"Yankee Doodle Dandy Andy Rooney" by Fly on the Wall

Yankee Doodle Dandy Andy Rooney

September 28, 2011

I was looking for a blog subject for one reason only: to push some of the embarrassingly old blogs off the cliff. Looks like blogging has gone the way of .... sliders, or Sarah Palin. Seemed like such a good idea at the outset. Then I read that 92-year-old Andy Rooney -- semi-retired from "60 Minutes" for a while -- is waving his last goodbye. Andy was a commentator I loved to hate ... not hate, really. He's a nice old guy, once a crack reporter/author who enriched (!) his retirement years by sitting at a desk and reading from the teleprompter an essay on the most inane subjects. The essay lasted under two minutes. I'll bet he took home $10,000 a shot. Do the math for his hourly rate. This made me mad because most of his observations were so obvious, like how many pens does a guy need, or what to do with old greeting cards, or why his bushy eyebrows are nobody's business. He didn't try to be funny. Just curmudgeonly. At that he succeeded. Most of all, he succeeded at keeping his wits when all around him were forgetting theirs. He even talked, not too kindly, as I remember, about old folks who lean back and drift off. I expect a replacement is on board. The network has a stable of sharpies from "CBS Sunday Morning" But I'll miss him closing down the show, if only for the teeth-gnashing.