Follow-up
10/01/2001
Poor driveling, doddering Andy Rooney! It would mean so much to
him if he could just show us that he is smarter than President
Bush. But in trying to prove it, he managed to trip over his own
smart mouth. Here's how he began his September 23 commentary at
the end of 60 Minutes:
"Nothing's funny these weeks. I was going to say something about
President Bush before he spoke Thursday. After he spoke, what I
was going to say seemed wrong. The speech was good. He was good
and no one's in a mood to be critical. He's not Winston Churchill
but he has an appealing way of being and he knows we need a
leader. You wonder why anyone smart enough to be President would
want to be President. George W. Bush is getting a college
education in how to be President. White House 101 and he's
learning. Last week, we all cheered his go-get'em speech two
days after the attack."
George W. Bush: "There's an old poster out west as I recall that
said, 'Wanted Dead or Alive.'"
Rooney continued: "Well, he didn't sound like an intellectual. I
felt vengeful, too, but I hoped there were other people in
government too smart to be driven by vengeance alone. He
threatened to close our enemy's harbors."
Bush: "This is an enemy that thinks its harbors are safe, but they
won't be safe forever."
Rooney, showing a map of Afghanistan: "Well, not too smart either.
Afghanistan is landlocked; it doesn't have a harbor. Neither does
Afghanistan have a building worth as much as one of our bombs would
cost to destroy it."
Apparently it flew right over his head that Bush was not referring
to harbors such as ships sail into, but to safe hiding places for
terrorists. HAH-hah! Real clever, Rooney!
Check out this comment from Brent Baker of the Media Research
Center:
"Watching Rooney Sunday night while I was also doing other things,
I assumed it was just some poorly executed humor. But MRC analyst
Brian Boyd since suggested otherwise and after re-watching Rooney's
commentary I've decided he was quite serious and really thought
Bush's reference to "harbors" meant a port on an ocean, not what
Bush was obviously referring to, nations which give terrorists
protection."
I agree. He started his commentary that evening by saying,
"Nothing's funny these weeks." And he did not include any other
"jokes" to demonstrate that he was trying to be funny.
Note also that this nitpicking was actually his second choice of a
topic:
"I was going to say something about President Bush before he spoke
Thursday. After he spoke, what I was going to say seemed wrong.
The speech was good."
He automatically assumed that the speech would contain fodder for
his liberal rant. Sorry to see you disappointed like that, Andy!
Doesn't CBS provide this guy with a producer or some other
moderately intelligent person to bounce around ideas with? It
seems that just a little bit of supervision would be in order.
At any rate, Andy Rooney did manage to demonstrate that he is
mean-spirited, condescending, elitist AND dumb. You can view a
RealPlayer clip of Rooney making a fool of himself at the MRC web
site. After savoring the moment, let's write to his bosses and
let them know what we think. Below is the contact information:
CBS
524 West 57th Street
New York, New York 10019
Phone 212-975-4321
FAX 212-975-1893
Owner of CBS:
Viacom
1515 Broadway
New York, New York 10036
Phone (212) 258-6000
FAX (212) 258-6464
CBS News web site: reach contact page by clicking yellow "feedback"
link on the left
Read more here:
CBS News: full text of Andy Rooney's commentary on 60 Minutes, 09/23/2001
MRC CyberAlert, 09/28/2001
