Week of October 3: A Few More Minutes With Andy Rooney

By Sylvia Gurinsky

It's quite an achievement these days when a journalist can have the full, uninterrupted, unaltered career of his or her choosing without fear or favor. Andy Rooney fits the category.

As he said in his last regular weekly commentary that aired Sunday on CBS' "60 Minutes," he's a writer, and writers don't retire. But he's had a 70-plus year career, most of it for CBS, along with a syndicated column. The last 33 years have included the "A Few Minutes With Andy Rooney" segment at the end of "60 Minutes."

Rooney has discussed plenty of subjects in more than 1,000 commentaries, both trivial and not. He's gotten into trouble a few times, most notably in 1990 when he was suspended for a statement about "too many homosexual relationships."

Rooney explained the context of the comments and the suspension in his Academy of Television Arts and Sciences interview:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zognOu3SEAs

During World War II, Rooney was a correspondent for Stars and Stripes; among the stories he covered was the D-Day invasion. Here's a Rooney commentary from Memorial Day, 2005:

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504803_162-20112373-10391709.html


But let's wrap up with a 1988 Rooney commentary that's easy to agree with - the lack of truth in food packaging:

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504803_162-20112367-10391709.html



Thanks for giving us more than a few minutes, Andy.



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See you next week. Until then, Happy Viewing!