November 14, 2011
In honor of Andy Rooney’s recent passing, here is my post from last year in which I argue that Andy Rooney was the first and original blogger. I’ve added some new links and edited out a dead link so if you read this the first time, you can still enjoy some new Rooney goodies.
From September 28, 2010
The Urban Dictionary defines “blogger” as a term used to describe anyone with enough time or narcissism to document every tedious bit of minutia filling their uneventful lives.
It does not, however, speculate on who the first blogger was. For that honor, I nominate CBS 60 Minutes contributor Andy Rooney.
Since 1978, every week near the end of the show, they give Andy a few minutes to talk about whatever is on his mind. Typically, there doesn’t seem to be much going on up there. One week he blathered on about all the plastic bags he has laying around. He didn’t talk about recycling them, he didn’t suggest uses for them, he merely pulled them out of his desk drawers and from various places around his office and showed them to the camera.
“This one is from Waldbaum’s.”
“This bag says ‘I Love New York’ on it. Good thing I do.”
“I seem to have gotten this bag at a Waldenbooks, but I can’t seem to recall when I ever shopped there.”
It went on and on like that.
I think that Andy Rooney clearly inspired a whole generation of observational comedians. Listen to Andy Rooney and you can plainly hear the genesis of Jerry Seinfeld: “What’s the deal with carrying things? What’s the deal with plastic bags?”
And “What’s the deal with modern music”?
ANDY ROONEY LOSSES TOUCH WITH MODERN MUSIC:
I suspect that the real reason he has lost touch with modern music is that he is 91 years old!
According to CBS News’s biography of him, “Rooney wrote his first television essay, a longer-length precursor of the type he does on 60 Minutes, in 1964, ‘An Essay on Doors.’ From 1962 to 1968, he collaborated with another close friend, the late CBS News correspondent Harry Reasoner – Rooney writing and producing, Reasoner narrating -on such notable CBS News specials as ‘An Essay on Bridges’ (1965), ‘An Essay on Hotels’ (1966), ‘An Essay on Women’ (1967), and ‘The Strange Case of the English Language’ (1968).
Give the man credit for consistency- he hasn’t changed a bit in over 40 years. As the man himself wrote in a letter, “Let’s face it, even on the nights when I’m good, I’m not that good.”
I’ll end now with a question I’m sure we all want answered:
WHAT’S IN ANDY’S DRAWERS?
ANDY ROONEY DOESN’T LIKE E-BOOKS
ANDY ROONEY ON CHRISTMAS
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