Sorry, Andy, But Your Time Is Running Out
Don’t you just hate it when people dump on Andy Rooney? Apparently some 7,000 of the curmudgeonly “60 Minutes” commentator’s fans do.
That’s how many people called the Associated Press headquarters in New York City last week to complain about television critic Frazier Moore’s recent description of Rooney as a “chronic fuddy-duddy” who should hang it up at age 77.
Of course, it helped that Rooney posted the AP phone number on the screen at the end of last Sunday’s show and invited viewers to call.
Rooney rejected producer Don Hewitt’s suggestion that he invite Moore on the program tonight to further discuss the issue, although he allowed that it “wouldn’t be bad fun. I’d probably suggest that his mother take him down and get him a haircut.”
Loose talk
Figure skater Oksana Baiul, on her naivete (in Esquire magazine): “I’m only 18, so I don’t know about life, nothing. I’m not Roseanne, 43 years old. She’s old lady, old enough to know about life. Not me.”
He’ll be getting plenty of warm wishes
David Frost turns 68 today.
He’s getting used to skating on thin ice
CBS News correspondent Bob Arnot told Harper’s magazine he keeps up with his daily 90-minute workouts, wherever he is. “When I was in Somalia we would go to do the story with these big armed convoys,” Arnot said. “So I hired two trucks full of gunmen, one in front and one in back, with me in the middle, rollerblading through the streets.”
It’s actually a bad case of hoof in mouth
Radio shock jock Don Imus, who made waves with his Clinton jokes at the recent Radio and Television Correspondents Association dinner, didn’t make it to the D.C. press corps’ annual Gridiron show spoofing political leaders. Quipped White House chief of staff Leon Panetta: “He’s in London being treated for mad cow disease.”
All the royals need is another nutty Sarah
One of the surgeons who gave Britain’s 95-year-old Queen Mother a new hip last fall has a confession: he’s a transsexual. “I would rather be a woman than a man,” said William Muirhead-Allwood. “For years I have called myself Sarah and that is how many of my friends know me.”
Well, so much for the Scalias of justice
Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia says people should start solving their own problems. As he told an audience at Bridgewater (Va.) College: “I’m not a guru sitting on some windswept Tibetan mountain waiting for someone to ask a question like, ‘Is there a right to die?”’
Those nattering name-hogs of negativity!
Former vice president Spiro Agnew, who resigned his office in disgrace in 1973, is fielding more than 100 autograph requests per month. “Some of the best autographs are the autographs of scoundrels,” said a Baltimore auction gallery manager. “Jesse James, if you could find it, would be a wonderful one to have.”
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The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Compiled by staff writer Rick Bonino