Rrrrrrrrr!! ROONEY!!!

May 11, 2010 7:35 AM

The ultimate GET OFF MY LAWN collection. Time magazine of all places brings the LOLZ with the ultimate Andy Rooney Top 10. What's a Lady Gaga?
posted by spicynuts (92 comments total)

Who's Andy Rooney? Is he someone I'd have to watch television to know about?
posted by Faint of Butt at 7:37 AM on May 11, 2010 [7 favorites]

Well, it's better to have never heard of Justin Bieber than to have heard of Lady Gaga. So I guess I'm happy for him.
posted by mccarty.tim at 7:37 AM on May 11, 2010 [1 favorite]

Related lists: Top 10 Grumpiest Andy Rooney Segments, Top 10 Worst Superhero Sequels, Top 10 College Dropouts, Happy Cinco de Mayo: Top 10 Drunkest Holidays.

So now Time magazine is getting into the whole "stupid top ten lists on the internet because the internet needs more stupid lists of nothing," eh?
posted by paisley henosis at 7:41 AM on May 11, 2010 [1 favorite]

It's like he's tragically unhip.
posted by zarq at 7:41 AM on May 11, 2010 [1 favorite]

So now Time magazine is getting into the whole "stupid top ten lists on the internet because the internet needs more stupid lists of nothing," eh?

Hey, hey, hey. Don't knock the lists. This one: Happy Cinco de Mayo: Top 10 Drunkest Holidays is essential information!!
posted by zarq at 7:42 AM on May 11, 2010

zarq: Hey, hey, hey. Don't knock the lists. This one: Happy Cinco de Mayo: Top 10 Drunkest Holidays is essential information!!

Interesting to note #6: "Thanksgiving Eve."
posted by paisley henosis at 7:43 AM on May 11, 2010

It may be what everyone thinks of themselves as, but I consider myself to be an absolutely dead-center, normal, average American. Maybe we should call it even.
posted by Dr-Baa at 7:44 AM on May 11, 2010 [1 favorite]

The ultimate irony will be 45 years from now, when I will be Andy Rooney's age and trying to remember who the hell Justin Bieber and Lady Gaga WERE.
posted by briank at 7:46 AM on May 11, 2010 [9 favorites]

What's ironic is that the ultimate grumpy, rude person is the Time magazine author. At least Andy Rooney is occasionally funny.
posted by eye of newt at 7:47 AM on May 11, 2010 [1 favorite]

We're not Wall Street owned.

We're client-owned.

Which means...

I close the window and stop watching the ad.
posted by three blind mice at 7:48 AM on May 11, 2010 [3 favorites]

At least Andy Rooney is occasionally funny

Please cite said occasion.
posted by spicynuts at 7:51 AM on May 11, 2010 [4 favorites]

Previously: the Andy Rooney Game .
posted by jeisme at 7:51 AM on May 11, 2010 [1 favorite]

"I wish the telephone had a different sound when it was someone you didn't want to talk to."
posted by mrgrimm at 7:51 AM on May 11, 2010 [3 favorites]

jinx
posted by mrgrimm at 7:51 AM on May 11, 2010

Andy Rooney is hilarious. He's a completely trivial crotchety old man who summarizes his routine in a moment and then disappears from my screen. Unfortunately, most real life crotchety old men do not disappear, and therefore wear out their welcome. Andy Rooney, an inspiration for old men everywhere.
posted by mikeh at 7:55 AM on May 11, 2010 [8 favorites]

The more I think about it, the more I realize that Jerry Seinfeld stole his shtick from Andy Rooney.
posted by mikeh at 7:56 AM on May 11, 2010 [4 favorites]

Below several of the entries, Time has placed links to other top 10 lists of theirs. I don't know if they're automatically generated or chosen by humans, but some of them are strikingly appropriate. Below the comments on Rooney's rant about Pope Benedict, "See the top 10 religious relics" is good. But best of all, below the entry about Rooney's sleep habits, "See the top 10 taserings." But I'm not going to actually click through to the taserings list, because it can't possibly be as good as what I'm imagining based on that juxtaposition.
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 7:56 AM on May 11, 2010 [2 favorites]

So now Time magazine is getting into the whole "stupid top ten lists on the internet because the internet needs more stupid lists of nothing," eh?

This is basically just a lazy recycling of their 1936 article "Father Charles Coughlin's Top 10 Angriest Crypto-Fascist Radio Tirades."
posted by Horace Rumpole at 7:57 AM on May 11, 2010 [21 favorites]

So now Time magazine is getting into the whole "stupid top ten lists on the internet because the internet needs more stupid lists of nothing," eh?

Beats having to spend money, energy, effort and resources to report real news, silly!
posted by Alexandra Kitty at 7:58 AM on May 11, 2010

What's fun is to start at the top of this thread and read the comments in Andy Rooney's voice, pauses and all. Even this one.
posted by cashman at 8:00 AM on May 11, 2010 [13 favorites]

I like Andy Rooney. I like his reminiscences of writing for "Stars & Stripes", his obituaries of his journalistic and military comrades, his grumbles about the shrinking sizes of coffee cans and candy bars. His handful of seconds and the end of "60 Minutes" are some of the last shreds of genuine humanity and honesty you can find on network TV these days.

Being genuine and honest is easy to mock, and Rooney is mocked often, and he couldn't give a damn. I like that, too.
posted by Missiles K. Monster at 8:00 AM on May 11, 2010 [6 favorites]

Old Media goes after Old Man. Film at 11.
posted by Bromius at 8:01 AM on May 11, 2010 [1 favorite]

Time Magazine calling out Andy Rooney is like Art Linkletter calling out ..... Red Buttons.

Time Magazine writer with a name who is nonetheless interchangeable with all other ostensibly name-possessing yet eerily nameless Time writers: "And yet, he offers his opinion anyway."

And yet, Time continues to cling to dear life anyway.

I will say this for Andy. It'd be nice to have the advantage of never having heard of Justin Bieber.
posted by blucevalo at 8:03 AM on May 11, 2010 [2 favorites]

Being genuine and honest is easy to mock,

How much do you think he gets paid for this 'genuine and honest' stuff he drops on us every week? Cuz my mother pretty much spends every dinner conversation saying the same 'genuine and honest' stuff but no one wants to give her a prime time (if football is on) spot every week. Shit, she doesn't even have a blog.
posted by spicynuts at 8:05 AM on May 11, 2010

Andy Rooney is so old that even jokes about how out-of-touch he is are unknown to the current generation.
posted by DU at 8:09 AM on May 11, 2010 [18 favorites]

Andy Rooney is a national treasure.

And by that I mean he's ancient.
posted by moviehawk at 8:09 AM on May 11, 2010 [1 favorite]

His handful of seconds and the end of "60 Minutes" are some of the last shreds of genuine humanity and honesty you can find on network TV these days.

It's a shtick. It was a shtick in 1976, it's a shtick now. It's about as honest and genuine as an Ocean Spray cranberry juice or Pepperidge Farm commercial.
posted by blucevalo at 8:09 AM on May 11, 2010 [5 favorites]

Is this something I'd have to be a regular normal average everyday American to understand?
posted by Elmore at 8:10 AM on May 11, 2010 [1 favorite]

Is this something I'd have to be a regular normal average everyday American to understand?

Yeah, if you're a regular normal average every third Tuesday American it'll go right over your head.
posted by spicynuts at 8:11 AM on May 11, 2010 [1 favorite]

Andy Rooney Will Seat You Now

We'd like a table for two, by the window if possible.

I don't much care for windows. It seems everything is made of glass nowadays. Mirrors are made of glass, and so are bottles. You'll find glass in everything from skyscrapers to goldfish bowls. Vases are often glass as well. Frankly, I'm not a big fan of vases, never used them. I've never understood the need for a special container for your flowers when you can just carry them around indefinitely.

posted by The White Hat at 8:12 AM on May 11, 2010 [13 favorites]

I guess this is where I link to Chinese Andy Rooney (The Onion, video, autoplay)
posted by 2bucksplus at 8:13 AM on May 11, 2010 [5 favorites]

Seriously, what is up with all that cotton taking up two thirds of my vitamin bottles?
posted by StickyCarpet at 8:14 AM on May 11, 2010

"How come they call it taking a dump, and not leaving a dump? I mean, after all, you're not really taking it anywhere."

Beavis mocks Andy Rooney
posted by brand-gnu at 8:18 AM on May 11, 2010 [9 favorites]

Beavis: "How come they call it 'taking a dump' and not 'leaving a dump?' I mean after all, you're not really taking it anywhere."
posted by Mayor Curley at 8:18 AM on May 11, 2010 [2 favorites]

11:18 was a turd of a time.
posted by cavalier at 8:20 AM on May 11, 2010 [2 favorites]

WHen did Time magazine become Cracked.com?
posted by djduckie at 8:26 AM on May 11, 2010 [1 favorite]

Quoted in its entirety (because it's hilarious):

Dennis Miller: And now here with a commentary is Grumpy Old Man! Welcome, Grumpy!

Grumpy Old Man: I'm oooooold! And I'm not happy! And I don't like things now compared to the way they used to be. All this progress -- phooey! In my day, we didn't have these cash machines that would give you money when you needed it. There was only one bank in each state -- it was open only one hour a year. And you'd get in line, seventeen miles long, and the line became an angry mob of people -- fornicators and thieves, mutant children and circus freaks -- and you waited for years and by the time you got to the teller, you were senile and arthritic and you couldn't remember your own name. You were born, got in line, and ya died! And that's the way it was and we liked it!

Life was simpler then. There wasn't all this concern about hy-giene! In my day, we didn't have Kleenex. When you turned seventeen, you were given the family handkerchief. ... It hadn't been washed in generations and it stood on its own ... filled with diseases and swarmin' with flies. ... If you tried to blow your nose, you'd get an infection and your head would swell up and turn green and children would burst into tears at the sight o' ya! And that's the way it was and we liked it!

Life was a carnival! We entertained ourselves! We didn't need moooovin' pitchurrrres. In my day, there was only one show in town -- it was called "Stare at the sun!" ... That's right! You'd sit in the middle of an open field and stare up at the sun till your eyeballs burst into flames! And you thought, "Oh, no! Maybe I shouldn't've stared directly into the burning sun with my eyes wide open." But it was too late! Your head was on fire and people were roastin' chickens over it. ... And that's the way it was and we liked it!

Progress?! Flobble-de-flee! In my day, when we were angry and frustrated, we just said, "Flobble-de-flee!" 'cause we were idiots and we didn't know what else to say! Just a bunch o' illiterate Cro-Magnons, blowin' on crusty handkerchiefs, waitin' in lines for our head to burst into flame and that's the way it was and we liked it!

posted by Atom Eyes at 8:33 AM on May 11, 2010 [2 favorites]

Sometimes I think the interenet mentality was based on Andy Rooney's attitude. (magnified by X)
posted by edgeways at 8:33 AM on May 11, 2010 [3 favorites]

I was interested to learn that it's pronounced Justin BEE-ber. My brain always said "BYE-ber" when I saw it.
posted by JanetLand at 8:36 AM on May 11, 2010 [1 favorite]

I'd never heard of Justin Bieber before seeing this thread, and I'm still not sure who he is. I like puppies.
posted by kirkaracha at 8:36 AM on May 11, 2010 [1 favorite]

spicynuts: "Being genuine and honest is easy to mock,

How much do you think he gets paid for this 'genuine and honest' stuff he drops on us every week? Cuz my mother pretty much spends every dinner conversation saying the same 'genuine and honest' stuff but no one wants to give her a prime time (if football is on) spot every week. Shit, she doesn't even have a blog."

It's not up to us to monetize your mother.
posted by boo_radley at 8:38 AM on May 11, 2010 [7 favorites]

His handful of seconds and the end of "60 Minutes" are some of the last shreds of genuine humanity and honesty you can find on network TV these days.

This. Also, people, he's in on the joke. I know it's hard to believe that a 91-year-old can play that "irony" game that the youngsters so enjoy these days...but he's been in the media 70 years. He's not really baffled at divergent musical tastes between people three generations apart.
posted by stupidsexyFlanders at 8:39 AM on May 11, 2010 [8 favorites]

Andy Rooney is a lot like Garrison Keilor - you don't get it, you get it, or you get it and it drives you up a wall.

I get it. He offers small commentaries on a current slice of life from the perspective of someone who's seen a whole hell of a lot of those slices. He's in on the "old man doesn't understand the modern world" joke.

Every now and again he puts away the walker and comes out with a baseball bat - see any of his commentaries on the Iraq ar or Bush, or when he clearly and carefully exposed the way some manufacturers use packaging to be one step away from consumer fraud, offering less product in larger packages, or quietly decreasing the amount in the same package you've been buying for 10 years.
posted by Slap*Happy at 8:41 AM on May 11, 2010 [3 favorites]

Every now and again he puts away the walker and comes out with a baseball bat

He comes out with a flyswatter. Anyone who's in a position to be terrified by his jeremiads shrugs and says, "God, get yourself to a rest home already. And take CBS and its 60 years of fossils with you."
posted by blucevalo at 8:47 AM on May 11, 2010

Andy Rooney is not out of touch for the fact that he does not recognize anybody on the Billboard Top 200 list.

Andy Rooney is out of touch for the fact that it apparently took him 40 years to become aware that he doesn't recognize anybody on the Billboard Top 200 list.
posted by adamrice at 8:50 AM on May 11, 2010

I happened to be watching the segment in question on Sunday, and before he even said her name, I knew he was going to go off on Lady Gaga. I also thought he mispronounced Gaga, too, which, I guess is par for the course for someone so far from the other end of the age spectrum he can't remember one of baby's first words...

I always thought he was in a yin-yang relationship to Paul Harvey. Paul Harvey, for all his random narratives, always seemed upbeat and looking to the more positive side of things, where Andy Rooney is always glum and downbeat.
posted by kuppajava at 8:52 AM on May 11, 2010

Don't you just hate it when the most inconsequential topics on Metafilter garner the greatest number of responses? And you're just one of an increasing number of pointless posters?
posted by kozad at 8:57 AM on May 11, 2010 [3 favorites]

Also, people, he's in on the joke. I know it's hard to believe that a 91-year-old can play that "irony" game that the youngsters so enjoy these days...but he's been in the media 70 years.

Yes. Yes, he has. And never once in my recollection has he displayed the slightest hint of irony or self-awareness. More than 20 years ago, he wrote a book that had a chapter - a whole chapter - entitled "Chairs." It was about the different chairs there are in the world, and which ones he does and doesn't like.

If Andy Rooney says he's baffled, he's baffled. He might find his own bafflement amusing, but that's not the same as playing up an exaggerated version of himself for the purposes of irony.
posted by gompa at 8:59 AM on May 11, 2010 [6 favorites]

Beetle browed old fart.
posted by pianomover at 9:04 AM on May 11, 2010 [1 favorite]

The dirty little secret about Andy Rooney is that 60 Minutes has never paid him very much -- certainly not the going rate for someone with national name recognition doing a once-a-week televised essay on a top-rated show.

He knows he can't go anywhere else. They know he knows he can't go anywhere else. They already tried doing other things with him in the late 70s and 80s. So he sits there, making a marginal effect on the show. He makes a little money on a syndicated column, past book sales and speaking engagements. Enough to keep him in tweed and books.

CBS probably thought he'd have died 10 years ago.
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 9:05 AM on May 11, 2010 [1 favorite]

Paul Harvey, for all his random narratives, always seemed upbeat and looking to the more positive side of things, where Andy Rooney is always glum and downbeat.

When fascism comes to America, it will be delivered in a cheery, folksy drawl seamlessly plugging some sort of back pain medication in between apocryphal stories of a better time.





... and now you know ... the rest of the story.
posted by joe lisboa at 9:06 AM on May 11, 2010 [20 favorites]

His rants never seem to have any point to them. The music one just seems to be him saying 'I used to be with it, but then they changed what it was. Now, what I'm with isn't it, and what's it seems weird and scary to me'. What the bag one was for I... no clue.

What really saddened me was seeing responses to it though. The number of people saying 'he's right, I haven't liked a new band in ten years, everything in the charts is dreadful' was appalling.

I don't know what the last piece of music in the charts I listened to was, but I listen to a lot of current music. I find it so depressing that so many people can't look past the charts to find something worth listening to. There really is so much great music happening now and because no one has any sense of adventure, or god knows what reason, they just ignore it all, moan about what shitty pop is in this week, and then listen to their favourite album of the 80s for the five billionth time (most of the music I like from previous decades I still enjoy, but because I can dilute them with a hundred other artists...)
posted by opsin at 9:07 AM on May 11, 2010 [1 favorite]

It's not up to us to monetize your mother

THAT'S NOT WHAT SHE SAID LAST NIGHT!
posted by Kirk Grim at 9:10 AM on May 11, 2010 [8 favorites]

Seriously? He's hating on a statue of Mr. Potato Head in Rhode Island? The place where Hasbro is? Really?
posted by giraffe at 9:13 AM on May 11, 2010

I find it so depressing that so many people can't look past the charts to find something worth listening to. There really is so much great music happening now and because no one has any sense of adventure, or god knows what reason, they just ignore it all, moan about what shitty pop is in this week, and then listen to their favourite album of the 80s for the five billionth time

Many people like a lot of current music. Many people don't, or don't like as much of it. To each his own. There are thousands of things that are more appalling and depressing than that.
posted by blucevalo at 9:20 AM on May 11, 2010 [1 favorite]

...and did you ever wonder how Andy Rooney got his own segment on 60 Minutes in the first place?
posted by not_on_display at 9:20 AM on May 11, 2010

The dirty little secret about Andy Rooney is that 60 Minutes has never paid him very much -- certainly not the going rate for someone with national name recognition doing a once-a-week televised essay on a top-rated show.

He was collecting $7700 a week in 1987. I don't know what the going rate is for someone who gets national airtime to vent his spleen about Hispanic ballplayers and non-functioning typewriters for five minutes a week, but that seems more than fair.
posted by total warfare frown at 9:20 AM on May 11, 2010

Also, this list is missing the "what are all these gadgets in my kitchen?" segment with Andy Rooney wielding a comically large knife.
posted by giraffe at 9:21 AM on May 11, 2010

He's smart enough to have a spread in Rensselaerville. Dude's got something going for him.
posted by jgirl at 9:21 AM on May 11, 2010

I saw this on Sunday, got sucked into the segment on 'walk-away mortgages' and stayed to watch Andy Rooney. It was like looking at a car wreck, I just couldn't turn it off. I was laughing at him, but not in a good way.
Then yesterday I mentioned it to my team at work (all of them at least 20yrs younger than me) - and to a man, they said " Who's Andy Rooney?" That said it all.
posted by dbmcd at 9:30 AM on May 11, 2010 [1 favorite]

spicynuts: What's a Lady Gaga?

It's the same thing as a Men's Gaga, except it's pink and comes with extra Aloe+Vitamin E moisturizer strips.
posted by Greg_Ace at 9:33 AM on May 11, 2010 [9 favorites]

...and did you ever wonder how Andy Rooney got his own segment on 60 Minutes in the first place?

Did he open his legs for someone?

Disclaimer: I have no idea who Andy Rooney is, and I've only heard of 60 minutes because Joan Rivers was once so appalled by the presence of a programme on British TV called 40 minutes that she thought a 20 minute rant about the missing 20 minutes would be hilarious to a British TV audience struggling to recognise her.
posted by vbfg at 9:34 AM on May 11, 2010 [1 favorite]

I haven't clicked a Time Magazine link since they let YouBetcha' write a glowing endorsement of Potato Man, in which he was characterized as professorial.
posted by sswiller at 9:37 AM on May 11, 2010

Soooo, I guess when people say who's Lady Gaga people get incensed, but saying who's Andy Rooney is a badge of honor.
posted by edgeways at 9:37 AM on May 11, 2010 [1 favorite]

He was collecting $7700 a week in 1987.

The kid from Two and Half Men makes $250,000 per episode. And he doesn't write his own stuff.

If you assume Rooney has seen a ten-fold increase in salary, he's still nowhere near this kid.

Now, Two and a Half Men is the most popular sit-com on broadcast TV. But it's not in the current top-10.

On the other hand, 60 Minutes has never NOT been in the top 10 for the last 40 years. And everyone knows Andy Rooney's name (hey look, we're not even in Rooney's demo and we're still talking about him), but I didn't know Angus Jones's name until yesterday when I read that article.
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 9:37 AM on May 11, 2010 [1 favorite]

Episode 902 ("The Phantom Planet") of MST3k has Mike and the 'bots doing an Andy Rooney-off.

You're welcome.
posted by Wild_Eep at 9:47 AM on May 11, 2010

He's a perfect example of when the moon turns red, the dead shall rise. Him and Larry King. Two walking corpses who need to retire or put the other foot in the grave already. Jobs are to be had by others, damn it.
posted by stormpooper at 9:47 AM on May 11, 2010 [1 favorite]

Andy Rooney is the luckiest dude on the planet; everyone complains about the things they hate, but he's the only guy who gets paid to do it.
posted by The Card Cheat at 10:06 AM on May 11, 2010 [1 favorite]

The kid from Two and Half Men makes $250,000 per episode. And he doesn't write his own stuff.

Now, Two and a Half Men is the most popular sit-com on broadcast TV. But it's not in the current top-10.

On the other hand, 60 Minutes has never NOT been in the top 10 for the last 40 years.

We'll have to agree to disagree on whether or not attending script readthroughs, rehearsals, and tapings is harder work than writing down some diatribe about the Billboard Top 200 (which is subsequently read off a monitor), or how much of 60 Minutes popularity is due to Rooney. I maintain that the guy is amply compensated for what he does.

And apparently his salary was $800,000 in 1990. Even assuming a modest doubling of that amount in that last 20 years, that'd make his "going rate" about $40,000 per segment. Nice work if you can get it.
posted by total warfare frown at 10:13 AM on May 11, 2010

The kid from Two and Half Men makes $250,000 per episode. And he doesn't write his own stuff.

Yeah, but if they didn't pay him that much, he'd go be a dumb kid on some ABC, and then they'd have to find some other dumb-looking kid who was willing to make confused faces at Charlie Sheen for whatever scraps they'd pay him, and then just think of the firestorm of continuity errors CBS would have unleashed on the world.

This is CANON we're talking about here.
posted by Copronymus at 10:20 AM on May 11, 2010 [2 favorites]

Hey Andy Rooney - I bought a pen yesterday, I'm wearing a belt, I don't own a comb, I accidentally killed a house plant by over-watering it, I own a record player, I have too many remote controls, my walls are off-white, my socks sometimes slip down, I don't usually tuck my shirt in (but sometimes I do), there are 3 different types of light-switches in my house, I set my alarm clock 15 minutes ahead of the actual time, I'm often disappointed by Radio Shack employees, my cat meows a lot, I used a credit card for $6.13 worth of deli items today, I don't have a land line, I throw away my phone books as soon as they arrive, I get tired when I don't get enough sleep, I prefer regular doors over rotating ones, I don't have a business card, I don't wear flip flops (even at the beach), I take technology for granted and I'm trying to take smaller bites of my food.
posted by hellbient at 10:21 AM on May 11, 2010 [6 favorites]

Wow, I loved/hated the Ali G interview. Never seen that one before. Sacha Cohen is always a master of capturing the worst sides of people, and the same approach with Rooney doesn't disappoint. What a cranky old man.
posted by The Winsome Parker Lewis at 10:22 AM on May 11, 2010 [1 favorite]

Free Is The Worst Kind of Fudge: InfoMania's Tribute to Andy Rooney
posted by Hoenikker at 10:30 AM on May 11, 2010 [1 favorite]

I think of myself as a musical ignoramus who doesn't hear or like the nuances of sound that other people do like. -- Andy Rooney

this is going to be cited as the epigraph to my next noise opus
posted by idiopath at 10:44 AM on May 11, 2010 [1 favorite]

Back in my day, Time magazine had a modicum of journalistic integrity.

Also, Get Off My Lawn!
posted by JeffK at 10:53 AM on May 11, 2010

I was thinking it was amazing that some very old American dudes suddenly look infinitely better than when they were young.


Turns out he's not the annoying guy who did those stupid movies with Judy Garland!
(I'd never heard of another famous old geezer called Rooney!)
posted by Jody Tresidder at 11:13 AM on May 11, 2010

Hey! Mickey Rooney was great in It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World!
posted by The Winsome Parker Lewis at 12:20 PM on May 11, 2010

Hey! Mickey Rooney was great in It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World!

Now that you mention it The Winsome Parker Lewis - I totally agree!
He caught a lucky break there:)
posted by Jody Tresidder at 12:41 PM on May 11, 2010

He's a perfect example of when the moon turns red, the dead shall rise.

Andy Rooney was on Omaha Beach a few days after D-Day, observing the rows of dead GIs under blankets lined on the sand, noticing that those thousands of boys, all different, were all wearing the same pair of boots. He went on a bombing raid in 1943 in a plane hit by anti-aircraft fire and, later, having seen another bomber land with broken landing gear still retracted--land with a gunner trapped in a turret underneath the fuselage, he went on to interview the pilot and wrote a story about the incident. He was in Paris when it was liberated and was at Buchenwald a few days after allied tropps reached it in April 1945.

As far as his fellow broadcasters at CBS are concerned, he is living history--he will be on the air as long he can finish a sentence. Old age is about decay and loss and creeping infirmity and I think that most young people can't stand the sight of him because he embodies what all will all become if we live long enough. But he, in his youth, having seen more real life carnage in real life than most now alive have seen playing video games, he has earned his pop cultural cluelessness. In a longer view, while it is shooting fish in a barrel easy to mock him, few here or elsewhere have earned the comparable right to even think of stepping on his lawn.
posted by y2karl at 1:30 PM on May 11, 2010 [12 favorites]

Also, this list is missing the "what are all these gadgets in my kitchen?" segment with Andy Rooney wielding a comically large knife.

"Harry Truman was president last time I sliced a sponge cake."
posted by evilcolonel at 1:36 PM on May 11, 2010

y2karl, that was very well said. Thank you.
posted by zarq at 1:37 PM on May 11, 2010

I don't like people and I never have. I guess that makes me bad.
posted by evilcolonel at 1:38 PM on May 11, 2010

Probably also a good place to link to the Onion's Joad Cressbeckler, an 1880's semi-literate gold prospector given his own cable talk show: he's the love child of Rooney and Bill O'Reilly transported back in time to Deadwood.

"I don't respect no man who don't lost a body part in the war!
posted by Bora Horza Gobuchul at 1:45 PM on May 11, 2010

Mickey Rooney discusses Twitter with Ben Stiller

He was pretty funny on The Simpsons.
posted by mrgrimm at 1:47 PM on May 11, 2010

Not knowing about this pop culture shite is empowering. and a good thing. But I guess he wouldn't get that cos he's an average American.
posted by Liquidwolf at 2:20 PM on May 11, 2010

I know right mrgrimm, it's hard to believe he went from being the top box-office star in the world to that curmudgeonly old raisin on 60 Minutes. You gotta hand it to him though - that's some range.
posted by hellbient at 2:54 PM on May 11, 2010

Yeah, it was like he was two different people.
posted by y2karl at 3:37 PM on May 11, 2010

I grew up with "why is it always that paper clips..." and "why isn't there as much coffee in the can" at the end of 60 Minutes and found it hilarious BECAUSE he is grumpy and grouchy.
posted by Wuggie Norple at 4:19 PM on May 11, 2010

Dennis Miller: And now here with a commentary is Grumpy Old Man! Welcome, Grumpy!

Grumpy Old Man: I'm oooooold! And I'm not happy! And I don't like things now compared to the way they used to be.

Atom Eyes, the best "Grumpy Old Man" bit on SNL that I remember went something like this:

"Back in my day, we didn't have no laaatex con-doms. We had to wrap it up in a squirrel skin and tie it off with a bungie cord! COULDN'T FEEL NOTHIN'! And we LIKED it!"
posted by Anephim at 6:13 PM on May 11, 2010

I'm becoming more and more like Andy Rooney every day. That alone used to make me grumpy, but now I think I'd much rather live under whatever rock he's been hiding under for the past sixty or so years. His world is a much better place.

Sometimes I feel like I'm becoming Mickey Rooney, too. I don't know how I feel about that. Kind of makes me want to have a big show in my barn.
posted by Mael Oui at 8:24 PM on May 11, 2010

Incidentally, I resent it when all you hipsters make fun of us old-timers (though I'm 29, supposedly)!
posted by Mael Oui at 8:26 PM on May 11, 2010

Sometimes I feel like I'm becoming Mickey Rooney, too. I don't know how I feel about that.

Well, it could be worse--you could be turning into Dennis Miller.
posted by y2karl at 7:58 AM on May 14, 2010