Gary North

Nov. 7, 2011

Andy went out at the peak of his career. The peak lasted 30 years.

There are lots of ways of viewing Rooney. I view him as a fellow scribbler.

The man could write. He could write anything. The CBS News obituary reported:

Rooney had convinced CBS News he could write for television on any subject when he wrote his first television essay in 1964, an original genre he is credited with developing. Proving his point, he picked doors as the subject and Reasoner as the voice for "An Essay on Doors." The team - Rooney writing and producing and Reasoner narrating -- went on to create such critically acclaimed specials as "An Essay on Bridges" (1965), "An Essay on Hotels" (1966), "An Essay on Women" (1967), "An Essay on Chairs" (1968) and "The Strange Case of the English Language" (1968). Rooney also wrote and produced many news documentaries, including the most comprehensive television treatment of Frank Sinatra, "Frank Sinatra: Living With the Legend," in 1965. He wrote two CBS News specials for the series "Of Black America" in 1968, one of which, "Black History: Lost, Stolen or Strayed," won him his first Emmy and the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Awards First Prize for Television.

He was a humorist. To understand how unique he was, you have to know a little about humorists. There are not many widely known ones in any era. They make people smile, not laugh. They make people think, "I never thought of it that way. He's right." The great ones write brief items that survive through the generations. America's greatest ones so far are Mark Twain and Will Rogers. Finley Peter Dunne's Mr. Dooley was dominant in the late nineteenth century, but is forgotten today. For the post-World War II era, I would rank Jean Shepherd as the master, given his incomparable output: every week night for 45 minutes from 1961 to 1977 on WOR radio, New York City. Start here. He began in regional markets in 1950. A Christmas Story will surely survive me. It may survive you. "Wanda Hickey's Night of Golden Memories" is an essay of golden memories. That Wikipedia does not list him among 200 American humorists is not a laughing matter. Chicago columnist Mike Royko's Slats Grobnick was every bit as insightful as Mr. Dooley. Bill Cosby's early reminiscences about life in South Philadelphia were representative of the genre -- the black Jean Shepherd. The New York Times gave us Russell Baker's "Observer" column for over three decades.

P. J. O'Rourke is not a bona fide humorist. He makes libertarians laugh out loud. His books should never be read on an airplane.

Dave Barry was on the edge. It was difficult to keep from laughing out loud, but it could be done.

Rooney was on television. His books are far less known. This gave him a huge audience, but not much staying power. The problem with audio and video is that the performances have very short lifespans: one evening. You cannot access your favorites, as you can with a book collection or anthology of one-liners. Rooney's videos 60 Minutes should all be posted on the CBS News site. I don't think this is likely.

Rooney looked like a leprechaun. He was not much taller. Those wonderful eyebrows were matched only by Jack Elam's. (Elam had one wall eye, which made his face even more startling.) As he aged, his visage became even more attention-getting. The eyebrows got white, along with his hair. He was like some distant uncle who came up from the basement every Sunday evening to comment on the endless tom-foolery of America, case by case, and then disappeared into the basement again. The message: "Can't you people ever get anything straight?" He was left-of-center, which is to say he was a mainstream journalist. But he was nonpartisan in his observations of our foibles. He spent the last three decades of his career shaking his head verbally in seeming disbelief and asking: "Why?"

He loved woodworking. He loved New York Giants football. He was a World War II veteran journalist with the Stars and Stripes, who knew the greats in journalism from their early days. He really was a man of the people. The people knew it, which is why so many loved him, to the extent that we can love an image on a screen. The screens kept getting bigger, but remained a leprechaun.

At 92, he had the right to die without generating a stream of sociological essays about how a man who retires too young risks dying young. I call it good timing. He knew when his work was over.

Rooney was one of those blessed few whose job is their calling, and who gets really rich pursuing it faithfully. I define calling as "the most important thing you can do in which you would be most difficult to replace." He proved his point by retiring. He lived long enough -- one month -- to see that no one had replaced him. My guess: no one will. Not on CBS, anyway.