Andy Rooney
From Philosopedia
Rooney, Andrew (Andy) Aitken (14 January 1919 - 4 November 2011)
Rooney was a writer, columnist, and television commentator known for his dry commentaries on mundane subjects. He appeared on the CBS program, “60 Minutes,” starting in 1959. In 1968, and again in 1978, 1981, and 1982, he won an Emmy Award.
Rooney is author of The Story of Stars and Stripes (1946); A Few Minutes With Andy Rooney (1981); Pieces of My Mind (1984); Not That You Asked (1989); Sweet and Sour (1982); My War (1995); and Sincerely, Andy Rooney (1999), in the last chapter of which, “Faith in Reason,” he publishes a letter to his children and explains that he is an agnostic.
In some respects he came across as everyone’s uncle or grandfather, and in others he came across as a logical curmudgeon. To almost everyone he came across as someone who could make anyone laugh:
- My wife’s from the Midwest. Very nice people there. Very wholesome. They use words like “Cripes.” For Cripes sake! Who would that be—Jesus Cripes? Son of Gosh? Of the church of the Holy Moly? I’m not making fun of it—you think I want to burn in Heck?
- We all ought to understand we're on our own. Believing in Santa Claus doesn't do kids any harm for a few years but it isn't smart for them to continue waiting all their lives for him to come down the chimney with something wonderful. Santa Claus and God are cousins.
- Christians talk as though goodness was their idea but good behavior doesn't have any religious origin. Our prisons are filled with the devout.
- I'd be more willing to accept religion, even if I didn't believe it, if I thought it made people nicer to each other but I don't think it does.”
Paul Rifkin’s The God Letters (1986) tells of posing as a fifth grade student who asked noted individuals if they believed in God. Rooney responded,
- No, of course I don’t [believe in God] and anyone who tells you that there is a god who makes his or her presence known to him or her is hallucinating or not telling the truth.
"I heard from God just the other night," Rooney reported in 2004. "God always seems to call at night. 'Andrew,' God said to me – he always calls me Andrew. I like that – 'Andrew, you have the eyes and ears of a lot of people. I wish you'd tell your viewers that both Pat Robertson and Mel Gibson strike Me as wackos."
Rooney told Sam Donaldson on ABC’s “Prime Time Live” (May 1995) that he was critical of anyone who even claims to know whether or not a god exists.” And in a 1996 interview with Arthur Unger in TV Quarterly, he was asked if people really knew him. “The only thing I hide from people,” Rooney responded, “that I have never said so far as being blunt and honest goes, is that I am not a religious person. I’m not sure the American public would accept from me that fact. I don’t think that would please them or that it would attract a lot of people to me. And I take the position that it is sort of a personal matter, so I do not ever make an issue of it.” With all the problems throughout the world, he finds religion has not really done anything to help.
Rooney and his wife, Marguerite, were married for 62 years before she died in 2004. They had four children and lived in Rowayton, Connecticut. Their daughter, Emily Rooney, is a former executive producer of ABC's "World News Tonight." He died in New York City at the age of 92 while being hospitalized from complications following minor surgery.
