Andy Rooney_ 60 Years of Wisdom and Wit

by Andy Rooney

  “I’ll be seventy-five in April,” Lonnie said.

  “But you’re strong and healthy,” I said. “Why would you quit work?”

  “I want to do some things,” Lonnie said. “Fix up my house. Do some things.”

  “Can’t you fix up your house and still work here?” I asked.

  There seemed to be something he wasn’t telling me.

  “Oh, I could,” Lonnie said, “but I want to go back to school.”

  “That would be great,” I said. “I’ve always wanted to do that too.” I wondered what courses Lonnie was thinking of taking but decided not to ask.

  “Yeah,” Lonnie said, “I been working for sixty-two years now. Want to go back to school. Never did get enough school. Never really learned how to read. I was a little lame boy, you know. Embarrassed to go to school. All the big kids. What I want to do is learn to read, good enough to satisfy myself.”

  I’ve known Lonnie for thirty years and never knew how handicapped he was.

  The Godfrey You Don’t Know

  Arthur Godfrey has spoken more words to more people than any man since the beginning of time. Historians may someday search those words to find out what kind of man commanded so much attention. And if historians can decide exactly what kind of a man he was, they will have achieved something Godfrey’s contemporaries never could.

  Between 1949 and 1955, I wrote for Godfrey. Since then, I have resisted the temptation to write about him because if I did, I thought, I’d want to catch the truth, and, as any writer discovers, truth is not solely a matter of intent. Many important things about Godfrey have never been said, and many untrue and unimportant things have been repeated for years. Now perhaps it’s time to fill in a few gaps.

  One winter evening in 1955, Arthur taxied his DC3 down the runway at Teterboro Airport in New Jersey, roared into the sky and turned the plane toward the Hudson for a look at New York, before heading south for Virginia. That night, I was standing between Arthur and his copilot, Frank La Vigna.

  “Look,” Arthur said, gazing down entranced at the sight of New York from the air. “It makes me so damn mad,” he said thoughtfully. “Someday I’ll be dead, and all this will still be here but I won’t be able to see it.”

  Godfrey’s zest for living takes precedence over everything else, even his career. His own programs have never been of paramount importance to him, except when they coincided with whatever else he was doing.

  ***

  Godfrey has always known what many entertainers never find out. He knows people are lonely. He knows that they listen to and respond to the entertainer who reduces their loneliness, who appeals to their sense of fellow feeling. Godfrey, in his seemingly aimless talks, touches on basic elements of likeness in superficially unlike individuals, and every listener recognizes something of himself and feels he “belongs.” This makes people feel good, and most of all, that is what people want.

  Godfrey’s instincts about what to say on air are great. “I don’t like to think too much about something,” Arthur often says. “If I say what comes to my mind first, that’s usually the best thing. Just as soon as I start figuring it out, I get loused up.”

  Years ago, some of Godfrey’s associates suggested that he avoid mentioning the luxurious swimming pool on his Virginia estate or his $200,000 airplane equipped with a cocktail lounge, television, beds, lounge chairs, and wing-to-wing carpeting. On instinct, he ignored the advice and spoke of both constantly, with the pride of a boy with a new bike. He was right, as usual. While the swimming pool or the private airplane might be luxuries beyond the reach of his viewers, the

  Arthur Godfrey in front of camera for CBS’s Talent Scouts

  feeling he conveyed of unembarrassed delight in his possessions was understandable.

  Within the highly regimented broadcasting industry, Godfrey is famous for his independence. Most television shows are prepared by network officials, producers, writers, directors, independent packagers, advertising agencies or various combinations of these. They are prepared for a performer. The performer is told how things are going to be. No one tells Godfrey anything, and if anyone does, he doesn’t listen. For example, every network has a censor who checks scripts for policy, taste, and conflicts of interest. In thirty years of broadcasting, Godfrey has yet to give network officials any indication of what he is going to do or say on air. No censor passes on anything of his.

  *** Broadcasting is a business dedicated to attracting and selling to the largest possible audience. Godfrey’s answer to any complaint broadcasting executives have ever made is: “Am I selling the stuff?”

  In the very beginning of his career as a broadcaster in Washington, D.C., Godfrey took a daring chance. He started treating the commercial copy of several sponsors in a lighthearted way. The story he tells most often is the one about Zlotnick, the furrier: He read some of Zlotnick’s commercials with the heavy Russian-Jewish accent of the store owner. The next day, several friends asked Zlotnick why he let Godfrey make fun of his accent on the air.

  As Godfrey tells it, Zlotnick looked at his friends and said, “Heccent? Vot heccent?”

  The next day, Godfrey not only made fun of Zlotnick’s accent again, but told that story. Who could be mad? Not Zlotnick. His fur store, along with his accent, was becoming the best known in Washington. And Arthur Godfrey was on his way to becoming the biggest name in broadcasting.

  Godfrey has a way of touching sore spots, and his relations with both CBS and several of his sponsors have often been less than friendly. If they put up with his “go to hell” attitude, it is only because he makes money for anyone connected with him.

  To these two industries—television and advertising—Godfrey is a pain in the neck, to put it the nicest way I know how. He takes no nonsense from either one of them.

  In ten years, more than one hundred sponsors have paid something like $125 million for Godfrey to sell their products, and he has done it with unparalleled success. He learns something about a product, convinces himself that is a good one, and sets out to convince others. His proud boast is that he has never sold a product he did not personally have faith in. Although this is literally true, it must be said in honesty that he also has an unequaled ability to convince himself of almost anything he wants to believe. So when he goes on the air and says he thinks a product is good, he isn’t doing it with tongue in cheek. He believes what he says.

  This part of Arthur’s commercial approach delights his sponsors; it is the second part of his pitch that angers them. The second step is to make his audience believe as he believes. To accomplish this, he allies himself with the listeners against the sponsor. He gains their confidence by pointing out some obvious absurdity or exaggeration in advertising claims. He may complain for instance about the package the product comes in. Or he will needle the advertising men handling the product. If the sponsor has several products, he will single out one and admit he doesn’t care much for that particular product. (“What a time to be selling peanut butter! I hate the stuff anyway. But, brother, if you want to try something good, taste this sponsor’s peaches.”)

  At his best, when Godfrey has finished a commercial, he has: 1) pointed up his own honesty; 2) made certain that everyone knows the name of the product; and 3) made clear that he, an honest man, thinks the product is the best there is.

  ***

  Godfrey is as independent of CBS as he is of sponsors. At fifty-six, he is not completely tactless, but the network does not push him anywhere he doesn’t want to go. There have been times when his relations with the network have been close to the breaking point. Frank Stanton, CBS president, would gladly have made an usher out of Godfrey in 1952 when Godfrey advised his Talent Scouts audience not to buy a television set until color sets were on the market in quantity. Color was years off, and CBS’s own television manufacturing subsidiary, DBS-Hytron, was up to its ears in black-and-white sets on which the network was spending an advertising fortune.

  Anyone who has ever worked for
Godfrey is asked, with monotonous regularity, “Is he hard to work for?”

  The answer is that Godfrey is hard, but good, to work for. Because he does not like to think that anyone can really help him, he often belittles people’s efforts on his behalf.

  He demands constant confirmation from the people around him that he is everything he wishes he was. He suspects himself of being a fraud— which he is not—and insists in a hundred little ways that his staff convince him that he is not.The Godfrey capacity for adulation is a bottomless pit.

  “How was it?” he will ask after a show, and for an hour, people will sit around thinking of new ways to say that a real stinker was great. He leaves knowing in his heart that it was a stinker.

  Godfrey is thoughtful, concerned about his employees’ personal problems, tight with a buck but free with a bankroll. He demands loyalty, but he returns it. Any employee of reasonably long standing who finds himself in trouble can get sympathy and real help from Arthur.

  The greatest satisfaction in working for Godfrey is that he affords a refuge from all the petty pushers in the business. He takes no nonsense and protects those working for him from it. Within the limits of his absolute dictatorship, there is complete freedom, and next to getting to be the dictator, that is about all an employee can hope for.

  ***

  At this point in his career, he has a nagging sense of unimportance. He underrates what he has accomplished. For instance, in 1951 Godfrey was brought into the Republican movement. He and automobile executive Charles E. Wilson had breakfast with Eisenhower in December while the general was still president of Columbia University, and Godfrey and Wilson also met with the late Sen. Robert A. Taft. “We’re looking for the right guy,” Arthur said one day, a little grandly but in the confines of his office.

  When the Republicans decided on Eisenhower, Godfrey started on a “get out and vote” campaign that rivaled any selling job he ever did for a sponsor’s product. He never said who to get out and vote for, but his sentiments were clear. Anyway, he was speaking to women on his morning shows, and in 1952, it was easy to forecast that if women got out and voted, it would be for Eisenhower. They did just that, of course, in record numbers, and Godfrey’s campaign was at least partly responsible.

  He has been important in another area too. He is the most genuinely open-minded man I have ever known when it comes to another’s race

  Harry Reasoner 231

  or religion. His attitude must have had a healthy influence on his audience. As a matter of fact, one of the words Godfrey dislikes is “tolerance.” To be “tolerant,” he feels, suggests a superior attitude on the part of the tolerator.

  I don’t know what historians may say about Godfrey at some future time, but I hope they understand that he was, despite everything, a giant of a man.

  Harry Reasoner

  Harry Reasoner was one of the original correspondents on 60 Minutes when it first aired in 1968. He retired in 1991.

  In 1961 CBS asked me to write a show for Harry. We’d never met so I called him and suggested we talk first. He put me off. He wasn’t unfriendly, he just wasn’t interested in talking about it. Harry’s like that.

  Writing for other people on television, I learned something. I learned that its hard to write for someone who couldn’t do it without you and easy to write for someone who doesn’t need you. Harry was always easy to write for.

  And you could ask Harry. There are people who know things and people who don’t know anything. Harry knows things. He’s an omnivorous reader with a great memory. He’s got a lot in his head . . . some of which he’d be better off without, of course.

  Once I saw someone come to him with a blank map of Africa . . . just the outline of the countries. Harry sat down, looked at it and filled in the names of all fifty-two African countries.

  Harry Reasoner’s my best friend. Of the ten people I say that about, Harry’s the most complicated and the hardest to be best friends with. He’s worth the trouble.

  People wonder why he’s leaving. Harry’s leaving CBS because he never really liked to work. It made him mad when anyone suggested he was lazy. He’s not lazy but, of all the people doing this kind of work,

  With Harry Reasoner, on location in California shooting the ABC documentary “A Bird’s Eye View of California”

  Harry enjoyed actually doing it the least. Mike Wallace loves to work. Harry hates it.

  In 1979 I questioned the overuse of the word “superstar.” I tried to say who was and who was not a real superstar.

  A superstar is always a person who has something more than skill and talent that attracts the rest of us to him. In this business, Walter Cronkite’s a superstar. Ten years ago, I said that of the four correspondents on 60 Minutes, two of them were and two of them were not.

  For months after that people asked me who I thought the two superstars were. I never said, of course, but I can tell you now. Harry Reasoner was one.

  A Best Friend 233

  With Walter Cronkite on his boat in Martha’s Vineyard

  A Best Friend

  How many really good friends do you have? If you’re lucky, you have two or maybe three.

  Walter Cronkite was a really good friend of mine—a best friend. I didn’t just know Walter well, I didn’t respect him, I didn’t revere him—I just liked him a lot. We were often together and it was easy. We didn’t have to think of things to talk about—things to talk about just came to us naturally.

  I was with Walter recently and we didn’t talk much because neither of us had much to say. You can do that with good friends too.

  Walter and I met in London in 1942.

  And I suppose we’ve been together a thousand times from then until now. It’s one of those numbers in your life that you can’t count.

  I’ve been proud over the years to see Walter become not just one of the best-known people on television but one of the best-known people in the whole world of people. He was proud of me, too, and there’s no better feeling in life than that. I wouldn’t trade Walter Cronkite liking me for just about anything I’ve ever had.

  The Flat Earth in Kansas

  In 1999 the Kansas Board of Education assured itself a place in the annals of ignorance by decreeing that Darwin’s theory of evolution be removed from the state’s school curriculum. It seems likely that board members, looking out their windows at their state’s broad plains, might also conclude that the Earth is flat.

  It helps restore my faith in the intelligence and good sense of the people of Kansas to know that their decision was reversed two years later.

  One of the pleasures of our country house is the recurring memory it evokes of Margie’s father, a doctor whose home it was. He was a self-educated intellectual who went from high school to medical college and never lost his fascination with knowledge. On either side of the fireplace in the living room, the bookcases are filled with literary masterpieces more admired than read by most Americans, including this one. Among the treasures is a twenty-volume set of red leatherbound books comprising the complete works of Charles Darwin. Over the years I have spent many hours reading them and have a ways to go to finish.

  There have been no more than a handful of people who have contributed as much to mankind’s knowledge of itself as Darwin did. No one who has read any of what he wrote could question his brilliance or his dedication to searching for the truth. His two-volume book The Origin of Species would surprise any member of the Kansas Board of

  The Flat Earth in Kansas 235

  Education who undertook reading it. It seems likely none of them ever has.

  “Natural selection is continually trying to economize every part of the organization,” Darwin wrote. “If, under changed conditions of life, a structure, before useful, becomes less useful, its diminution will be favored, for it will profit the individual not to have its nutrient wasted in building up a useless structure.”

  This is merely one paragraph on page 183 of Volume I, but it summarizes Darwin’s theory
of natural selection and his belief that all living things change as they adapt themselves to flourish or decline under the conditions they encounter. He points out that the tallest giraffes survive the droughts because, even if they are only two inches taller than others, they can reach higher branches for food.

  Darwin himself was more aware of the possibility he could be wrong than anyone on the Kansas Board of Education. He laid out some ways he might be wrong in Chapter VII of The Origin of Species. It runs for fifty-six pages and is called “MISCELLANEOUS OBJECTIONS TO THE THEORY OF NATURAL SELECTION.”

  There are scientists who doubt the broad implications of his conclusions about the origin of mankind but no scientist of any stature doubts the authenticity of his work. For “educators” in Kansas to eliminate study of it from their school curriculum is stupidity. Teach kids to doubt it if they wish, but teach it and let them decide.

  Darwin always inspected his own motives and the possibility that he was wrong.

  “From my early youth,” he says, “I have had the strongest desire to understand or explain whatever I observed—that is to group all facts under some general laws. These causes combined have given me the patience to reflect or ponder for any number of years over any unexplained problem.

  “I have steadily endeavored to keep my mind free so as to give up any hypothesis, however much beloved by me, as soon as facts are shown to be opposed to it.”

  The single biggest difference between those who believe that God created everything at one specific time in history and those who believe everything evolved from one simple cell over millions of years is that scientists like Darwin are willing, even anxious, to find evidence that will prove them to be wrong. Creationists are looking only for the elusive evidence that God did it.

  I have mixed feelings about Kansas. The most time I ever spent there was at a political convention and Kansas City was wonderful on that occasion. On one other occasion I was filming a story in Manhattan, Kansas, and was invited to dinner at someone’s home. It was the single most inedible meal I have ever faced and I learned, toward the end of it that our host, the woman who prepared it, taught a class in cooking at Kansas State University. I tell you this so you’ll know I had negative feeling about education in Kansas even before the Board of Education banned Darwin.