This reminds me of the time in the 1980's when Rex Reed once complained that movie stars like Robert DeNiro and Al Pacino did not have names like Cary Grant or Clark Gable. Like La Reed, Rooney appears to suffer from Tudor Image imprinting from his youth that monochromed his imagination and cultural tastes. Time to put this Old Dude to pasture...

I think in 10 years, when I'm eligible, I'll run for president under the pseudonym Whitehair Kickassington.  That presidential enough fer ya?

Embarrassing, wince-inducing, OMG kind of moment watching that last night. Aren't there editors at "60 Minutes" who watch these segments before they go on the air? It was like an outburst at the dinner table by the Simpson's grandfather, when the whole family looks blank for a few seconds and then ignores him.

"60 Minutes" seems to have just decided they'll never get an audience of anyone under 60, so the show will just go on until each and every viewer kicks the bucket.

My grandfather -- a pretty liberal guy -- has said the same thing about Obama.  It actually seems to be his primary reason for supporting Clinton.  American Anglophilia runs deep, and not just among WASPs (now a rather small minority almost everywhere but suburban and rural New England). Of course, the perfect "Anglo-Saxon" president in the second half of the century was actually Irish Catholic, but he had a nice patina of Ivy League and Massachusetts preppiness.

Clearly it's silly -- or, if we're being uncharitable, mildly racist -- to complain about Obama's or Giuliani's names (since there's nothing inherently less presidential about names that end in a vowel), but I can't say I really blame the old people.  Cultural change of this sort is hard, and we'll probably all have oddball, grumpy complaints like this by the time we're 85.  Which is not to say that they ought to be aired regularly on national television ...

To be fair, he also carped about "Mitt Romney" and "Joe Biden."  Part of his point seemed to be the undignified nature of the first names.  And isn't Huckabee a WASP?  So his commentary is trivial and foolish, and not necessarily ethnocentric/Anglophilic.  But one does have to say that by spending more time on Giuliani and Obama, he could have created the impression that he was being ethnically biased, and that in and of itself is reprehensible.

My grandparents before they passed away were pretty bigoted and I just attributed it to their living in different times.   My grandfather died first and made cringe-inducing comments until the end, but my grandmother had a sort of renaissance in her 90s when she started actually listening to our complaints about the way she talked/felt about blacks, Asians, and other gentiles and she became a remarkably tolerant and enlightened person.  (She voted for Al Gore in Palm Beach County).  The transition was surely aided by the anti-depressants they put her on after her husband died, but still, it was a like a final gift to her family that she mellowed out in the end.

My two comments are: (1) Why can't Andy Rooney do the same.  Maybe he just needs the right meds first;  and (2) Why do they put this guy on the TELEVISION?

I wouldn't read too much into Rooney's monologues. I've always felt no one takes the monologues seriously, not even Rooney.

Who's Andy Rooney? Is that the same TV guy who about half a century ago used to whine about his _pentalho de pentalho_ (luispc, pls explain to the girls and boys)? btw, my father can recall a day when people of our and Rooney's extraction also were viewed as having surnames not fit for the presidency.

Does anyone under 65 even watch 60 minutes anymore?

stgla - what's "television"?

It's a shame about Rooney, who back in his prime was a great newsman. Have his last 25 years on "60 Minutes" done anything but trash his own reputation?

That said, I hope Democrats are not shy about making fun of the Republican candidate for trivial superficialities this year. Republicans and their media echo chamber always do the same to Democrats.

And I say this as someone whose given name has a natural nickname that rhymes with "potty" and whose surname is shared by a number of teaseworthy famous people and fictional characters. So I've been on the receiving end of this kind of schoolyard ridicule, and I'm all for embracing our inner name-calling child when it comes to campaign time.

Rudolph William Luis Giuliani, for example That's a ridiculous name. Not because of the Italian-sounding bit at the end, but because who has two middle names without being in line to the British throne? Oh, right, effete Easterners who think they know better than the rest of us. Plus, he's a Republican with the middle initial W. I want to see Democrats start to call him Rudolph W. Giuliani.

Willard Mitt Romney is another great example. I go by my middle name too, but let's hear about "W. Mitt" when Democrats say his name. Or "Willard Romney." No squeamishness! We're not picking on him because of his Mormonism; we're picking on him because he's named after a hotel. And because he shares a Dubya with Dubya.

Huckabee's name makes its own teases, what with "Huckster" and "Huck" being synonyms variously for a charlatan or a fool.

John Sidney McCain III has a name as square and Andy Rooney-approved as the senator's jawline. But still, throwing the Sidney or a Sid into his name, or emphasizing the patrician-sounding "the third" can't hurt.

You know it's going to be "Barack Hussein Obama" when opponents of "the Democrat Party" speak, and you know they're going to slip a lot of "Osama" references into their talk. So the time to start ridiculing their candidates for their silly names is now. Start doing it here, in print. Start doing it in emails when you talk about the campaign. Slip name ridicule in when you talk with friends, family, and coworkers. Not with an angry tone in your voice, but with a bemused sense of can-you-believe-what-they're-trying-to-foist-on-us-this-time. "Oh, sure, Rudolph William Luis Giuliani. A man with as many names as ex-wives. He'll be a great role model." That sort of thing.

newVideoPlayer("Rooney_Snapper.flv", 475, 376,""); Hey, Andy Rooney’s not dead! Who knew? Also, he’s not happy with the all these ethnic-sounding people running for president. Barack Obama, Rudy Giuliani … jeez, this is supposed to be

Getting pissed off at Andy Rooney for being Andy Rooney is like commuting 100 miles a day alone in your car but convincing yourself it's okay because it's a Prius.

We're nice to dark people with finny sounding names because, gosh darn it, they're just like us, meaning either (a) they are of the same class as we are or (b) they are in a lower class but don't directly threaten us while conveniently occasionally demonstrating upward mobility so we can all pat ourselves on the back about what a wonderful system we all live and work under.

Meanwhile malaria sickens slightly more than one half of one billion people annually and kills between one and three million of them, mostly young African children, many if not most of whom would be saved by a piece of netting costing less than a buck.

I haven't bought any mosquito nets recently and thus haven't saved any African children and until I do please stop me if I begin pontificating about Andy Rooney's latest political incorrectness--speck in his eye versus two-by-four in mine, and all that.

Rooney's been around so long he thinks it's safe to steal laugh lines from Pat Paulsen:

"Bush and Dukakis?  What kind of names are these for presidents?  Where are all the Washingtons and the Jeffersons and the Jacksons?  (beat)  Well, they're playing basketball, that's where."

Who cares?

'It’s sad to see this voice of reason from my childhood fall off his rocker.'

I don't know how hold you are, Francesca, but you must be a lot older than me, because for the 30-odd years that I've been old enough to understand what Andy Rooney was saying, he's ALWAYS been off his rocker.

Wasn't America named after an Italian? I think Rooney is completely nuts, but I loved seeing him go off on non-white tennis outfits, with the kooky aside, on Andre Agassi - "how someone who dresses like this can get such a goodlooking woman is beyond me" [inserted picture of Brooke Shields for half a second]. But yeah, when you see something like this, you're kind of glad the old coots aren't in charge anymore. Even though they are completely right about Agassi's dressing.

Francesca Mari,

I thought the same thing when I caught Andy Rooney's Piece.  I think he was just lazy and didn't put much time into this episode.  He was really weak.

Did anybody notice that the youtube link leads to a whole series of Rooney spoofs, some of which may be of questionable taste (the ones I watched)?

Tarfon:  The term WASP refers to culture as well as ethnicity.  It's generally reserved for mainline Protestants of English, Scottish, and Dutch descent, mostly in the Northeast.  It was invented as a derogatory term of contrast as waves of Irish, Italian, and Jewish immigrants began to populate cities like New York, Boston and Philadelphia.  Most white Southerners are Scots-Irish (an ethnic group about which Jim Webb has written at length), and many are now Southern Baptists rather than Presbyterians.  There was no similarly momentous influx of white "ethnics" in the South, so the term wouldn't have had much meaning -- the relevant distinction there was white and black.  In short, I don't know anything about Mike Huckabee's ancestry, but I don't think anyone would describe him as a "WASP."

I stopped watching Andy Rooney about 15 years ago, when he devoted an entire segment to the correct way to eat an ice cream cone.

Francesca wrote yesterday about Andy Rooney's pining for the old days, when all of our presidential

Not only is this commentary embarrassing for Rooney and CBS, it is utterly vapid.  He needs to retire. Fast.