talked on "60 Minutes" about what was in the news, and his opinions occasionally got him in trouble. But he was just as likely to discuss the old clothes in his closet, why air travel had become unpleasant and why banks needed to have important-sounding names.

Rooney won one of his four Emmy Awards for a piece on whether there was a real Mrs. Smith who made Mrs. Smith's Pies. As it turned out, there was no Mrs. Smith. "I obviously have a knack for getting on paper what a lot of people have thought and didn't realize they thought," Rooney once said. "And they say, 'Hey, yeah!' And they like that." Looking for something new to punctuate its weekly broadcast, "60 Minutes" aired its first Rooney commentary on July 2, 1978. He complained about people who keep track of how many people die in car accidents on holiday weekends. In fact, he said, the Fourth of July is "one of the safest weekends of the year to be going someplace." More than three decades later, he was railing about how unpleasant air travel had become. "Let's make a statement to the airlines just to get their attention," he said. "We'll pick a week next year and we'll all agree not to go anywhere for seven days." In early 2009, as he was about to turn 90, Rooney looked ahead to President Barack Obama's upcoming inauguration with a look at past inaugurations.

He told viewers that Calvin Coolidge's 1925 swearing-in was the first to be broadcast on radio, adding, "That may have been the most interesting thing Coolidge ever did." "Words cannot adequately express Andy's contribution to the world of journalism and the impact he made — as a colleague and a friend — upon everybody at CBS," said Leslie Moonves, CBS Corp. president and CEO. Jeff Fager, CBS News chairman and "60 Minutes" executive producer, said "it's hard to imagine not having Andy around. He loved his life and he lived it on his own terms. We will miss him very much." "60 Minutes" will end its broadcast Sunday with a tribute to Rooney by veteran correspondent Morley Safer. For his final essay, Rooney said that he'd live a life luckier than most. "I wish I could do this forever. I can't, though," he said. He said he probably hadn't said anything on "60 Minutes" that most of his viewers didn't already know or hadn't thought. "That's what a writer does," he said.

"A writer's job is to tell the truth." True to his occasional crotchety nature, though, he complained about being famous or bothered by fans. His last wish from fans: If you see him in a restaurant, just let him eat his dinner. Rooney was a freelance writer in 1949 when he encountered CBS radio star Arthur Godfrey in an elevator and — with the bluntness millions of people learned about later — told him his show could use better writing. Godfrey hired him and by 1953, when he moved to TV, Rooney was his only writer. He wrote for CBS' Garry Moore during the early 1960s before settling into a partnership with Harry Reasoner at CBS News. Given a challenge to write on any topic, he wrote "An Essay on Doors" in 1964, and continued with contemplations on bridges, chairs and women. "The best work I ever did," Rooney said. "But nobody knows I can do it or ever did it. Nobody knows that I'm a writer and producer.

They think I'm this guy on television." He became such a part of the culture that comic Joe Piscopo satirized Rooney's squeaky voice with the refrain, "Did you ever ..." Rooney never started any of his essays that way. For many years, "60 Minutes" improbably was the most popular program on television and a dose of Rooney was what people came to expect for a knowing smile on the night before they had to go back to work. Rooney left CBS in 1970 when it refused to air his angry essay about the Vietnam War. He went on TV for the first time, reading the essay on PBS and winning a Writers Guild of America award for it. He returned to CBS three years later as a writer and producer of specials. Notable among them was the 1975 "Mr. Rooney Goes to Washington," whose lighthearted but serious look at government won him a Peabody Award for excellence in broadcasting. His words sometimes landed Rooney in hot water. CBS suspended him for three months in 1990 for making racist remarks in an interview, which he denied.

Rooney, who was arrested in Florida while in the Army in the 1940s for refusing to leave a seat among blacks on a bus, was hurt deeply by the charge of racism. Gay rights groups were mad, during the AIDS epidemic, when Rooney mentioned homosexual unions in saying "many of the ills which kill us are self-induced." Indians protested when Rooney suggested Native Americans who made money from casinos weren't doing enough to help their own people. The Associated Press learned the danger of getting on Rooney's cranky side. In 1996, AP Television Writer Frazier Moore wrote a column suggesting it was time for Rooney to leave the broadcast. On Rooney's next "60 Minutes" appearance, he invited those who disagreed to make their opinions known. The AP switchboard was flooded by some 7,000 phone calls and countless postcards were sent to the AP mail room. "Your piece made me mad," Rooney told Moore two years later. "One of my major shortcomings — I'm vindictive. I don't know why that is. Even in petty things in my life I tend to strike back. It's a lot more pleasurable a sensation than feeling threatened.

"He was one of television's few voices to strongly oppose the war in Iraq after the George W. Bush administration launched it in 2002. After the fall of Baghdad in April 2003, he said he was chastened by its quick fall but didn't regret his "60 Minutes" commentaries. "I'm in a position of feeling secure enough so that I can say what I think is right and if so many people think it's wrong that I get fired, well, I've got enough to eat," Rooney said at the time. Andrew Aitken Rooney was born on Jan. 14, 1919, in Albany, N.Y., and worked as a copy boy on the Albany Knickerbocker News while in high school. College at Colgate University was cut short by World War II, when Rooney worked for Stars and Stripes. With another former Stars and Stripes staffer, Oram C. Hutton, Rooney wrote four books about the war. They included the 1947 book, "Their Conqueror's Peace: A Report to the American Stockholders," documenting offenses against the Germans by occupying forces.

Rooney and his wife, Marguerite, were married for 62 years before she died of heart failure in 2004. They had four children and lived in New York, with homes in Norwalk, Conn., and upstate New York. Daughter Emily Rooney is a former executive producer of ABC's "World News Tonight." Brian was a longtime ABC News correspondent, Ellen a photographer and Martha Fishel is chief of the public service division of the U.S. National Library of Medicine. Services will be private, and it's anticipated CBS News will hold a public memorial later, Brian Rooney said Saturday. Reblog A few minutes about Andy Rooney - Community News - NorthJersey.com © 2017 North Jersey Media Group November 17, 2011 A few minutes about Andy Rooney By Flynn, Ed Twin-Boro News I didn’t know Andy Rooney but I wish I had. Long-time TV personality Andy Rooney sits in his New York office in this Jan. 28, 1983 file photo. I think we would have gotten along. However, I’m not sure he would have wanted to meet me.

He pretty much made that clear on his last broadcast for "60 Minutes" when he asked that if anyone should happen to see him in a restaurant they do him a favor and leave him alone. I suspect, however, that his pose on TV as a cantankerous, old curmudgeon was just that… a pose. I’ve known a few celebrities in my own life, particularly during the years I served as a public relations consultant to the Screen Actors Guild in New York City. And, while some of them would pretend to be annoyed when stopped on the street and asked for an autograph, they would have been more upset if they hadn’t been recognized in the first place. Besides, in one of his more unguarded moments, Andy Rooney once wrote, "Everyone you meet deserves to be greeted with a smile." I have a feeling that came closer to reflecting the sentiments of the real Andy Rooney. Let me be clear. When I suggest that Andy Rooney and I had a lot in common, I’m not comparing our careers as writers. Rooney was in the Big Leagues; I spent my years in the minors. Where we probably had the most in common was our attitude toward old age.

"I didn’t get old on purpose," he wrote recently. "It just happened." Same with me. I thought of that quote the other day when I was eating in the dining room at the retirement community where I now live, and one of the ladies asked me how old I am. "I’ve just turned 89," I said. I was expecting her to say that I didn’t look that old, but she didn’t. Instead, she told me she was 92. She said it triumphantly, as if growing old was a game, and the one with the highest number won. I told her I was sure she’d live to be 100. She seemed pleased to hear it. I think the first time I ever really became conscious of my age was when I was 13. That would have been in 1935 during the depths of the Depression. Back then, Wednesday nights at Pop’s Palace theater in Bergenfield were known as "Dish Night" when women always received another free dish in one of the sets that are now known as Depression Glass.

Dad generally took my mom, my sister and me to the movies on that night for a program that, in addition to the free cup or saucer or plate, featured a double feature, a newsreel, short subject and a cartoon. Tickets cost 25 cents for an adult, 10 cents for a child. According to the list of prices posted in the ticket booth, a child was someone 12 or under. Dad, however, would buy two tickets for adults and two for children. My sister, who was four years younger than me, obviously qualified for the child’s ticket. But I was 13; an adult and proud of it. "But I’m 13," I’d whisper to dad. "Just scrunch down when I hand the tickets to the ticket-taker," he’d say. It was embarrassing, particularly when the guy who took the tickets and knew me well from the Saturday afternoon matinee, would look at me and smile. I’m not sure when dad eventually began to spring for the full price ticket for me. It was probably when I had grown as tall as he was and "scrunching" down was no longer an option.

For most of my life, I was among those who people said looked young for their age. When I was in my 20s, I was still occasionally asked to show some ID at a bar; and when I became a grandfather and a great-grandfather, people always said I didn’t look that old. But they don’t say things like that anymore. Which reminds me of something else Andy Rooney once wrote in his down-to-earth style. "Life," he said, "is like a roll of toilet paper. The closer it gets to the end, the faster it goes." When I heard of Andy Rooney’s own death at 92, less than a month after his retirement from "60 Minutes," I recalled a more eloquent quote, this from a poem written by John Donne in the 1600s: "Each man's death diminishes me, For I am involved in mankind.

Therefore, send not to know For whom the bell tolls, It tolls for thee." Andy Rooney of '60 Minutes' talked about life's absurdities, large and small - CSMonitor.com Andy Rooney of '60 Minutes' talked about life's absurdities, large and small "60 Minutes" commentator Andy Rooney, who passed on Friday, won Emmy Awards for his commentaries targeting everything from politics to pennies in curmudgeonly three-minute essays. By David Bauder, Associated Press November 5, 2011 Save for later Saved Andy Rooney of "60 Minutes" attends a memorial service for CBS newsman Walter Cronkite at the Lincoln Center in New York in 2009. Rooney, who won multiple Emmy awards, targeted everything from politics to pennies in curmudgeonly three-minute essays that concluded every edition of "60 Minutes," the longest running news magazine on US television. Newscom View Caption of New York — Andy Rooney so dreaded the day he had to end his signature "60 Minutes" commentaries about life's large and small absurdities that he kept going until he was 92 years old. Even then, he said he wasn't retiring.

Writers never retire. But his life after the end of "A Few Minutes With Andy Rooney" was short: He died Friday night, according to CBS, only a month after delivering his 1,097th and final televised commentary. Rooney talked on "60 Minutes" about what was in the news, and his opinions occasionally got him in trouble. But he was just as likely to discuss the old clothes in his closet, why air travel had become unpleasant and why banks needed to have important sounding names. Photos of the Day Photos of the day 02/08 "I obviously have a knack for getting on paper what a lot of people have thought and didn't realize they thought," Rooney once said. "And they say, 'Hey, yeah!' And they like that." Looking for something new to punctuate its weekly broadcast, "60 Minutes" aired its first Rooney commentary on July 2, 1987. He complained about people who keep track of how many people die in car accidents on holiday weekends. In fact, he said, the Fourth of July is "one of the safest weekends of the year to be going someplace." More than three decades later, he was railing about how unpleasant air travel had become.

"Let's make a statement to the airlines just to get their attention," he said. "We'll pick a week next year and we'll all agree not to go anywhere for seven days." In early 2009, as he was about to turn 90, Rooney looked ahead to President Barack Obama's upcoming inauguration with a look at past inaugurations. He told viewers that Calvin Coolidge's 1925 swearing-in was the first to be broadcast on radio, adding, "That may have been the most interesting thing Coolidge ever did." For his final essay, Rooney said that he'd live a life luckier than most. "I wish I could do this forever. I can't, though," he said. He said he probably hadn't said anything on "60 Minutes" that most of his viewers didn't already know or hadn't thought. "That's what a writer does," he said. "A writer's job is to tell the truth." True to his occasional crotchety nature, though, he complained about being famous or bothered by fans. His last wish from fans: If you see him in a restaurant, just let him eat his dinner.

Rooney wrote for CBS stars such as Arthur Godfrey and Garry Moore during the 1950s and early 1960s, before settling into a partnership with newsman Harry Reasoner. With Rooney as the writer, they collaborated on several news specials, including an Emmy-winning report on misrepresentations of black people in movies and history books. He wrote "An Essay on Doors" in 1964, and continued with contemplations on bridges, chairs and women. "The best work I ever did," Rooney said. "But nobody knows I can do it or ever did it. Nobody knows that I'm a writer and producer. They think I'm this guy on television." He became such a part of the culture that comic Joe Piscopo satirized Rooney's squeaky voice with the refrain, "Did you ever wonder ..." For many years, "60 Minutes" improbably was the most popular program on television and a dose of Rooney was what people came to expect for a knowing smile on the night before they had to go back to work. Rooney left CBS in 1970 when it refused to air his angry essay about the Vietnam War.

He went on TV for the first time, reading the essay on PBS and winning a Writers Guild of America award for it. He returned to CBS three years later as a writer and producer of specials. Notable among them was the 1975 "Mr. Rooney Goes to Washington," whose lighthearted but serious look at government won him a Peabody Award for excellence in broadcasting. His words sometimes landed Rooney in hot water. CBS suspended him for three months in 1990 for making racist remarks in an interview, which he denied. Gay rights groups were mad, during the AIDS epidemic, when Rooney mentioned homosexual unions in saying "many of the ills which kill us are self-induced." Indians protested when Rooney suggested Native Americans who made money from casinos weren't doing enough to help their own people. The Associated Press learned the danger of getting on Rooney's cranky side. In 1996, AP Television Writer Frazier Moore wrote a column suggesting it was time for Rooney to retire. On Rooney's next "60 Minutes" appearance, he invited those who disagreed to make their opinions known.

The AP switchboard was flooded by some 7,000 phone calls and countless postcards were sent to the AP mail room. "Your piece made me mad," Rooney told Moore two years later. "One of my major shortcomings – I'm vindictive. I don't know why that is. Even in petty things in my life I tend to strike back. It's a lot more pleasurable a sensation than feeling threatened." He was one of television's few voices to strongly oppose the war in Iraq after the George W. Bush administration launched it in 2002. After the fall of Baghdad in April 2003, he said he was chastened by its quick fall but didn't regret his "60 Minutes" commentaries. "I'm in a position of feeling secure enough so that I can say what I think is right and if so many people think it's wrong that I get fired, well, I've got enough to eat," Rooney said at the time. Andrew Aitken Rooney was born on Jan. 14, 1919, in Albany, N.Y., and worked as a copy boy on the Albany Knickerbocker News while in high school.

College at Colgate University was cut short by World War II, when Rooney worked for Stars and Stripes. With another former Stars and Stripes staffer, Oram C. Hutton, Rooney wrote four books about the war. They included the 1947 book, "Their Conqueror's Peace: A Report to the American Stockholders," documenting offenses against the Germans by occupying forces. Rooney and his wife, Marguerite, were married for 62 years before she died in 2004. They had four children and lived in Rowayton, Conn. Daughter Emily Rooney is a former executive producer of ABC's "World News Tonight." Next up Former '60 Minutes' Commentator Andy Rooney Dies | Fox News Former '60 Minutes' Commentator Andy Rooney Dies Published November 05, 2011 Facebook 0 Twitter 0 livefyre Email Print FILE - Aug. 9, 2009: "60 Minutes" commentator Andy Rooney, center, leaves the Celebration of Life Memorial ceremony for Walter Cronkite at Avery Fisher Hall in New York.

(AP) NEW YORK – Andy Rooney so dreaded the day he had to end his signature "60 Minutes" commentaries about life's large and small absurdities that he kept going until he was 92 years old. Even then, he said he wasn't retiring. Writers never retire. But his life after the end of "A Few Minutes With Andy Rooney" was short: He died Friday night, according to CBS, only a month after delivering his 1,097th and final televised commentary. Rooney had gone to the hospital for an undisclosed surgery, but major complications developed and he never recovered. "Andy always said he wanted to work until the day he died, and he managed to do it, save the last few weeks in the hospital," said his "60 Minutes" colleague, correspondent Steve Kroft. Rooney talked on "60 Minutes" about what was in the news, and his opinions occasionally got him in trouble. But he was just as likely to discuss the old clothes in his closet, why air travel had become unpleasant and why banks needed to have important-sounding names. Rooney won one of his four Emmy Awards for a piece on whether there was a real Mrs. Smith who made Mrs.

Smith's Pies. As it turned out, there was no Mrs. Smith. "I obviously have a knack for getting on paper what a lot of people have thought and didn't realize they thought," Rooney once said. "And they say, `Hey, yeah!' And they like that." Looking for something new to punctuate its weekly broadcast, "60 Minutes" aired its first Rooney commentary on July 2, 1978. He complained about people who keep track of how many people die in car accidents on holiday weekends. In fact, he said, the Fourth of July is "one of the safest weekends of the year to be going someplace." More than three decades later, he was railing about how unpleasant air travel had become. "Let's make a statement to the airlines just to get their attention," he said. "We'll pick a week next year and we'll all agree not to go anywhere for seven days." In early 2009, as he was about to turn 90, Rooney looked ahead to President Barack Obama's upcoming inauguration with a look at past inaugurations.

He told viewers that Calvin Coolidge's 1925 swearing-in was the first to be broadcast on radio, adding, "That may have been the most interesting thing Coolidge ever did." "Words cannot adequately express Andy's contribution to the world of journalism and the impact he made -- as a colleague and a friend -- upon everybody at CBS," said Leslie Moonves, CBS Corp. president and CEO. Jeff Fager, CBS News chairman and "60 Minutes" executive producer, said "it's hard to imagine not having Andy around. He loved his life and he lived it on his own terms. We will miss him very much." For his final essay, Rooney said that he'd live a life luckier than most. "I wish I could do this forever. I can't, though," he said. He said he probably hadn't said anything on "60 Minutes" that most of his viewers didn't already know or hadn't thought. "That's what a writer does," he said. "A writer's job is to tell the truth." True to his occasional crotchety nature, though, he complained about being famous or bothered by fans.

His last wish from fans: If you see him in a restaurant, just let him eat his dinner. Rooney was a freelance writer in 1949 when he encountered CBS radio star Arthur Godfrey in an elevator and -- with the bluntness millions of people learned about later -- told him his show could use better writing. Godfrey hired him and by 1953, when he moved to TV, Rooney was his only writer. He wrote for CBS' Garry Moore during the early 1960s before settling into a partnership with Harry Reasoner at CBS News. Given a challenge to write on any topic, he wrote "An Essay on Doors" in 1964, and continued with contemplations on bridges, chairs and women. "The best work I ever did," Rooney said. "But nobody knows I can do it or ever did it. Nobody knows that I'm a writer and producer. They think I'm this guy on television." He became such a part of the culture that comic Joe Piscopo satirized Rooney's squeaky voice with the refrain, "Did you ever ..." Rooney never started any of his essays that way.

For many years, "60 Minutes" improbably was the most popular program on television and a dose of Rooney was what people came to expect for a knowing smile on the night before they had to go back to work. Rooney left CBS in 1970 when it refused to air his angry essay about the Vietnam War. He went on TV for the first time, reading the essay on PBS and winning a Writers Guild of America award for it. He returned to CBS three years later as a writer and producer of specials. Notable among them was the 1975 "Mr. Rooney Goes to Washington," whose lighthearted but serious look at government won him a Peabody Award for excellence in broadcasting. His words sometimes landed Rooney in hot water. CBS suspended him for three months in 1990 for making racist remarks in an interview, which he denied. Rooney, who was arrested in Florida while in the Army in the 1940s for refusing to leave a seat among blacks on a bus, was hurt deeply by the charge of racism.

Gay rights groups were mad, during the AIDS epidemic, when Rooney mentioned homosexual unions in saying "many of the ills which kill us are self-induced." Indians protested when Rooney suggested Native Americans who made money from casinos weren't doing enough to help their own people. The Associated Press learned the danger of getting on Rooney's cranky side. In 1996, AP Television Writer Frazier Moore wrote a column suggesting it was time for Rooney to leave the broadcast. On Rooney's next "60 Minutes" appearance, he invited those who disagreed to make their opinions known. The AP switchboard was flooded by some 7,000 phone calls and countless postcards were sent to the AP mail room. "Your piece made me mad," Rooney told Moore two years later. "One of my major shortcomings -- I'm vindictive. I don't know why that is. Even in petty things in my life I tend to strike back. It's a lot more pleasurable a sensation than feeling threatened. He was one of television's few voices to strongly oppose the war in Iraq.

After the fall of Baghdad in April 2003, he said he was chastened by its quick fall but didn't regret his "60 Minutes" commentaries. "I'm in a position of feeling secure enough so that I can say what I think is right and if so many people think it's wrong that I get fired, well, I've got enough to eat," Rooney said at the time. Andrew Aitken Rooney was born on Jan. 14, 1919, in Albany, N.Y., and worked as a copy boy on the Albany Knickerbocker News while in high school. College at Colgate University was cut short by World War II, when Rooney worked for Stars and Stripes. With another former Stars and Stripes staffer, Oram C. Hutton, Rooney wrote four books about the war. They included the 1947 book, "Their Conqueror's Peace: A Report to the American Stockholders," documenting offenses against the Germans by occupying forces. Rooney and his wife, Marguerite, were married for 62 years before she died of heart failure in 2004.

They had four children and lived in New York, with homes in Norwalk, Conn., and upstate New York. Daughter Emily Rooney is a former executive producer of ABC's "World News Tonight." Brian was a longtime ABC News correspondent, Ellen a photographer and Martha Fishel is chief of the public service division of the U.S. National Library of Medicine. Services will be private, and it's anticipated CBS News will hold a public memorial later, Brian Rooney said Saturday. Advertisement A Final Few Minutes with Andy Rooney - CBC News - Latest Canada, World, Entertainment and Business News A Final Few Minutes with Andy Rooney Rex on Andy Rooney 3:39 Rex on Andy Rooney 3:39 Rex offers his take on veteran journalist Andy Rooney, who is leaving 60 Minutes at the age of 92. Read a transcript of this Rex Murphy episode The wonderful Andy Rooney, after -- what is it? 800… 900 years? -- no actually it’s an almost as impressive 62 years, is leaving CBS.

The real milestone for most people, however, is that the man who brought the "mudgeon" to curmudgeon -- who groused, griped, grunted, grumbled and kvetched about the modern world better than anyone else in America --- is unhitching his mournful dingy from the mighty battleship 60 Minutes. Tonight was his last lamentation on that program. Andy – sorry, Mr. Rooney – is a mere 92-years-old and has been flailing America and all its wonders, from Peanuts to Presidents, from Lady Gaga to all those pins in new shirts, since 1978. He signed off tonight having delivered about 1100 jeremiads, about the horrors of the modern world. What to say of Mr. Rooney? That he could be like a really grumpy version of an Old Testament Prophet, who’s run out of locusts for supper and had a particularly trying day in the wilderness, and in addition the most threatening set of eyebrows outside of Mount Olympus. When Mr. Rooney raised one of those ominous ocular outcrops, it was like watching an avalanche in reverse.

When the great bushy thickets combined -- as it was almost impossible from their abundance for them not to -- it was like a great white fort had been erected on his forehead to keep out all the nonsense of this nonsensical age. Those little talks of his, the 60 Minutes Post Scripts, are many of them devilishly clever in all their seeming artlessness. He had a kind of genius for wild observation, as his comment that you think short shoes would be less expensive than long shoes -- "less in them" and then concluded that "people with short feet are subsidizing people with long feet" -- the injustice. Dig up his verbal mugging of Bill Gates on the internet it’s a classic. And please don’t call his pieces rants -- they are all fragments of one melancholy aria about modern times, from a man born in an age which has passed, an age tougher, wilder, more free and rightfully anxious that the virtues and joys of that gone day are lost forever. A Few Minutes with Andy Rooney every Sunday night, it wasn’t quite going to Church, but there were similarities. Anyway, Andy, at 92, is laying down the cudgel. Well done, thou good and faithful Curmudgeon.

For The National, I’m Rex Murphy. Andy Rooney to sign off '60 Minutes' after 33 years - latimes YOU ARE HERE: LAT Home → Collections → Entertainment Andy Rooney to sign off '60 Minutes' after 33 years In typical Rooney fashion, news of his retirement was muted so as to give the irascible 93-year-old his final say on Sunday. September 28, 2011 |By Scott Collins, Los Angeles Times After 33 years of piquant and sometimes irascible commentary, 92-year-old Andy Rooney will surrender his regular gig on CBS' legendary newsmagazine "60 Minutes" this weekend. Rooney will sign off with a final piece — his 1,097th — on Sunday's program, preceded by a retrospective segment on his career with longtime colleague Morley Safer, the network said in a news release Tuesday. FOR THE RECORD: A headline on this article says Andy Rooney is 93 years old. He is 92.

In addition to his own often attention-grabbing views — he once scolded those who mourned the 1994 suicide of Kurt Cobain by saying he'd never even heard of the Nirvana frontman before then — the beetle-browed Rooney is one of the last on-air links to the glory days of CBS News, when "60 Minutes" regularly topped the ratings and anchorman Walter Cronkite was dubbed "the most trusted man in America." Virtually all of Rooney's on-air colleagues from when he joined "60 Minutes" in 1978 — including Mike Wallace, Harry Reasoner and Ed Bradley — have either retired or died; only Safer, 79, and Bob Schieffer, the 74-year-old host of "Face the Nation," remain at work. "There's nobody like Andy and there never will be. He'll hate hearing this, but he's an American original," Jeff Fager, the chairman CBS News and executive producer of "60 Minutes," said in a statement.

"It's harder for him to do it every week, but he will always have the ability to speak his mind on '60 Minutes' when the urge hits him." The network has not indicated whether it will replace Rooney. A CBS spokesman said neither network executives nor Rooney would elaborate until the commentator has his say on Sunday's program. Rooney did not appear on last week's season premiere of "60 Minutes" but the show did not allude to his absence. Last year, Rooney had told an interviewer, "I will work until I drop." Rooney is exiting his post with apparently none of the rancor that attended the departure of another CBS fixture, former anchor Dan Rather, who was harshly criticized for a 2004 report on then-President George W. Bush's Vietnam-era military service that network executives later deemed flawed. The following year, Rooney obliquely criticized Rather and, by extension, his network bosses, as ones who had "escaped" punishment despite their responsibility for overseeing the Bush piece. The network eventually pushed Rather from his "CBS Evening News" perch and ultimately booted him from the network in 2006.

(Rather later sued CBS but the case was dismissed.) In 1990, Rooney was suspended by CBS for three months after he was quoted making disparaging remarks about blacks and gays. Rooney denied making some of the remarks but accepted the suspension rather than leave the network. Rooney's departure firmly closes another door on an era for CBS and TV news in general. Some analysts hailed Rooney as a link to a more literate, less partisan age. "Andy Rooney's retirement from CBS shows how much television has evolved since the glory days of network television decades ago," said Paul Levinson, a media professor at Fordham University in New York. "It was a time of sage and piquant commentary from Eric Sevareid, John Chancellor and, since 1978, from Andy Rooney. Nowadays you have to go to cable to find commentary, where's there's lots of it, but often petty, carping, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." A World War II veteran who wrote for the military newspaper "Stars & Stripes," Rooney joined CBS in 1949, working with then-popular host Arthur Godfrey and later with Reasoner, mainly as a writer and producer.

In 1978, "60 Minutes" tapped him as a summer replacement for its "Point/Counterpoint" opinion segment. Within a few months, "A Few Minutes With Andy Rooney" had proved a hit with viewers. The segment's ultra-simple format became a familiar — and sometimes parodied — TV signpost. Wearing a rumpled suit, the pear-shaped Rooney would sit, hands folded, at his desk in what appeared to be his rather cramped and cluttered CBS office, speaking directly into the camera. His typical jowly, bemused expression would occasionally curl into an outright smile, but just as often he would raise his voice slightly during his rants on random topics, the sort of free-range target practice that these days routinely turns up on Twitter. Sometimes the matters were ones of consequence; more often, not. One characteristic piece faulted coffeemakers for putting fewer ounces than advertised of grounds in each can. "I don't really have any right to complain," he then concluded wryly.

"The actual content of '60 Minutes' is now less than 42 minutes." "I don't even know if they could replace him?" Doug Spero, an associate professor of mass communication at Meredith College in North Carolina, wrote of Rooney in an email. "He was the true representative of trivial matters. Common everyday things got his attention and common everyday things frustrated him, just like many of his viewers, who could relate." Andy Rooney, former ‘60 Minutes’ commentator, dies at 92 - The Washington Post Andy Rooney, former ‘60 Minutes’ commentator, dies at 92 The inside track on Washington politics. Be the first to know about new stories from PowerPost. Sign up to follow, and we’ll e-mail you free updates as they’re published. You’ll receive free e-mail news updates each time a new story is published. You’re all set!

By Sarah Halzack By Sarah Halzack November 5, 2011 Follow @sarahhalzack Andy Rooney , a humorist whose deadpan wit, perpetually furrowed brow and insights on the illogic and quirkiness of modern living defined his long-running commentary segment on CBS’s weekly news program “60 Minutes,” died Nov. 4 in New York. He was 92. CBS News said he had been hospitalized for an undisclosed surgery , but he did not recover after major complications developed. He had made his final appearance on “60 Minutes” on Oct. 2 . Mr. Rooney was a best-selling author and syndicated columnist, but he was best known for his long and celebrated career as a TV essayist. Walter Cronkite, the late CBS News anchor, once described Mr. Rooney as an “Everyman, articulating all the frustrations with modern life that the rest of us Everymen (and Everywomen) suffer with silence or mumbled oaths.” His three-minute segments on “60 Minutes,” which typically closed the program, brought him national recognition as the quintessential curmudgeon.

For more than 30 years, he lent his exasperated take on whimsical topics — including the uselessness of the cotton insert in a bottle of pills and the sense of frustration when winter gloves go missing. In a piece about office clutter, he sat at his desk and asked, “What’s a paperweight for, anyway? Papers don’t blow around in here. I can’t even open the window, what do I need to weigh papers down for?” Mr. Rooney endeared himself to fans by being frank and down-to-earth, as in a 2008 piece about his distaste for modern art and its prevalence in public spaces. “When did bright-colored plastic cows, pigs and rabbits get to be art?” he began. He called “Two Indeterminate Lines,” a New York street sculpture, “pretentious nonsense” and went on to note, “Does every open space have to be filled in? Is this really better looking than nothing would be? I don’t think so.” Mr. Rooney occasionally weighed in on more serious topics, such as a 2003 segment about the war in Iraq. “We didn’t shock them and we didn’t awe them in Baghdad,” Mr.

Rooney said less than two weeks after the war began, citing a slogan used by the Bush administration to promote the invasion. “The phrase makes us look like foolish braggarts. The president ought to fire whoever wrote that for him.” He said later in the same essay, “I wish my America had never gotten into this war. Now that we’re in it, I want us to win it.” No matter the subject, his TV essays always served as a cultural touchstone. “In so many of his commentaries, he sort of encapsulates all of the changes that occurred in America during and after World War II,” said Ron Simon, a curator at the Paley Center for Media in New York. Mr. Rooney, Simon said, “is like the grandfather who remembers life without television.” Mr. Rooney, a reporter for the Stars and Stripes newspaper during World War II, had worked at CBS for almost 30 years before joining “60 Minutes.” He joined the network in 1949 as a writer for “Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts” and went on to write for “The Garry Moore Show” and various public affairs programs.

In 1964, he began a celebrated collaboration with CBS correspondent Harry Reasoner on a series of TV specials, including “An Essay on Doors” (1964), “An Essay on Hotels” (1966), “An Essay on Women" (1967) and “An Essay on Chairs” (1968), among others. Mr. Rooney worked with Bill Cosby on CBS News’s “Of Black America” (1968) series, a project that focused on how blacks were portrayed in history books and Hollywood. His script for one installment, "Black History: Lost, Stolen or Strayed,” earned an Emmy Award. In 1970, when CBS refused to air another of his specials, “An Essay on War,” Mr. Rooney quit the network. Executives told him they thought the piece was too long, but they also may have been worried about it expressing too boldly his doubts about the government’s involvement in the Vietnam War. “A younger generation doesn’t understand why the United States went into Vietnam,” wrote Mr. Rooney, who had served in World War II.

“Having gotten into the war, all it wanted to consider itself a winner was to get out. Unable to make things the way it wanted them, but unwilling to accept defeat, it merely changed what it wanted.” He then took a job at PBS, where the piece eventually aired. He later worked at ABC before returning to CBS in 1972. His grouchy, acerbic style was his signature, but it landed Mr. Rooney in trouble several times when his comments were perceived as insensitive or bigoted. The most prominent example was when he was suspended from “60 Minutes” in 1990 after the Advocate, a national gay newspaper based in Los Angeles, quoted Mr. Rooney making derogatory comments about the intelligence of African Americans. Mr. Rooney denied that he had made the remarks, and the conversation was not recorded. His suspension from “60 Minutes” was supposed to last three months, but CBS cut that short after a dramatic drop in the show’s ratings. Around the same time, Mr. Rooney drew fire from gay rights supporters after he wrote a syndicated column in which he stated that he “wouldn’t want to spend much time in a small room” with gay people.

In a subsequent “60 Minutes” essay, he likened “homosexual unions” to alcoholism and smoking, saying they were “self-induced” ills that could lead to early death. Nevertheless, Mr. Rooney’s career bounced back quickly after the brief rash of negative publicity. His memoir “My War” (1995) became a bestseller, and he was given an Emmy Award for lifetime achievement in 2003. He received a prestigious Peabody Award for his hour-long CBS special “Mr. Rooney Goes to Washington” (1975), in which he professed to see “what a non-political reporter with no working knowledge of that place could find out about it.” After interviewing an agency head who was at a loss to explain the purpose of his job, Mr. Rooney found a city not “being run by evil people, it’s being run by people like you and me. And you know how we have to be watched.” Andrew Aitken Rooney was born Jan. 14, 1919, in Albany, N.Y. His father earned enough money as a salesman for the Albany Felt company to send his son to private school.

He attended Colgate University in Hamilton, N.Y., before joining the Army during World War II. When he arrived in London, Mr. Rooney talked his way into a job with Stars and Stripes despite limited journalism experience; he had been a copy boy at an Albany newspaper. At Stars and Stripes, he met Cronkite, one of his closest friends, and Don Hewitt, who became the founding producer of “60 Minutes.” In 1943, Mr. Rooney was one of a half-dozen correspondents who flew on one of the first U.S. bombing raids against Germany. He was also among the first Americans to visit a German concentration camp. He later co-wrote three books with Oram C. Hutton based on their wartime experiences, including “The Story of the Stars and Stripes.” Mr. Rooney was married for 62 years to his high school girlfriend, Marguerite “Marge” Howard, until her death in 2004.

Survivors include four children, Emily Rooney, a former executive producer of ABC’s “World News Tonight”; Brian Rooney, a former ABC News correspondent; Ellen Rooney, a photographer; and Martha Fishel, chief of the public service division of the U.S. National Library of Medicine at the National Institutes of Health; and five grandchildren. After his many postwar years at CBS working on Godfrey’s program and others, Mr. Rooney transitioned to the news division in 1964. His “60 Minutes” segment, “A Few Minutes With Andy Rooney,” was launched in 1978 as a summer replacement for a partisan-bickering feature called “Point-Counterpoint.” He soon became a “60 Minutes” fixture. Mr. Rooney’s pieces had a no-frills style: He was typically filmed in his office instead of a studio. The desk he sat behind was one that Mr. Rooney, an avid woodworker, had carved and built. As for the crabby disposition that was always a hallmark of his style, Mr. Rooney told USA Today in 2010, “There’s an awful lot of nonsense in this world. I’m not shy about expressing a dislike when I feel it.

If that’s grumpy, then I am.”

Question: What TV program once concluded with "A Few Minutes with Andy Rooney"?
Answer: 60 Minutes