Seriously, has anyone in the history of television outlived their relevance by a longer period of time?
I still love “60 Minutes”. But, while watching it, I always have that nagging feeling like “he’s coming. That old old man with the melting lips and unoriginal ideas is coming.”
I mean. . .this guy is atrocious. If someone was starting out on TV doing the stuff he’s doing, they’d be gone in a day.
His last three “essays” have been about neckties (we should still wear them because somehow they’re civilized), baseball salaries (they’re too high), and VE Day (he was there).
He manages to do it all while just sitting at his desk (I guarantee he comes in one day per week), with no humor, no creative writing, and no original viewpoint (baseball players should be paid AFTER the season based on what they do.)
If he ever gets out into the field again, I expect it will be on the 9/10ths of a cent we pay for gas (yes, he’s done that before).
So, I just read a story that 60 Minutes II is being cancelled. What they should do is move the competent Steve (?) Hartman(*) to Sunday nights, and put old Rooney out to pasture. What a god damn dinosaur.
(*) this guy, while sort of a wuss does some interesting pieces. You might remember him from the CBS Saturday morning show where he threw darts at a map, picked a name at random from teh town where the dart landed and did a story on them. For over a year. Every state.
Recently he got like a $500 hair cut in NYC and then went and asked women what they thought of it. The consensus was that he looked like a dork.
*Who * are you pitting? I love Andy Rooney! When I was too young to understand 60 minutes and like it, I’d still tune in for the last 10 minutes to watch ol’ Andy.
I suspect a lot of people watch 60 Minutes at least in part because of Andy Rooney. I know I still listen to him, even if he is an opinionated curmudgeon I don’t always agree with. For years the opening of 60 Minutes said “All this and More on 60 Minutes”, until they finally changed it to “…and Andy Rooney”. Andy Rooney was to 60 Minutes as “and the rest” was to Gilligan’s Island.
Andy’s just too easy to make fun of:
“Did you ever notice how these kinds of programs always try to sneak in some “humor” feature at the end? Why is that, anyway? Isn’t 60 Minutes supposed to be a news show? And it’s always some rumpled opinionated talking head that I don’t agree withThe problem with these segments is that if they’re too dry, too many people won’t get the joke. But if they’re too blatant, people will think you’re making fun of them and will switch to “America’s Funniest Home Videos”. Maybe we’d all be better off if we got rid of the segment, and just read more letters every week. I lnow I’d write one for every show.”
Last Thursday night on the ride home, a rabid national talk radio host, tried to resuscitate this old monologue that was incorrectly attributed to Rooney.
I’d like an opinionated curmudgeon I don’t agree with.
This guy is just spent, though. He hasn’t had an original thought in years. He just sits behind the desk complaining (or worse, reminiscing) about nothing. . .“i get too much junk mail”, “there’s too much packaging for toothpaste”, “they don’t make phones like they use to”.
It’s stuff that stupid old people complain about every day without actually considering the other side of the coin.
And he follows what is still the smartest 50 minutes on TV.
Give me a guy who really lets rip. . .put a guy like Frank Rich on there. Put George Stephanopolous on there. . .someone who is actually plugged in to what is going on around him.
Don’t you just KNOW that Andy spends time in TWO places. . .his office and his apartment and the entire sphere of his whining is composed of what he can take from his travels between the two, while occasionally opening the paper.
That’s why he’s still on, Sparky. There are more old (not necessarily stupid) people than young ones. As one nudging that group (hell, at 62 maybe I’m already a member) I’m glad to see Mr. Rooney any time. A lot of what 60 Minutes presents stirs my guts up. Andy makes me laugh. And calms me down. Go, Andy! Long may you wave!
Believe me, I can like a cranky old coot. But he’s got to actually be cranky about something relevant, and not just recycle the same things he’s been cranky about forever and that other people are cranky about more interestingly.
He’s an unoriginal, un-funny, cranky old coot. It’s the first two parts I have a problem with.
Sometimes it seems like he just rolled into the studio on the day of the taping with no plan or idea whatsoever of what he’s going to so he just randomly grabs something off his desk and improvises some lame monogue on the spot.
“Look at this stapler. Isn’t that a funny word, 'stapler?” Why do some staples always bend? How do they get them to stick together in the box. Did you know there’s a store called Staples? Now they have electric staplers…"
A few years ago (four or five maybe), he read a viewer e-mail asking him to step down and giving lots of the complaints in here. He said that if people truly felt that way he would, and gave an e-mail address to write to. LITERALLY about 85% of the responses were “Go sit at home and kvetch about the neighbor’s dog like most irascible old farts”. His response: I’m not going anywhere.
A friend of mine recently told me about hearing him interviewed on a popular morning radio show in Denver. He spent the first several minutes of the interview bitching about how incompetent the radio station staff was in arranging the call with him, then attacked all of the questions he was asked with “That’s not how an actual journalist would do it” or “that’s a stupid question”. The disk jockey told him “I’m not a journalist” and finally asked, “Look… what would you like to talk about…” and Rooney responded something to the effect of “Nothing at all with you.” The DJ said “Fine… wish granted” and hung up on him far less than halfway into the time allotted for the interview. The station received hundreds of calls and e-mails, almost all of them cheering the DJ.
I know what you mean, but Rooney’s pretty on-the-ballo for 80-odd.
It’s the other buggers on 20/20 and 60 Mins that irritate the sit out of me. I busted a TV set when they dedicated an entire segment to one of themselves. Yes, a tribute to some pompous hack who takes himself too seriously from a load of other pompous hacks who take themselves too seriously.
The best thing about the film The Insider was the demolition job it did on the self-same Mike Wallach. Loved it.
I know what you mean, but Rooney’s pretty on-the-ball for 80-odd.
It’s the other buggers on 20/20 and 60 Mins that irritate the shit out of me. I busted a TV set when they dedicated an entire segment to one of themselves. Yes, a tribute to some pompous hack who takes himself too seriously from a load of other pompous hacks who take themselves too seriously.
The best thing about the film The Insider was the demolition job it did on the self-same Mike Wallach. Loved it.
I believe 100% that he has done this on more than one occasion. The baseball thing he did 3 weeks ago could have been put together in 2 minutes.
He made 2 points and had the interns plug in some video and do some calculations like how much Giambi earned per hit last year.
AND. . .I distinctly remember the epsidoe Sampiro is talking about. I was so hoping he was finally going to be gone. He comes on the air and goes, “I want to thank everyone who wrote in.”
And, like, that was it.
Most clueless TV personality out there. By a MILE.
John Stossel is one of my least favorite humans. He claims that people hate him because he’s right wing. I hate him because he’s an arrogant megalomaniacal jerk who habitually tells only half the story and considers it case-closed (e.g. yes, there are more trees now than there were at the turn of the century, but it’s a little bit more than the number of trees that has environmentalists concerned)
Heh. You think Rooney’s bad! Have you ever watched 60 Minutes II? His erstwhile apprentice, Charles Grodin, isn’t (well, wasn’t now) even half as funny or relevant as Rooney is. I think I managed to stand about two of his monologues before I decided watching 60MII to the end was a fool’s game…
