It rained all weekend, which was oddly comforting to me. The muscles in my legs and back were in full revolt after Friday’s long run. The rain afforded me reason to hunker down and watch the internet. On Sunday I even glimpsed several hours of television… the U.S. Open at Eliot’s place. Roger Federer advanced over Novak Djokovic. Darth Fed hit a winner running backward between his legs, and later proclaimed it was the best shot of his career. The announcers suggested it was the equivalent of Roger slam dunking on Novak.
Afterwards we watched 60 Minutes and ate Beauty’s pizza. One of the pizzas (American Cheeseburger) was sauced with mustard, the other (Bombay Beauty) with yellow curry. Barack Obama talked about his health care speech, Ted Kennedy (posthumously) talked about his memoir, and my brain went to sleep during a segment on Guiding Light. Then Andy Rooney came on and yakked about Walter Kronkite. The one salient fact I gleaned from the emotional testimony was that Rooney was once suspended from 60 Minutes for 3 months. In that difficult period, Walter went out to dinner with Andy, in an effort to boost the public opinion of CBS’ banished bête noire.
Its not hard to imagine Andy zagging across the line of decency. I was quickly able to ascertain exactly what Andy said to get suspended. “Too much alcohol, too much food, drugs, homosexual unions, cigarettes [are] all known to lead… to premature death.” An excellent article in TIME magazine (from which this blog post gets its title) quotes from a follow-up letter Andy wrote to the L.A. Advocate. Homosexuality is a, “behavioral aberration . . . caused when a male is born with an abnormal number of female genes.” For this, Andy was thrown off the air for 90 days. You have to applaud CBS’ action, especially considering this was in 1990.
60 Minutes lost 20% of its viewers during Andy’s suspension.
Way to go 3rarm, digging up the dirt like a mole! Digging on through the tunnels for 60 minutes or more, getting that chump tick-tocked!