Zapping A Curmudgeon

By J.D. Reed

Jimmy the Greek. Al Campanis. Jackie Mason. Add the name of Andy Rooney to the roll call of media loose lips. The furor keeps escalating over Rooney's 90-day suspension from CBS for his comments about gays and his alleged remarks about blacks. Minority groups are grumbling about fairness, pundits are punditing about the First Amendment, and the network has received more than 4,000 calls, almost all of them urging Rooney's reinstatement.

All this seems a lot of hoopla, given the fact that the 71-year-old 60 Minutes curmudgeon usually zeros in on fail-safe targets like health clubs, cereal and encyclopedia salesmen. But starting last December, Rooney blundered beyond his usual puckish humor into a series of ill-advised and sometimes ignorant statements. On a prime-time special called A Year with Andy Rooney: 1989 he listed "homosexual unions," along with smoking and alcohol abuse, among the "self-induced" causes of death incurred by Americans. There were immediate protests at the implication that gays willingly contract AIDS.

Rooney soon received a call from the Advocate (circ. 80,000), a Los Angeles- based magazine for gays, and during the conversation seems to have talked freely about homosexuality and race. He allegedly said, "Blacks have watered down their genes because the less intelligent ones are the ones that have the most children."

He later wrote the Advocate a rambling letter, sent without the approval of CBS News officials, in which he apologized for his homosexual-union comment but contended that homosexuality was a "behavioral aberration . . . caused when a male is born with an abnormal number of female genes." The magazine printed his letter and an article based on the telephone interview.

Rooney denies making the statement about blacks. He says he was talking more about "class," which applies to whites as well. "I'm just furious," he says, "about the notion that I am a racist or a bigot." The Advocate says it made no tape recording of the conversation. But, a spokesman says, "we stand by our reporter 100%, and CBS chose not to do so."

That is sadly so. Rooney's opinions may have been ill considered, but CBS's hasty response slammed the door on sufficient regard for freedom of expression. When 60 Minutes anchorman Mike Wallace told off-color ethnic jokes during a videotaped rehearsal in 1981, he was not suspended or even publicly censured, and the incident was quickly forgotten. This time, the network apparently felt that regardless of some disputed evidence and despite the commentator's denials, suspension was the proper course.

The action pointed up once again the TV networks' anxiety to round off the sharp corners of public controversy. A professional grouch like Rooney cannot always restrict himself to restaurant receipts and faulty tools. As Fred Friendly, a former CBS News president who is director of the Columbia University Seminars on Media and Society, points out, "Andy's paid to be outrageous." Encouraged to be provocative, Rooney could hardly avoid occasionally uttering something imprudent or offensive to a portion of his audience. But against such excesses must be balanced his intent, which was hardly to ridicule, and his overall record, which in Rooney's case goes back 41 years at CBS.

The network seems to have weighed more heavily the market share that minority groups represent. If so, the attitude could backfire. Suspending Rooney might encourage more special-interest groups to blow whistles at even less substantial slights. As for Rooney, he continues to produce a twice-a- week syndicated column and is working on a book. He will probably not change his offbeat tune much. "Public relations," he says, "is a business that I'm not in." Thank goodness. CBS is doing enough backpedaling for everyone concerned.

With reporting by Leslie Whitaker/New York