Andy Rooney and Ali G
Hilarious
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KglSPl7g14Q&feature=youtube_gdata_player
He had a couple of interesting experiences as a reporter for Stars and Stripes in Europe. He flew as cargo on an Eigth Air Force Raid (over Schweinfurt, I believe). His plane took flack damage and it scared the bejeebers out of him. He narrated a film of the raid.
He also crossed the Remagen bridge on the first day that it was captured. At the time the area was very weakly defended by the Wehrmacht, and only a handful of U.S. troops and a couple of tanks had gotten across it. (The Americans, finding it hard to believe their luck, rushed reinforcements across as soon as possible.)
He also possessed that most essential of all elements for happiness: gratitude. He appreciated how lucky he had been in his life. He made a show of misanthropy and loved to grouse, but we loved him, because deep down, we knew it was a fascade.
He never shook off the reflexive and unthinking New Deal liberalism that most people of his generation had become innoculated with. To Andy it was always 1965 in Selma, 1969 in Saigon, 1940 in Europe, 1929 on Wall Street, 1968 on campus.
For Andy, Ed Murrow was still reporting the blitz from London and Bill Paley was building the greatest broadcast news team in history. Dan Rather was a young pup, who still had to learn the ropes. And Hyannisport truly was Camelot.
He was an interesting man. I can understand an agnostic but an atheist is simply on the wrong side.
He’s been dead for years.. CBS just figured it out.
A WW2 Vet, we should all be sad. He had his ups and downs but man the first few posts hoping he’s in hell are terrible.
And?
A loathful man, but my sympathies to his family who probably loved him.
Not just an atheist, but a liar as well. And not about politics, but about a colleague, maybe even a friend.
In an essay after Steve Allen’s death, he said that the obits written about Allen left out the fact that Steve was a student of the Bible who was obsessed (my word, not Rooney’s) with exposing its flaws. And while it is true that Allen was an atheist for much of his life, in his last few years he described himself as “an involved Presbyterian.” For this lie and essays about religion that compared God to Santa Claus, Rooney won the Emperor Has No Clothes Award from the Freedom From Religion Foundation. Meanwhile, though I don’t have the facts to make it a solid conclusion, I suspect that Allen is just another in the long line of people (such as Lew Wallace and Josh MacDowell) who decided to disprove the Bible and ended up transformed by it.
I hope he repented, but whether he did or not he has met the Emperor of the Universe, and he ain’t Santa.
Don’t you really hate it when that happens? /s
RIP Mr Rooney. I disagreed with him a lot but he did provide valuable service in WWII. Condolences to his family and friends
Sad day. Rest in Peace. I used to enjoy watching him complain....did not agree with him much but he was entertaining in his own way. God bless and prayers to his family.
RIP.
Rooney was more than a bit of an oddball.
He was strongly opposed to gambling which would have put him in the same position as Southern Baptists.