Crazy Andy Rooney Is Dead

Nov 5, 2011 7 Comments ›› Pat Dollard

NEW YORK (AP) – CBS says former “60 Minutes” humorist Andy Rooney has died just a month after his final commentary aired.

He was 92. CBS says he died Friday night in New York.

Rooney spent more than 30 years wryly talking about the oddities of life for “60 Minutes.”

From Wikipedia:

He has claimed on Larry King Live to have a liberal bias, stating, “There is just no question that I, among others, have a liberal bias. I mean, I’m consistently liberal in my opinions.”[21] Though in a controversial 1999 book Rooney self-identified as agnostic,[22] in 2008 Rooney said he was an atheist.[23] Over the years many of his editorials have poked fun at the concept of God and organized religion. Increased speculation on this was brought to a head by a series of comments he made regarding Mel Gibson’s film The Passion of the Christ (2004).[24]

Though Rooney has been called Irish-American, he once said “I’m proud of my Irish heritage, but I’m not Irish. I’m not even Irish-American. I am American, period.”

In 2005, when four people were fired at CBS News perhaps because of the Killian documents controversy, Rooney said, “The people on the front lines got fired while the people most instrumental in getting the broadcast on escaped.” Others at CBS had “kept mum” about the controversy.[25]
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Racial remarks

Andy Rooney wrote a column in 1992 that it was “silly” for Native Americans to complain about team names like the Redskins saying, “The real problem is, we took the country away from the Indians, they want it back and we’re not going to give it to them. We feel guilty and we’ll do what we can for them within reason, but they can’t have their country back. Next question.”[26]

In a 2007 column for Tribune media services, he wrote, “I know all about Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig, but today’s baseball stars are all guys named Rodriguez to me.” Rooney later commented, “Yeah, I probably shouldn’t have said it, [but] it’s a name that seems common in baseball now. I certainly didn’t think of it in any derogatory sense.”[26]

Rooney always denied that he is a racist. In the 1940s, he was arrested after sitting in the back of a segregated bus in protest.[27] Also, in 2008, when Barack Obama was elected President of the United States, Rooney applauded the fact that “the citizens of this country, 80 percent of whom are white, freely chose to elect a black man as their leader simply because they thought he was the best choice.” He said that makes him proud, and that it proves that the country has “come a long way — a good way.”[28]
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Suspension by CBS

In 1990, Rooney was suspended without pay for three months. It is believed that this punishment was for saying that “too much alcohol, too much food, drugs, homosexual unions, cigarettes [are] all known to lead to premature death.” He wrote an explanatory letter to a gay organization after being ordered not to do so. After only four weeks without Rooney, 60 Minutes lost 20 percent of its audience. CBS management then decided that it was in the best interest of the network to have Rooney return immediately.[29]

After Rooney’s reinstatement, he made his remorse public:“ There was never a writer who didn’t hope that in some small way he was doing good with the words he put down on paper and, while I know it’s presumptuous, I’ve always had in my mind that I was doing some little bit of good. Now, I was to be known for having done, not good, but bad. I’d be known for the rest of my life as a racist bigot and as someone who had made life a little more difficult for homosexuals. I felt terrible about that and I’ve learned a lot.[30] ”

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Remarks on Kurt Cobain’s suicide

In a 1994 segment, Rooney attracted controversy with his remarks on Kurt Cobain’s suicide. He expressed his dismay that the death of Richard Nixon was overshadowed by Cobain’s suicide, stating that he had never heard of Cobain nor his band, Nirvana. He went on to say that Cobain’s suicide made him angry. “A lot of people would like to have the years left that he threw away,” Rooney said. “What’s all this nonsense about how terrible life is?” he asked, adding rhetorically to a young woman who had wept at the suicide, “I’d love to relieve the pain you’re going through by switching my age for yours.” In addition, he asked “What would all these young people be doing if they had real problems like a Depression, World War II or Vietnam?” and commented that “If [Cobain] applied the same brain to his music that he applied to his drug-infested life, it’s reasonable to think that his music may not have made much sense either.”[31]

On the following Sunday’s show, he apologized on the air, saying he should have taken into account Cobain’s depression. He also read only critical feedback from listeners without interjecting any commentary of his own.[32][33]