Complaining is his job; Rooney does it well

By BRENT CUNNINGHAM
Reporter Staff

"I very often offend people in the audience when I talk," Andy Rooney told his audience in the Center for the Arts last Thursday. "So I'll speak for awhile and then, if I haven't offended you by the time I finish, you can ask a question and I'll offend you person-to-person."

Rooney brought his sense of humor, his often-contentious opinions and anecdotes from 50 years of associating with "well-known people" to the university as part of the Distinguished Speakers Series. A well-known person himself, Rooney is famous for the "television essay" he delivers each week on "60 Minutes" and for his nationally distributed newspaper column.

He offered stories and opinions about friends, fame, economics and writing. "I have opinions about so many things," he said. "That's how I make my living."

Many of Rooney's liveliest and warmest stories involved well-known American figures. He has been close friends with famous media figures like anchorman Walter Cronkite, reporter Diane Sawyer, and Harry Reasoner and Mike Wallace from "60 Minutes." Rooney also described meeting American architect Frank Lloyd Wright, comedian Bob Hope, singer Frank Sinatra, Gen. George C. Patton and Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon.

Rooney's commentary often zeroes in on everyday subjects, such as food or clothing, but some of his remarks at UB were suprisingly broad and sober.

"I've never been really satisfied with capitalism," he said. "You couldn't say this 20 years ago without being accused of being a communist, but it has always seemed philosophically wrong to me that we've decided that it works best for everyone if each person selfishly grabs as much for himself or herself as is possible.

"We're selling things in America better than we're making them," he added.

But Rooney's self-deprecating sense of humor was evident even when he criticized current American business and advertising practices. "I have no idea what to do about anything, you understand," he said. "My job is just complaining."

Rooney, who has a reputation for "telling it like it is," also complained about "the decline of the written word" and the burden of being well-known.

Fame, he said, "is a pain in the neck. And that's putting the pain a lot higher than it should be."

Rooney continued, "Well-knownness is an overrated state. Not only that, but I have a much lower opinion of well-known people than before I got to be one."

While admitting that "the money is good," Rooney described the less savory side of fame: the loss of privacy, the thousands of angry letters he receives and the difficulty of turning down well-deserving charity organizations.

Rooney agrees to sign his books, but he otherwise refuses to sign his autograph and dislikes being recognized in public. "Today in the airport a woman said to me, 'You look familiar,'" said Rooney, "And I said, 'I think we went to high school together.'"

Describing himself primarily as a writer, Rooney directed his most adamant criticism toward what he sees as a national decline in the use and quality of the written word.

"I am distraught," he said. "I do use a computer, and I think all these new tools we have are great for the dissemination of information, are great to write on, but the quality of what is being disseminated is just poor.

"Unclear writing is a sign of unclear thinking," he contended. "Of course, some writing, as we all know, is deliberately unclear. A lot of legal, medical and scientific writing is unclear because if lawyers, doctors and scientists wrote it simply, we'd all know they were idiots."

Although Rooney feels there is great abuse of the English language, he asserted that English is still "the best language in the world."

Citing both the tendency English has to absorb its slang and the unparalleled size of the English vocabulary, Rooney argued that English "is the whole world's second language, not because we are economically or culturally dominant. It's the second language for everybody because it's the best language."

Rooney at first declined to discuss sexual allegations against President Clinton, saying, "I don't talk dirty.

"I question whether I should tell you this," continued Rooney, "but the closest I ever came to oral sex was once, by mistake, I used a girl's toothbrush."

Later, during a question-and-answer session, Rooney returned briefly to the Clinton allegations. "I think he's lying," he said.

After the applause died down, Rooney remarked, "But I think it's a tragedy."