Crotchety rambler Andy Rooney has passed away, just one month after his final “60 Minutes” appearance and slightly more than a week after suffering complications from minor surgery. In honor of his passing, I’ll be just as respectful about his death as he was about Kurt Cobain’s.
Rooney was an unremarkable, cranky bore whose bitching about simple annoyances struck a nerve with other aging white people who were frightened by or opposed to change. His view of America was essentially a collection of Rockwell paintings, and he complained about any facet of life that strayed from that impossible vision. When technological developments improved commerce or people’s lives, Rooney only saw the inconvenience of learning something new. In every TV appearance of his that I saw, he came off to me as intellectually incurious, and he happily took a paycheck from CBS for 60 years while brushing away the fans who sent him letters or tried to approach him in public. I don’t understand why people who didn’t know him should stop and mourn a man who never cared for people he didn’t know.
Rest in peace, Andy Rooney. The world has moved on.
