He Wondered, and We Listened

Barely a month after his farewell broadcast on the CBS News program, 60 Minutes, legendary commentator Andrew (Andy) Aitken Rooney passed away suddenly from complications related to a recent surgery. He was 92.

Rooney began his journalism career while still in high school, working as a copy boy at the Albany Knickerbocker News in Albany, New York. He attended Colgate University but his studies were interrupted by World War II and he ended up working on the GI newspaper, Stars and Stripes.

In the 1940's, Rooney and co-worker from Stars and Stripes wrote four books about the war, including "Their Conqueror's Peace: A Report to the American Stockholders," which illustrated offenses committed against the Germans by occupying forces.

During the 1950's and 60's, Rooney wrote for some of the biggest stars on the CBS network, including Arthur Godfrey and Gary Moore. In 1970, when the network refused to air his heated essay about the Vietnam War, he left CBS for nearly three years. Rooney won a Writers Guild of America Award for the piece after reading it on PBS.

His name soon became a household word, however, with the broadcast of his first opinion essay on 60 Minutes in 1978, originally titled, "A Few Minutes with Andy Rooney." For 30 years, the bushy eye-browed curmudgeon was as familiar in American living rooms as a member of the extended family and he was just as willing to say what most people never voiced.

While many of Rooney's essays were light and entertaining others were not so mild and, as with all editorial commentators, not everyone liked his straight-forward, direct style. Despite his critics however, Rooney won three Emmy Awards for his work over the years and became an icon in television news.

As an opinion writer, Rooney was something of a folk hero to me. Whether in print or on television, opinion-editorial, or "op-ed," columnists are the most hated, most loved contributors to journalism, accounting for some 30 percent of overall content.

I think most of us get the same question every week, "Where do you get your ideas?" In my experience the best ideas come from everyday life and listening to the concerns of people around me.

There might be more poignant topics, but one of my favorite Rooney essays couldn't have been a better example. It starts like this. "I don't think there's anything more mystifying than the cotton inside pill bottles," Rooney once said. "Why is it in there?"

Op-ed writers are not bloggers. We are required to maintain the same journalistic integrity as any other contributor (yes, there really is still such a thing), and we are accountable for what we say. Like Rooney, my name is on each and every essay I write. If you don't like what you read, you're free to write to me and say so. But you'd better have a good argument with facts and figures to back you up, because that's what I have to do.

It might sound like op-ed writers are just whining about the inequities of life or complaining about the fallacies of the government. But, for the most part, we're really trying to express what most people are afraid to say for fear of being chastised, socially or otherwise.

Each of us has our fans and critics alike. In my columns, I'm often critical of the hypocrisy of organized religion and the corrupt underbelly of government, probably the two worst topics anyone could choose to take on. But these are also the most talked about subjects on the minds of everyday people.

Rooney's style and directness were refreshing in a media environment frock with one-sided politics. But those like him, myself included, will try to keep that fire going and keep people always questioning, always asking, "Did you ever wonder why?"

Gery L. Deer is an independent business writer and columnist based in Jamestown, Ohio. Read more at www.deerinheadlines.com