The Best Eyebrows in the Biz

Today we lost a wonderful American, a straight talker and the best set of eyebrows seen on t.v. since WWII.  

Andy Rooney passed away this morning.  The Longtime CBS News commentator was 92.   I can personally comment that I enjoyed seeing him read his essays on 60 Minutes.  He would read them at the very end of the show so it was always what I would remember most about 60 Minutes.  In fact, it's one of my first memories of seeing news.

One reason his reporting stuck in my head was the way that he looked.  For my entire life he always looked very old.  In particular, Rooney was always known for his eyebrows, which seemed almost cartoonish. When asked about his bushy white eyebrows he once said, "I try to look nice. I comb my hair, I tie my tie, I put on a jacket, but I draw the line when it comes to trimming my eyebrows. You work with what you got."   I love it.  It's that kind of attitude that made Rooney so endearing. 

As I mentioned earlier, at the end of 60 Minutes he would read an essay. These essays ranged from looking for a job ("We need people who can actually do things. We have too many bosses and too few workers. More college graduates ought to become plumbers or electricians, then go home at night and read Shakespeare.") to the "shock and awe" campaign that started the Iraq War in 2003 (the phrase "makes us look like foolish braggarts.")

His comment that America needs more people to go to college, become plumbers and electricians and be able to read Shakespeare hearkens back to a time when Americans could earn a decent living by actually making things or fixing things.  That's not necessarily the case anymore.  Doing something useful like plumbing or bringing electricity to homes, businesses and factories is clearly good for the nation.  Throughout the last two decades too many of America's brightest have gone into the financial services industry...

Also, he was spot on in claiming that America's "shock and awe" campaign "makes us look like foolish braggarts".  If we read in a history book about a country that invaded another country - whether if history justified it or not - and called that invasion a "shock and awe campaign" we'd laugh.  How pompous, we'd say. 

In all, Andy Rooney wrote 1,097 essays for 60 Minutes and we were luck for every one of them.

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 The Takeaway: We were lucky to have a straight talker like Andy Rooney.  He did his best, but he wasn't perfect. That seems like an admirable goal for America.