Andy Rooney_ 60 Years Of Wisdom And Wit Part 15

"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. Embarra.s.sed 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 G.o.dfrey You Don't Know Arthur G.o.dfrey 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 G.o.dfrey's contemporaries never could.

Between 1949 and 1955, I wrote for G.o.dfrey. 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 G.o.dfrey 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 d.a.m.n 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."

G.o.dfrey'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.

G.o.dfrey 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. G.o.dfrey, 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.

G.o.dfrey'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 G.o.dfrey's a.s.sociates suggested that he avoid mentioning the luxurious swimming pool on his Virginia estate or his $200,000 airplane equipped with a c.o.c.ktail 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 [image]Arthur G.o.dfrey in front of camera for CBS's Talent Scouts feeling he conveyed of unembarra.s.sed delight in his possessions was understandable.

Within the highly regimented broadcasting industry, G.o.dfrey 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 for a performer. The performer is told how things are going to be. No one tells G.o.dfrey 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, G.o.dfrey has yet to give network officials any indication of what he is going to do or say on air. No censor pa.s.ses on anything of his. a performer. The performer is told how things are going to be. No one tells G.o.dfrey 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, G.o.dfrey has yet to give network officials any indication of what he is going to do or say on air. No censor pa.s.ses on anything of his.

*** Broadcasting is a business dedicated to attracting and selling to the largest possible audience. G.o.dfrey'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., G.o.dfrey 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 G.o.dfrey make fun of his accent on the air.

As G.o.dfrey tells it, Zlotnick looked at his friends and said, "Heccent? Vot heccent?"

The next day, G.o.dfrey 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 G.o.dfrey was on his way to becoming the biggest name in broadcasting.

G.o.dfrey 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 h.e.l.l" att.i.tude, it is only because he makes money for anyone connected with him.

To these two industries-television and advertising-G.o.dfrey 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 G.o.dfrey 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 believes what he says. 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 b.u.t.ter! I hate the stuff anyway. But, brother, if you want to try something good, taste this sponsor's peaches.") At his best, when G.o.dfrey 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.

G.o.dfrey 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 G.o.dfrey in 1952 when G.o.dfrey advised his Talent Scout Talent Scouts audience not to buy a television set until color sets were on the market in quant.i.ty. 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 G.o.dfrey is asked, with monotonous regularity, "Is he hard to work for?"

The answer is that G.o.dfrey 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 G.o.dfrey 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.

G.o.dfrey 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 G.o.dfrey 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 G.o.dfrey 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 G.o.dfrey 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, G.o.dfrey 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 G.o.dfrey'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 231 231 or religion. His att.i.tude must have had a healthy influence on his audience. As a matter of fact, one of the words G.o.dfrey dislikes is "tolerance." To be "tolerant," he feels, suggests a superior att.i.tude on the part of the tolerator.

I don't know what historians may say about G.o.dfrey 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 60 Minutes when it first aired in 1968. He retired in 1991. 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, [image]With Harry Reasoner, on location in California shooting the ABC doc.u.mentary "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, 60 Minutes, two of them were and two of them were not. 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 233 233 [image]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 a.s.sured 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 The Origin of Species would surprise any member of the Kansas Board of would surprise any member of the Kansas Board of The Flat Earth in Kansas 235 235 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. The Origin of Species. It runs for fifty-six pages and is called "MISCELLANEOUS OBJECTIONS TO THE THEORY OF NATURAL SELECTION." 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d 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 cla.s.s 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.

Surrendering to Paris Paris is a special city in my life, considering I'm not much of an international traveler. I first saw Paris on August 25, 1944, the day the city was liberated from the Germans by a combination of French and U.S. troops. I entered it across the bridge at St. Cloud. We had reached St. Cloud the night before, and the tank commanders decided to wait until morning to make their final drive into the city.

Two German Army trucks, loaded with soldiers, tried to cross the bridge in our direction in the middle of the night, not knowing we were there in such force. They ran into the barrage of fire from the 75mm guns mounted on the tanks of our armored division sitting there on the other side of the river.

The bodies of the Wehrmacht soldiers, riddled by machine-gun bullets, lay askew in the trucks and on the grated bridge roadway where some of them had fallen, their blood dripping into the Seine below.

Surrendering to Paris 237 237 That was my gruesome introduction to what has been, ever since, an almost idyllic relationship to one of the world's great cities. (I suspect that if there were a poll taken among all the people who have been everywhere to determine their favorite city, Paris would win.) Paris is too expensive for an American to visit now, of course, but a lot of Americans go there anyway. We try to save some money and take the trip once every few years. I'd rather go to a foreign city I'm sure I like than take a gamble on a place I don't know.

Two of us went to one of the good restaurants in Paris for a birthday celebration in 1991 and dinner cost almost two hundred dollars apiece. That included one of the least-expensive bottles of wine. French wine is as expensive in France as it is in the United States. You could say that about California wine and California, too.

When you enter a restaurant in France, an American is struck by how many people are puffing cigarettes. The French don't have nosmoking sections. Morley Safer attributes the relatively good health of the French to the amount of red wine they drink. Some people are always looking for reasons why a vice of theirs is actually good for them. I accept Morley's word on this myself.

All French restaurants add 15 percent to the bill for the waiters. Service is as good or better than in the United States, where we a.s.sume waiters try harder to get a better tip. They don't, and we should abandon tipping and add a service charge. There's a restaurant I go to in New York that gets a lot of French tourists and one waitress told me they often don't get tipped by their French customers because the French a.s.sume it's included on their bill.

The French always seem to be having a good time when they eat. When a man and a woman sit together in a cozy restaurant, it's as if they were dancing. I don't understand what French women see in French men, though. I do see what French men see in French women. Even the women who are nowhere near beautiful have an attractive, s.e.xy way about them. French men, on the other hand, are as a whole and by my own standards not as good-looking as the average American man.

Before I left home for Paris, I bought a new pair of white pajamas, because I didn't want to be in my old, tattered ones when the maid came in every morning with the traditional French hotel breakfast of coffee, hot milk, a crusty loaf of their great bread and several croissants and jam.

I think, by the way, that the French ought to sue some of the bakeries making what they call "croissants" in our country. A soft, soggy roll is not automatically a croissant just because it's made in the shape of a crescent.

The third night I was there, I was getting ready for bed but I couldn't find my pajama bottoms. I know I'd hung them on the back of the bathroom door and it was apparent that the maid had picked them up with the white towels and bedsheets and put them in the laundry.

I didn't know whether to spend the money on a new pair, which probably would have cost as much as the expensive dinner, or sleep in just the tops for the rest of the trip. It occurred to me that it seemed almost impossible to surprise or shock the maids who brought breakfast, no matter what you were wearing, if anything at all. You can guess what I did.

I drove eighty miles from Paris to Reims, the heart of champagne country, and stopped for gas just outside the city. The superhighway gas station had everything one in the United States would have, except unleaded gas. The French don't have much unleaded gas yet. The gas station sold candy, junk food, Eiffel Tower ashtrays for tourists and trashy magazines, but, unlike any gas station I'd ever seen, it had a huge selection of expensive champagne for sale. I was tempted to buy a quart of oil, a bag of potato chips, and a magnum of Moet and Chandon.

We went to Reims, or "Rheims," as it's spelled in English, because I wanted to see where the Germans surrendered on May 7, 1945. They've made the building into a museum, but it's not very good. The French are not much interested in making a big thing of a German surrender to Waiting 239 239 U.S., British and Russian troops. They seem to be vaguely embarra.s.sed about their role in World War II.

On the way back to Paris, we came over the same bridge I had crossed forty-eight years ago when Allied forces entered the city. It's one thing I know more about than the Parisians know about their city. It gives me a kind of smug satisfaction when they're impatient, because I don't speak French very well.

I just smile quietly and think to myself, "I know something about this city you'll never know."

No, Thank You Waiting Today I stood in line for seventeen minutes to cash a check for seventyfive dollars. I'd given this company, a bank, all my money to hold onto for me until I needed it, and today, when I needed some of it, it took me that long to get it back.

This is a good example of the kind of things that makes so many of us smile when we read that banks are having a hard time. We're glad. It fills us with pleasure to read about their troubles. They've made us wait so often over the years that nothing bad that happens to a bank makes us do anything but laugh. "You had it coming, bank." That's what we think.

Waiting is one of the least amusing things there is to do. Short waits are worse than long waits. If you know you're going to have to wait for four hours or six months, you can plan your time and use it and still have the pleasure of antic.i.p.ating what you're waiting for. If it's a short wait of undetermined length, it's a terrible waste of time.

[image]

I've read all the proverbs about waiting and patience: "All things come to him who waits."

"They also serve who only stand and wait."

"Patience is a virtue."

I don't happen to believe any of those old saws. Impatience Impatience is a virtue, is a virtue, that's what I think. Shifting from one foot to the other and tapping your fingers on something and getting d.a.m.n mad while you stand there is the only way to behave while you're waiting. There's no sense being patient with people who make you wait, because they'll only make you wait longer the next time. The thing to do is blow up . . . hit the roof when they finally show up.

Some people seem to think they were born to get there when they're ready, while you wait. Banks are not the only big offenders in the waiting game, so are doctors. Some doctors a.s.sume their time is so much more important than anyone else's that all the rest of us ought to wait for them, Hot Weather 241 241 "patiently," of course. What other profession or line of business routinely includes in its office setup something called "the waiting room"?

In New York City many of the parking garages have signs over their cashier windows saying, "No charge for waiting time." What a preposterous sign! What it means is that they can take their time getting your car, but you don't have to pay them anything while you wait for it. I always tell them that I have a charge for waiting, and I think doctors ought to start knocking ten dollars off their bill for every half hour we spend in their waiting rooms. The doctor who tells all his patients to come at nine o'clock ought to be sent back to the hospital to spend another year as a resident.

All of us admire in other people the characteristics we think we have ourselves. I don't have any patience, so it's natural, I guess, that I don't admire it in other people. Sometimes I reluctantly concede it works for them, but I still don't think of it as a virtue. I secretly think that people who wait well are too lazy to go do something. Just an opinion, mind you. I don't want a lot of patient waiters mad at me.

The funny thing about that word "waiter" is that those who make a living as waiters are about the most impatient people on earth. You can't get a waiter to wait ten seconds. You go in a restaurant, he hands you a menu eighteen inches long with fifty dishes to choose from, and in three seconds he starts tapping his pencil on his order pad to let you know how impatient he is.

I'd make a great waiter. I can't wait at all.

Hot Weather I detest hot weather. That's easy enough for me to say in the middle of a heat wave, but I'll say the same thing on the coldest day of the year.

Somehow we don't worry quite so much about the people subjected to relentless heat as we would if they had been through a flood or a hurricane. There are no pictures of it for television, and millions suffer silently.