Oh yes, I remember that now. I also saw a follow-up statement by him, where someone (IIRC Ed Bradley) asked him if he meant it, and he went on this tirade about how, in effect (not quoting him) the downfall of “the Greatest Generation” was due to women leaving the house and feeling like they had to be equal to men, and how much better things were when Teh Man went to work and Teh Woman stayed home and raised the kids. He painted a real “Leave it to Beaver” type of ideal scenario. He finished up by saying something about how it was bad enough that women watched football, instead of taking that valuable weekend time to socialize or cook, but having them interview football players…you might as well teach a hen to crow, I tell’s ya!
I still like the guy, for all his misogynistic “Greatest Generation” claptrap.
For what it’s worth, the list of the most popular people in the history of [American] television from Entertainment Weekly really isn’t very good:
Jimmy Smits is the 48th most popular person in the history of American television? Only 12 of the 50 from all of the time from 1946 to 1969? Isn’t this list very biased toward recent television? (And notice how myopic this list is in that it doesn’t even find it necessary to mention that it’s only about American TV, as if the rest of the world doesn’t exist.) I can easily imagine someone old enough to remember 1940’s, 1950’s, and 1960’s television writing a nasty rejoinder to it in which they exaggerate the importance of older television. Andy Rooney’s reply may be as biased as Entertainment Weekly’s article, but it’s not much worse. And Rooney is joking, people. That’s his job. Yeah, I find him to be a tiresome bore too, but a lot of people like him. Just because those TV viewers are over 65 doesn’t mean that you can ignore their tastes. Furthermore, apparently Arthur Godfrey really was hugely popular in the late 1940’s and early 1950’s. He was also quite a jerk by most accounts, but he was really very popular.
Cite? Maybe I missed his “good reporting” because I was busy fighting in WWI when he did it, but somehow that seems unlikely. My mom did have one of his “books”, which I admit I found occasionally mildly humorous when I perused it. Of course, I was 10 at the time. But reporting? It is to puke.
Yeah, the list starts falling apart pretty seriously below about #15. And they do that scheap shit stunt of naming a whole category of people – the Not Ready for Primetime Players – because they can’t name an individual from the group who measures up.
BTW, what did Sarah Michelle Gellar ever do on TV? I know of her mainly through some schlockey horror flicks. My only impression – nice tits.
I remember Kristy Swanson as a pretty hot Buffy in a pretty amusing flick, but I’ve never seen the series. Not sure why, just seemed a ridiculous idea for a weekly series.
You know, maybe it’s something that varies from place to place. Perhaps it depends where you are, and who the local customers are. I’m only 36, have been to lots of movies over the last few years and have never, not one single time in my entire life, heard or seen a person using a cell phone during a movie in a movie theatre. Not at the Cineplex, not at AMC, not at Silvercity, not anywhere. Not during dramas, not during comedies, not during kid movies, not during action movies. Never.
This image of all kids of people using phones during movies is so bizarre to me I have difficulty believing it actually happens, except on the most rare occasions.
That’s absolutely correct. It’s his gimmick the way Jack Benny was always “39” and George Burns always smoked a cigar and Gracie Allen was always a numbskull, Lucille Ball was always a klutz, or, to use a recent example, Stephen Colbert is a conservative idiot loonball. It’s a shtick. I don’t care for Rooney myself, but I at least know that about him.
Auther Godfrey was way before my time, but I knew who he was before this thread and tend to agree that he should be on a list of all-time TV greats because he was very very influential. Just because someone’s not a household name doesn’t make them any less important.
I don’t see what’s so terribly wrong with the list. And I do understand why they mentioned the NRfPP instead of just one. They were a team that changed television. EW couldn’t name just one because they were all important. Perhaps they could have named Loren Michaels instead.
See, everybody’s ignorant about something. I’ve never once watched Buffy, but I knew that Sarah Michelle Gellar played Buffy in the long-running and highly acclaimed TV show. At least Rooney was joking.
Never. Maybe these lists are intentionally bad, but even if they weren’t, they’d still guarantee heated discussion. No one ever agrees on lists like this.
Me neither, and I see well over 100 movies a year in the theater. I did have a woman next to me checking her messages during Mystic River a few years ago, but she quit when I leaned over and asked her to please dim the light.
We were at the movies over the weekend and I could see a couple of people looking at the screens of their cell phones (possibly they were text messaging). I just found it amazing that it didn’t occur to Andy Rooney that people might answer a cell phone call during a movie. Somehow he seems stuck in some long-gone decade.
A few years ago, while flipping through the channels, I came upon Andy Rooney doing his schtick. Since he wasn’t Mickey Rooney, I kept on flipping through the channels. His humour simply does not appeal to me.
I don’t go to movies much. 5 in the last 6 months or so. Every single time, cell phones rang and were answered. At length. 3 times I sat near someone texting, near enough to be annoyed at the light. A quiet “Please don’t do that” led only to snarling ripostes along this line: “Wow, someone’s wearing her cranky pants tonight, eh?”
I think it’s a shame that my sister’s system has not yet been adopted: You are allowed to shoot one fool a week.
DAMN these new-fangled Buffys. When I was a kid we had ONE vampire and ONE vampire killer, and we LIKED it. I’ll bet you they have some kind of stake firing gun too. In my day you had to HAMMER it in…
**
Woody** you are killing me. When will you cut it out with the sign offs? You are seriously cracking me up, as I have just noticed you are still doing it.
Oh, and I like Andy Rooney. I know he a doddering ol’ fuddy duddy, but he makes me chuckle sometimes.
