“Being dead.”
Andy Rooney died yesterday. He was 92.
I had a bad feeling when he didn’t show up on the television show 60 Minutes for several weeks in a row, and then went on to announce that he was retiring—after 60 years at CBS.
He was America’s Curmudgeon, and, after the three segments of 60 Minutes, I always left it on to see what Andy would say. A lot of the time I wasn’t interested in his rants, but he was often on the mark. I’ll miss him.
Some of his best pieces have been collected here. I love “Mixed nuts” from 1997. Haven’t you ever wondered whether you were being cheated by the presence of so many peanuts? (I’m one of those cheaters who always picks out the cashews.) Andy got paid to answer questions like that (he did more serious pieces, too, of course), and that’s a job I’d love!
His segments were always entertaining. But he did say he doesnt like chocolate chip cookies. How can someone not like chocolate chip cookies???
You sound like Andy Rooney! 🙂
They played that clip a couple of weeks ago when he retired. He was great at grabbing your attention with something simple like that, “I don’t like chocolate chip cookies.” You can’t help but listen after an intro like that.
Indeed, RIP Andy. 60Min won’t be the same. He gave the suggestion in his retirement piece that he’d be back occasionally, and I was looking forward to those special occasions.
I enjoyed his curmudgeonry for many years, but at some point he became a nasty, cranky old man. A fate that awaits us all, hopefully. (except the women, of course)
I did laugh at this Beavis & Butthead send-up at 1:10. Sorry, Andy.
Andy had always been cranky and had a very low tolerance for nonsense. It was always great fun to see someone offering him nonsense and seeing him get stuck into them.
That’s one of my favorite B&B bits! Every time I hear about Andy Rooney, that always comes to mind!
60 minutes will never be the same for me. He always made me smile.
Sundays I have dinner with Mom and Dad, and 60 Minutes is on about the same time the kitchen is cleaned up. Andy has been a regular part of that ritual, and we’ve missed him already.
b&
He did a great piece a few years back “On The Origin of Species” and Charles Darwin
Good long life.
In 2001 he won the Emperor Has No Clothes Award ~ which celebrates “plain speaking” on the shortcomings of religion by public figures [inaugurated by the Freedom From Religion Foundation in 1999]
Andy Rooney talked briefly about his atheism in this 2008 interview with the podcast “The Humanist Hour”:
I’ll miss you Andy.
As Andy said, it is all about applying logic to your life .. why does religion always get a free pass?
The Portable Atheist has been sitting prominently on Rooney’s bookshelf for the past few years. Anyone else notice that?
Here’s a Rooney quote for Jerry… “Vegetarian – that’s an old Indian word meaning lousy hunter.”
Read more: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/a/andy_rooney_2.html#ixzz1cqs0MQ4Z
How about the one complaining about free market capitalism – sorry, ‘desire’.
RIP Andy. Gone but not forgotten.
Sadly, the curmudgeon role seems now to have fallen to (ick) Ben Stein.
BTW: You can have my cashews. I’m allergic to them and pistachios (not anaphylaxis — just an irritating dermatitis). It’s the whole deadly nightshade family.
Funny, it used to be that you’d have a hard time finding them in any nut mix…now that I can’t eat them, they’re everywhere.
Ben Stein? Forget that.
I’ll be satisfied with John C. Dvorak.
Rooney is one of the reasons I stopped watching 60 Minutes.
Beavis honors Andy Rooney:
I just searched “you know what bothers me andy rooney” and this page was the top rank!
Its 2022 as of this comment – 11 years since!