RSSby Andy Rooney
HOME > USA > POLITICS > Well-Known to Me
One of the great pleasures of my life has been the famous people I've not only met but known.
Famous people don't get famous for no reason, so there's always something special about them.
It probably isn't a good thing to do, but when you write a newspaper column you're often looking for an idea. I'm going to write about a few of the famous people I've known. Not just met -- known.
The first very well-known person I ever met and got to know well was Dwight Eisenhower.
Ike (as he was called by everyone) was Commander in Chief of all our troops in Europe during World War II, when I was a reporter for the Stars and Stripes in London. I can't say we were close friends but we knew and liked each other. I know I liked Ike, anyway, and we saw each other often. I asked questions that he answered, and they were usually about something that was important to the several million American GIs in what we called "the ETO" -- The European Theater of Operations.
I was a young sergeant and it was a great feeling to be taken seriously by the Commander in Chief.
I often went to Ike's office in the 20 Grosvenor Square building in London to interview him. He seemed like such a good guy. Knowing him made me a big deal at the Stars and Stripes. (It seems like a terrible name for a newspaper now but I liked the name then and I still like it, corny though it may be. It had a special meaning. I met Ike just once in the White House after the war.
I knew Clark Gable. How's that for the opening line of a paragraph? Gable was the public relations officer for a B17 bomb group that I visited often. I went there as a reporter and got to know him pretty well.
After the war, I sold a book I'd written to Metro Goldwyn Mayer, and my friends there were plenty impressed the day Gable came into the cafeteria, saw me and came over and shook my hand. I pretended we were old friends. They don't make movie stars like Clark Gable anymore.
After the war, I flopped around and finally went to CBS looking for work.
I had known Ed Murrow during the war in London. I'm sorry to say Ed didn't give me a job, but I met Arthur Godfrey in the elevator by accident and ended up writing for him.
No one was ever bigger in the business than Godfrey and I finally made $600 a week -- close to all the money in the world, as far as I knew.
Arthur was on the air five days a week for an hour and a half each day.
On Monday nights, his show called "Talent Scouts" was No. 1 week after week for several years and his Wednesday night program, "Arthur Godfrey and His Friends" was right behind it. No one ever made the money for a television network that Godfrey made for CBS.
I got a little piece of it and it seemed very good to me at a time when we had four kids growing up. Arthur was a real bastard (can I use "bastard" here?) but he was good, too, and he dominated radio and television for many years. Working for him was a great start for me in the business.
After I wrote for Godfrey, I quit in a huff one day and was out of work for several months. Then I met Harry Reasoner one day, soon after he came to CBS, and it was one of the best things that ever happened to me.
Harry died too young but he may have been the best newsman who was ever on the air.
I've met many more well-known people over the years ... too numerous to tell you about.
ALSO from andy rooney:
(Write to Andy Rooney at Tribune Media Services, 2225 Kenmore Ave., Suite 114, Buffalo, NY 14207, or via email at aarooney5@yahoo.com)
(c) 2009 TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.
About Andy Rooney
Andy Rooney born January 14th, 1919 is a writer, humorist, radio and television personality.
Rooney became most famous as a humorist and political commentator with his weekly broadcast on the CBS News Program "60 Minutes" since 1978.
Recent Political Commentary
Roving Towards Irrelevancy: The GOP in the Obama Era
by Chris Thomas
Dick Locher
Victor Davis Hanson, Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, once wrote that one of the features of western civilization that gave it a leg up on other cultures was the concept of self-audit, or the capacity for us to critique ourselves and our institutions.
Which brings us to the Republican Party of 2009 which has fallen.
Unfortunately the GOP is currently incapable of embracing Hanson's concept of self-audit.
Obama Economic Team's Flawed Cosmology:
Still Believing Universe Revolves around Banks
Arianna Huffington
A series of recent meetings with members of Barack Obama's economic team leading to a spirited back-and-forth that made me feel like I was back at Cambridge, debating the smartest kid in the class), left me with a pair of indelible impressions:
First, these are all good people, many of them brilliant, working incredibly hard with the best of intentions to solve the country's financial crisis.
Second, they are operating on the basis of an outdated cosmology that places banks at the center of the economic universe.
Greening My House.
Arianna Huffington
Ever since I saw the Green light, thanks to my friend Laurie David, and traded in my gas-guzzling SUV, I've tried my best to up my eco-awareness.
On the Road to Buenos Aires
Even the United States can Manage Itself into Irrelevance
Chris Thomas
America has been the greatest of all nations for a long time. But we should not forget, especially at a crucial juncture like this, that with enough bad decisions and enough political incompetence, we can indeed manage ourselves into decline. Even we can become Argentina.
Larry Summers: Brilliant Mind, Toxic Ideas
by Arianna Huffington
According to most commentators, the president's press conference went a long way toward taking the spotlight off the roiling anger over AIG, bonuses and Wall Street abuses -- and putting it back where the president wants it: on the imperative need to pass his budget.
But the best laid plans of our remarkable president may be laid to waste by a bank rescue plan that is the product of exhausted ideas put together by men far too beholden to Wall Street.
To understand why a man as brilliant and accomplished as Summers can be so wrong about what to do with the banks and Wall Street, it would be useful to turn to "The Innovator's Dilemma," by Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen.
What if Jon Stewart, Instead of John King,
Interviewed Dick Cheney
Arianna Huffington
Jon Stewart's Jim Cramer interview was a pivotal moment -- not just for Stewart, Cramer and CNBC, but also for journalism. Stewart kept popping into my head as I watched John King interview Dick Cheney three days later.
King opened the interview by showing clips of President Obama saying that his administration had "inherited an economic crisis" and "inherited a big mess." He then asked Cheney: "Did you leave him a mess?"
"I don't think you can blame the Bush administration for the creation of those circumstances," responded Cheney. "It's a global financial problem. . . . So I think the notion that you can just sort of throw it off on the prior administration, that's interesting rhetoric but I don't think anybody really cares a lot about that."
Tim Geithner, CNBC &
The Second Coming of Known Unknowns
Arianna Huffington on Tim Geithner, Economic Crisis & Obama Budget
Besides being awash in toxic paper, credit default swaps, and collateralized debt obligations, we seem to be drowning in unknowns.
Only, I get the sense that there are fewer unknowns than we're being told. Instead, we're greeted with a wall of manufactured complexity by the people whose job it is to make known unknowns into known knowns.
Rove Pontificating on Economy Like Madoff Pontificating on Investing
Although anointed as "the intellectual force and energy behind the Republican Party," Rush Limbaugh is just a massive shiny object that distracts our attention from the real intellectual force and energy behind the Republican Party, Karl Rove.
Time to Treat American Homeowners as Well as Wall Street Bankers
Arianna Huffington
"The banks are too big to fail" has been the mantra we've been hearing since September. But when you consider the millions of American homeowners facing foreclosure, aren't they also too big to be allowed to fail? So why hasn't the foreclosure crisis gotten the attention it deserves? A combination of perverse priorities and flawed thinking.
Bipartisanship vs What's Best for America:
President Obama Needs to Choose
The first question at President Obama's primetime press conference should have been: "Mr. President, what is your priority -- bipartisanship or what is best for America? And when the two are in conflict, which are you going to choose?
Although the answer should be obvious, the president's actions over the last couple of weeks have left many wondering.
America's Best Bet: Municipal Redemption Fund (MuRF)
Stopping Foreclosures & Protecting Investors
An original economic stimulus plan developed by a real estate agent in New Jersey that is currently in the hands of the House of Representatives and every Senator in Washington D.C. The Federal Government purchases NO interest in any private property and may take NO assignment of any lien under this plan. This plan is strictly a transparent "time-out" and "reset" of the national tax lien industry for the sake of stopping foreclosures while simultaneously protecting investors by shoring up the absolute bedrock of the capitalist economy which emanates directly from real property values and the taxes thereon.
Stimulus Package: If You Jump Halfway Across a Chasm, You Fall Into the Abyss
Arianna Huffington
Here's a thought: If we are going to spend $2 trillion trying to deal with the economic crisis, shouldn't we do it right? The price of getting it wrong is, after all, extremely high.
John Thain, Poster Child for Era of Irresponsibility
Arianna Huffington
There is plenty of debate about what President Obama's stimulus bill should look like -- as well there should be, given all that is at stake. But there is a growing consensus that the guiding principle in that debate should be Obama's call for a "new era of responsibility."
Helping fuel that consensus is the saga of the rise and fall of former Merrill Lynch CEO John Thain, the poster child for the Era of Irresponsibility. The condemnation of his behavior is completely bipartisan.
Barack Obama Sober Sermon on the Steps
Arianna Huffington
The new president and the throng that turned out to cheer him and hear him on Inauguration Day were on two very different missions.
The crowd had come to celebrate. Obama had come to deliver a sober sermon.
Inaugural Address By President Barack Hussein Obama
President Obama's Inauguration Speech in text & video
President Barack Obama gives his inaugural address after taking the oath of office in Washington, D.C., Jan. 20, 2009. The presidential inauguration is a tradition dating back to George Washington's 1789 inauguration. President Obama's Inauguration Speech in full in text & video.
Laissez-Faire Capitalism Should Be as Dead as Soviet Communism
Arianna Huffington
The collapse of Communism as a political system sounded the death knell for Marxism as an ideology. But while laissez-faire capitalism has been a monumental failure in practice, and soundly defeated at the polls, the ideology is still alive and kicking.
Does the Madoff Debacle Finally End the 'Who Could have Known' Era?
Arianna Huffington
An ambitious and risky undertaking carried out with hubris, and featuring the weeding out of anyone who raises alarms, little-to-no transparency, an oversight system in which no central authority is accountable, and the deliberate manufacturing of ambiguity and complexity so that when it all falls to pieces, the excuse who could have known can be used
Rewarding Those Who Got It Right
Arianna Huffington
Among its myriad failings, the Bush administration has repeatedly gotten it wrong when it comes to getting it right.
Over the last eight years, there has consistently been no penalty for those who have gotten things -- even the most important things -- wrong, and no reward for those who have gotten things right.
Call it Bush Darwinism: Survival of the Unfittest.
The Economic Meltdown Will Be Blogged
Politics Arianna Huffington
Losing your job -- or even fearing that you might -- can make you feel powerless. But at the same time you are looking for work -- or learning a new skill -- you can take up blogging. It doesn't require anyone's permission, there is no application process. You just need blogging software (some of the best is free) and the will to express yourself.