Was advanced age the critical factor in the career-ending Helen Thomas incident? Because the Which-Retirement-Resistant-Journalist-Media-Figure-Will-Helen-Thomas-Next Watch is on.
At TVNewser, Gail Shister writes this of 60 Minutes’s Andy Rooney, 92:
Given the recent public flameout of 89-year-old Helen Thomas, some say Rooney should leave the party before he suffers the same fate.Rooney’s musings “too often are the discomforting ramblings of an old man…,” writes TV critic Ed Bark. “Hanging on like this is unseemly. Rooney has made his mark and then some. He should give someone else a chance to end ‘60 Minutes’ on their own terms.”
Not gonna happen, says Rooney, whose wry, two-minute sermonettes cover topics ranging from the amount of coffee in coffee cans to the demise of the “funny papers” (newspaper comic strips) to who is Lady Gaga.
(While Shister attributes the “time for Rooney to go” sentiment to Bark, she contributes this tidbit: “Contract-wise, Rooney says he doesn’t even remember the last time he signed one, but he thinks it was five or six years ago.”)
Here is David Carr’s ominous conclusion to his column yesterday on the who, how, and when already of 78-year-old Larry King’s succession at CNN:
A year of occasional substitutes just might yield a worthy, and viewer-friendly, successor. As it is, Mr. King has been left to dangle, battered by tabloid reports, sliding ratings and his own daily battle to anchor the show five days a week. The more legendary the talent, the more delicate the endgame. Think of Helen Thomas’s exit, which did not end well for anyone.
Andy Rooney was briefly suspended in 1990 for allegedly making racist remarks and (not allegedly) "express[ing] his distaste for homosexuality in blunt and ill-informed terms," according to Time. But viewers, etc. demanded that he be reinstated. That was twenty years ago, and it wasn't the last time he crossed the line between lovable curmudgeon and not-so-lovable voice of casual bigotry. But is Andy Rooney really a "journalist"? He's a commentator/ humorist / TV personality -- an entertainer, basically. And by now his age is a big part of his shtick. He's closer to Imus -- or Dick Clark -- than to Helen Thomas. Plus, who gains anything politically by denouncing Andy Rooney, even if he does say something reprehensible (again)?
#1 Posted by Mollie, CJR on Mon 21 Jun 2010 at 01:07 PM
Good points, Mollie. Made me curious about how CBS News characterizes Andy Rooney and what he does: He is a "correspondent," according to his official bio, "known for his wry, humorous, and sometimes controversial essays...that have been the signature end-piece of 60 Minutes for decades." Later in the bio, it is noted that he has been doing his "unique reports" for 33 seasons of 60 Minutes. Hmm.
And Larry King is a "TV talk show host"/"interviewer," per his CNN bio.
Really, I should have written, "the Which-Retirement-Resistant-Media-Figure-Will-Helen-Thomas-Next Watch is on."
#2 Posted by Liz Cox Barrett, CJR on Mon 21 Jun 2010 at 01:39 PM