That curmudgeonly champion of commentary, Andy Rooney, gives his last regular segment on the CBS network news program 60 Minutes on October 2nd. But old commentators never really retire, do they? The right to voice an opinion is as old as the soapbox on which one stands to do it, and older.
It seems that people like to hear commentary from other people because, whether it’s the same as or different from our own, their ideas may have something unique that will expand our own knowledge. If not, it may confirm something we already know (like the other person’s idea isn’t good at all). Either way, the experience can be enlightening.
Shows like 60 Minutes entertain and inform, much like newspapers, electronic media and protest gatherings (but the latter isn’t always as safe, as they are prone to getting a bit out of hand). The closing segment has become a staple of news programs, and nobody did it better: Andy Rooney made it enjoyable to laugh at ourselves and occasionally get mad about things that just don’t seem right. He took the time to examine everyday things like kitchen tools (in a kitchen drawer cleaning, he found he owned more than one nutcracker and couldn’t figure out why, since nobody in his family tends to crack nuts), abnormal things like wars, the complexity of our language (if he ever reads this, I hope I got it right) and the simplicity of life in its stripped-down essence.
Like most of us, he has made a blooper or two, getting himself sidelined from the show on one infamous occasion because he referred to something that CBS feared would inflame emotions among some viewers. Luckily God forgives our human flaws, and CBS did as well (that and sagging ratings in protest).
I didn’t know that Mr. Rooney’s original segment on 60 Minutes was a bi-weekly time slot shared with another called “Point/Counterpoint.” I didn’t watch the show as much back in the 1970s (it just didn’t seem like a show for me). Now I finally get the full thrust of the NBC Saturday Night Live joke about CBS’s “dueling commentator” concept that was ultimately taken off the air so that Rooney could chime in every week all by himself. He became a part of the ritual of the show; folks who would skip an entire program if they were too late to tune it in would jump aboard in the last minutes to hear what Andy had to say. He never disappointed.
Of course, blogs like mine are an offshoot of news commentary and that simple little soapbox. I try to be interesting and hope readers are fulfilled with what I have to say. Sure I’ve watched and taken mental notes on how Andy Rooney does it. Thank goodness he has books on the market as well, now that he is semi-retired, so his words will always be around. CBS says the door is always open if he wants to add his two cents sometime in the future. I hope he has a few good two-centers left in him and that we haven’t seen the last of him. He is a gem of a guy.
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