News shows and nonsense: This and Andy Rooney at Warwick's
By Lance Vargas

Veteran essayist and "60 Minutes" television columnist Andy Rooney freely admits that, in the more than 20 years he has been enlightening America with his opinions, he often looks back at his segments and realizes he may not have always been 100 percent right.

"I look back at things and think that I was an idiot for having said that or thought that," he said, "but, I don't know, you tend to put those out of your mind."

Rooney will be in La Jolla on Friday, Jan. 24, signing copies of his book, "Common Nonsense" at Warwick's Bookstore at noon.

Humility often helps when one's job is to perpetually share their thoughts on subjects as eclectic as politics, dogs and doors. But the unique aspect about Rooney's place in American culture is that he has carved out a distinguished career doing it. Right or wrong, people listen.

This suggests that, whether his critics wish to admit it, the former Stars and Stripes reporter may have been more right than wrong. Rooney has firmly established himself at the end of America's longest-running network news show simply because his views elicit a response in viewers, sometimes to the point of controversy.

"I don't set out to be controversial," he said. "The fact is that, for some reason I don't understand, Americans avoid saying what they mean in order to avoid controversy, and it doesn't seem very honest to me. I don't see what's wrong with speaking what we feel to be the truth. And if it offends people and if everybody did it, it would be less offensive. I think we should all be more open than we are."

Rooney's willingness to air even his most mundane annoyances has earned him a reputation as a curmudgeon. Rooney, however, dismisses such generalizations.

"I think people use it in a perfectly friendly way," he said. "The word curmudgeon is so attached to H.L. Mencken that I don't really think anyone else has the right to use it or have it used on them."

Of "60 Minutes," Rooney said, "It's better done, and I think they are less worried about taking on a serious subject that some of the other shows would not consider to have enough popular interest. If the producer at '60 Minutes,' Don Hewitt, thinks it's a good story, that's all that it takes. He doesn't care if, on the surface, it has a popular aspect or not. ... Nine times out of 10, it turns out to be a worthwhile story. ... I think they have tackled stories with more importance. They have dared to be important."

But Rooney said that "60 Minutes" could become a relic if current trends in television journalism are allowed to manifest themselves. Feeling that the networks have bowed to sensational pressure by cable news channels, he opined that the focus is not always on the best story but the most sensational.

"They are giving people what they want to hear and not what they need to know," he said, "because they think it will attract a bigger audience, and a bigger audience means more money. They take all these polls trying to figure out what people want to hear about. They want to hear about medical aspects, so they always have something medical on the news, whether its significant, true, relevant or not. People are interested in it, so that's what they are going to do."

Rooney said that the big three networks - CBS, NBC and ABC - have no choice but to follow cable news networks in order to keep up with ratings.

"Bad follows bad," said Rooney, "and once they start doing it and eating away at the network audience, the network feels obliged to follow along.

Regardless of the state of television news, Rooney feels that his place will be secure as long as his well of ideas remains full.

"I am in a world filled with ideas," he said. "All I have to do is open my eyes and walk down the street, or walk out my office door. There are more ideas than I could ever do in 10 lifetimes. I have the feeling that I could write an 800-word newspaper column on anything. ... If you do a little research and think over any subject on Earth, if you're a good writer, you can write about it and make it interesting. I think every writer secretly hopes that what he or she puts down on paper will have some good effect on the world. That may be pretentious, but we all think that. I like to think that."