Top Stories Jacksonville

Archive for the ‘Andy Rooney’ Category

If there has ever been a book written about small talk, and how to conduct it, I’ve never seen it. During the holiday season is when we need a book like that the most.

A cocktail or dinner party can be a drag if people don’t know how to small-talk. “How have you been?” isn’t good enough.

“How have you been?” leads inevitably to, “Fine. And yourself?” The person standing in front of you with a glass in his hand has hit the ball back in your court and you’re right where you started: in a conversational abyss.

You have to begin again. The worst thing that can happen at a stand-up or sit-down party is to get stuck with someone who doesn’t want to talk to you and to whom you have no interest in talking. Until someone else comes along and interrupts your tortured conversation, you have nothing to do but continue with idiotic pleasantries. “Incredible weather for this time of year, isn’t it?”

Many holiday parties this past year were lucky to have sub-freezing weather. It’s small disasters that bring out the best small talk, and the record-cold Christmas was a conversational blessing.

The situation in Afghanistan was good another good topic of conversation at recent holiday parties. “Do you think we did the right thing in Afghanistan?” A person is flattered to be asked a question with more substance than, “Is it cold enough for you?” and almost everyone has an opinion on the war.

Travel conversation is seldom satisfying banter at parties. People who have been somewhere want to tell everyone else all about the fabulous trip they just took, and the listeners don’t want to listen. They can’t wait to break in and say, “Did you get to Leningrad? Leningrad is fabulous. We were there in May.”

One of the few ways to escape when you’re trapped one-on-one with someone at a party, is to say either, “Can I get you a drink?” or “I think I’ll freshen this a little.”

You then disappear and hope that before you return the person has found someone else to bore. This ploy is from a man’s point of view. A woman can hardly break away by asking a man, “Can I get you another drink?” This is one of the unfair things women have to bear in life.

One of the reasons food is important at a party is not for its nutritional value but because it’s a source of small talk. If the food is dull, the talk is often dull.

The best thing that can happen to enliven a party is a petty calamity, or, at least, a small, unexpected event. Years ago, we were at a party and, in the middle of it, all the sirens in town went off, and two of the men who were with the volunteer fire department rushed off to the fire.

The fire didn’t amount to much, but between the tension over the possibility that someone’s house was going up in flames and the question of when the volunteer firemen would return with their stories about it, the party picked up immeasurably.

Even something as simple as a fire in the hostess’ kitchen stove is a help. It breaks down any reserve that may have existed between relative strangers at the party.

One strange phenomenon: People who know each other well and don’t like each other a lot seldom seem to have any trouble when they’re thrown together at parties. Over the years, I’ve seen people who say terrible things about each other behind their backs, laughing and joking with each other at parties. Maybe that’s what small talk is for.

(Write to Andy Rooney at Tribune Media Services, 2225 Kenmore Ave., Suite 114, Buffalo, NY 14207, or via email at aarooney5@yahoo.com)

(c) 2010 TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.

Post Footer automatically generated by Add Post Footer Plugin for wordpress.

I love Christmas and I hate Christmas. I don’t like to see it end but I’m glad it’s over.

We had a great Christmas this year. We have a summer house in the country in upstate New York and there were 12 of us at the table for the Christmas turkey. Margie is gone now and my son, Brian, Cecile and their two kids, Emma and Kathryn, didn’t make the trip from California. It would have cost me about $2,400 to fly four people from Los Angeles to New York and back, and when they got to New York, they still would have had to travel to our home upstate. We missed them, but Christmas was good anyway.

I’m embarrassed to say how much I like Christmas and Christmas presents. I don’t know how it got started, but giving presents at Christmas is one of the great customs of all time. They’re as much fun to give as to get. I don’t know which I like better. I seem a little old to enjoy getting a Christmas present but I loved it as a kid and I’ve never gotten over liking it. (I’ve never called a Christmas present “a gift,” either. “Gift” is too stuffy a word for such a good thing as a Christmas present.)

I can still remember some of the presents I got as a child. Uncle Bill always gave me a $20 gold coin. These coins were issued from 1838 to 1933. Most $20 gold coins were melted down and the ones that are left are extremely rare and hard to find. If you do find one, it could be worth thousands of dollars.

They say the value of a $20 gold coin today depends on the condition it’s in and the year it was minted. Somehow, though, I can’t imagine a $20 gold coin being used so much that it was worn out and worth less. I hid the gold coins Uncle Bill gave me over the years and eventually they disappeared. I had a great mother but she wasn’t as sentimental about things as I am, and I think she found them and paid bills with my $20 gold coins. Her attitude was that it was just money.

I collected Indian head pennies, too, which I also received as presents at Christmastime. I wish I knew what happened to my Indian head penny collection. (There are probably several million people my age who wonder what happened to their Indian head pennies.)

Nothing is worth what it used to be and that includes money. The money I saved as a kid that I received during the holidays seemed like a lot when I wasn’t spending it but it doesn’t seem like so much anymore. I think I should have spent it while it was worth money.

In 1929, I was old enough to have a few dollars, and I hated the new dollar bills they issued because they were smaller in size than the $1 bills we were all used to. It wouldn’t surprise me in the next few years if they decided to reduce the size of dollar bills again. If they ever do, I wish they would make $5, $10, $20, $50 and $100 bills each a different size. After all, the mint realized it would be better if our coins were each a different size.

We wouldn’t want a nickel to be the same size as a dime, although it does seem as though they made a mistake making a dime smaller than a nickel. I haven’t seen a silver dollar in many years. I wish my employer paid me in silver dollars; it would be easier for me to save money.

It’s amazing, really, that we handle money as casually as we do. I say “handle,” but the fact is, we handle very little of the money we spend. Most of the money we earn is in the bank and we keep little of it in our pockets. I think if I had to actually handle all the money I spend, I’d spend less of it. I carry my cash loose in my pocket. I’ve been thinking of buying a billfold to see if I can organize my pocket money.

So next Christmas, you know what I want…some $20 gold pieces and some larger $1 bills.

(Write to Andy Rooney at Tribune Media Services, 2225 Kenmore Ave., Suite 114, Buffalo, NY 14207, or via email at aarooney5@yahoo.com)

(c) 2010 TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.

Post Footer automatically generated by Add Post Footer Plugin for wordpress.

I don’t know whether it’s me or life, but the year 2010 is just around the corner and I was thinking how little I care. One year has gotten to feel just like the last one. It seems like a nice even round number and it’s easy to remember but otherwise there’s nothing special about 2010 for me. Those of us who don’t like New Year’s Eve and the necessity to have a good time are looking forward to New Year’s Day because New Year’s Eve will be over and 2010 will have started.

We’ve made a big mistake making January 1 New Year’s Day. It doesn’t feel like anywhere near the first of the year for me. I’d like to make September 1 New Year’s Day, no matter what anyone else thinks. On September l, summer is almost over, vacations are usually over and many of us go back to our tiresome jobs. If the kids didn’t go back to school by early September, everyone, including their teachers, would notice.

For years I’ve been fighting a losing battle to change New Year’s Day, but no one will listen. (I don’t know what that apostrophe is for in “year’s” but everyone puts it in.) Am I the only one who thinks this isn’t a ridiculous idea? If we did change the date on which the new year starts, August 31 would be the most logical day to celebrate “New Year’s Eve.” We wouldn’t be faced with all this cold, snowy unpleasantness of having a new year that falls in the winter.

I always go to a party with old friends New Year’s Eve, but I don’t even like parties on New Year’s Eve anymore. Like eating creampuffs, there are just so many New Year’s eves a person can take, and I’ve had mine. I’d like to just sit home on New Year’s Eve and feel miserable about all the things I didn’t get done in the past year. I’d also think about all the hard jobs I have ahead of me in 2010 because I didn’t get them done in 2009.

Every year, I jot down some resolutions. I have some for next year:

1) I’m not going to stop eating coffee ice cream four times a week.

2) I’m not going to talk back to the television set during the news, critiquing the reporters.

3) I’ve resolved not to make any more resolutions I won’t keep; I’ve already done that.

4) I’m not going to smoke cigarettes next year. This is easy because I’ve never smoked cigarettes and have no intention of starting.

5) I’m going to be nicer to everyone, starting with myself.

6) I’m not going to exercise again next year. I joined the YMCA years ago but I don’t go there and exercise; I just belong.

7) For the first time, I think I’ll resolve not to try to get ahead with my “60 Minutes” segments. I never have and I see no reason to change now.

I’m not going to try to keep from being cynical if I feel cynical about something. Being cynical is good for a person.

So, Happy New Year to all. If you drink this New Year’s Eve, don’t drive, and if you drive and drink, don’t do it near me or anyone else.

(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.

Post Footer automatically generated by Add Post Footer Plugin for wordpress.

The shopping part takes a lot of the fun out of Christmas. The stores are crowded and the streets are even more clogged with shoppers. There are two kinds of shoppers. One shopper goes out with a list of people he or she wants to buy presents for, and the other shopper goes out to buy presents and will decide later who all the presents are for. I’m half of one and half of the other. I know who I have to get presents for, but I have no idea what to buy. I prefer small stores and big presents.

The trouble is, we all tend to buy presents we like without much thought about what the person you’re giving the present to would like. Sometimes the people you like best are hardest to get presents for. (I like using the word “presents” better than “gifts.”)

My family and friends have given me a lot of great Christmas presents over the years, but I don’t think I ever got any present better than the Ivor Johnson tricycle my mother and father gave me for Christmas when I was about 7. I think receiving presents when you’re a kid always seems better than receiving them as an adult. I rode that bike up and down the street we lived on in Albany and got thoroughly familiar with the places I had to avoid because the slate sidewalk was broken. I shoveled snow off the sidewalks, and from riding my bike on the street, I knew every crack on Partridge Street between Madison and Western Avenue.

All the kids loved it when it snowed on Partridge Street because we got rich shoveling sidewalks. The sidewalk in front of the Wachters’ house was hardest because it wasn’t level and there were big cracks in it. We shoveled Mrs. Potter’s sidewalk for 35 cents like the others but we didn’t like to because there were a lot of cracks in it and she never gave us anything extra the way some people did. We were often paid 50 cents for shoveling a sidewalk for which we were charging 35 cents, and we had a high regard for those customers for the rest of the year. We never soaped their windows on Halloween.

The McAuliffes lived on the corner of Partridge Street and Western Avenue, and we had to shovel the steps up to their house on a little hill, so we charged 75 cents. It took two of us more than an hour to shovel that. Sometimes I can’t remember what day it is, but I never forget how much we were paid to shovel someone’s sidewalk on Partridge Street 80 years ago.

Shoveling snow is a lot easier and more satisfying than raking leaves, although I’ve done a lot of both. The worst job around the house is washing windows. You just get one side done and you have to go inside or out to do the other. I’ll take shoveling snow over washing windows or raking leaves any day. For one thing, you can see more clearly what you’ve accomplished when you shovel snow. A washed window doesn’t look much different than a dirty one except you can see through it a little better. The best part of shoveling for our neighbors was that the money I earned, I used, in part, to buy Christmas presents for my parents.

I think giving Christmas presents is one of the nicest things we do for each other. I don’t really care how hard it is to shop and find the right item. We mean it when we give to someone we care about. We often miss and get the wrong thing, but the idea is never wrong.

(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.

Post Footer automatically generated by Add Post Footer Plugin for wordpress.

When we use the word “Indian,” it can mean one of two things, which is unnecessarily confusing. I don’t know how we got into calling two absolutely different people from two different continents by the same name. I don’t think there is a relationship between an Indian born in New Delhi, India, and an American Indian born in North America.

Recently, I came across two big stories in the paper, one about American Indians and the other about Indian Indians. It seems that the Obama administration has come to an agreement with more than 300,000 American Indians to settle a long-standing class action lawsuit against the federal government.

The dispute centered around mismanagement of Indian land trusts that date back to the 1880s. The suit involves 56 million acres of Indian land that was leased to various oil, gas and logging companies. The suit, filed on behalf of the thousands of Indian plaintiffs, claims that the Indians were not fairly compensated for use of their land by these businesses.

The settlement between the federal government and the American Indians was announced on Tuesday but must still be approved by Congress and the U.S. District Court. The Interior Department will distribute $1.4 billion among the plaintiffs.

The other story, about Indians from India, centers around the huge global warming issue now being debated at the Copenhagen Climate Conference. Just before the conference, the Indian government announced it would cut the country’s carbon dioxide emissions over the next decade. I’m not sure I know or understand fully what a carbon emission is, but I do know that India has a population of more than a billion people and I think that cutting pollution there would have quite a positive impact on the environment.

I spent some time in New Delhi, India’s capitol, during World War II, and I loved the food, but I didn’t care much for the city. I’m glad the Indians like it but I found it quite hot and crowded. I never went back to India. I much prefer places where they have at least a few months of good, solid, bone-chilling cold. I don’t think it snows much in New Delhi.

In all my years, I have lived in Rowayton, Conn.; New York City, London, Frankfurt, Germany, Pilot Knob, N.Y. (on Lake George); and Albany, N.Y. I liked all those places and always go back to see the house I lived in when I’m in these areas.

Of all the places I’ve lived, I like New York, London and my house in Connecticut best. Incidentally, “Connecticut” comes from an Indian word meaning “beside the long tidal river.”

The Indians were there first.

(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.

Post Footer automatically generated by Add Post Footer Plugin for wordpress.

(Andy is taking the day off. In his absence, we are reprinting one of his classic columns, originally published Oct. 26, 1989.)

The red sticker on the cover of the catalog read: “This may be your last catalog!”

And, in the smaller print, “Our latest computer report shows you haven’t ordered any of our products in a while. Place an order now and you’ll continue to receive every issue of our catalog!”

Is this a threat or a promise?

I would be happy to pay a modest amount if I could be assured of never again getting a catalog that I didn’t ask for. My mailbox runneth over. Not one in 10 pieces of mail is anything I want to look at, and I’m not including bills. When it comes to catalogs, not one in 50 has anything I want to order.

Last year, I suppose we got an average of 25 catalogs a week in the mail – even more around the Christmas season. That’s 1,300 catalogs and I ordered one thing from one of them. Two, actually. I ordered a pair of shoes from a place that specializes in wide shoes. The other 1,299 catalogs, with postage, represented several thousand dollars — wasted on me. It’s not always possible to tell how you got on a catalog mailing list but there are several things that do it:

–Having a hobby.

–Having a baby.

–Winning the lottery.

–Buying a house.

–Giving to a charity.

–Using a credit card.

–Being listed in the telephone book.

–Giving your name and address to a store when you buy something.

There ought to be a law compelling any company that sends out unsolicited catalogs or advertising material to include a stamped, self-addressed return postcard. It would say simply: “Remove my name and address from your mailing list or be fined $100 for every piece of literature you send me after two weeks from the date of this notice!”

The catalogs we get most of are in three categories: the clothes catalogs, the seed catalogs and those from woodworking tool companies.

There’s a similarity in the literature of many of the catalogs. The catalogs I get from a company that sells wide shoes, for example, may have the same catalog writer that another company uses to try to sell me woodworking tools.

Some of their favorite phrases are:

“Once you’ve used our…”

“Ordinary (blanks) are made from (blank), but our (blanks) are designed specially for us and made by old world craftsmen from the finest (blank) money can buy.”

“Try our (blank) once and you’ll never use any other (blank) again.”

Banks, credit card companies and insurance agents abuse the mails. I got an official-looking letter from a large New York bank. On the envelope it said, “Important! Personal!” (They always use a lot of exclamation points. Nothing that claims it’s important and has a lot of exclamation points in it is ever important at all.)

If you get a letter from a bank, you should be able to trust the bank not to con you. Some of the mail you get from banks is important, and there shouldn’t be any confusion about what is and what isn’t. Anything from a bank that doesn’t pertain to your account should be clearly labeled on the envelope, “Sales Pitch.”

I object to the devaluation of the importance of our mail. Mail is special when it’s personal and when it’s serious business. It ought not be diluted with junk that diminishes the satisfaction we all get from our mail.

(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.

Post Footer automatically generated by Add Post Footer Plugin for wordpress.

Just as I don’t want to know exactly what’s in a hot dog, I didn’t like reading the other day that there’s a possibility Hershey may be taking over Cadbury. I don’t know what’s in Cadbury chocolate or Hershey bars, and I don’t care because I trust them to put good ingredients in their candy.

I don’t want the details of what’s in a candy bar. The ingredients of some things are best left secret. I often eat a Hershey bar, even though I don’t necessarily think Hershey bars are the best chocolate or even better than Cadbury’s. Every candy store in America sells Hershey bars. The name has become part of our language. “Hershey Cake,” “Hershey Stick,” “Hershey Nibble,” “Hershey Sweet” wouldn’t have done it.

I know little or nothing about big business (or even about business that isn’t very big), so I have no idea why Hershey would want to buy Cadbury, but I hope they’re both happy about it. I really doubt that they are, though. It’s as if Ford were buying Chevrolet, Saks were buying Bloomingdale’s, or NBC were buying CBS. It might be good business to take over a thriving company, but many people in the company being bought don’t like the idea.

The image and price of things in general has a lot to do with our opinion of them. It seems wrong, but almost always the things that cost the most are considered to be the best (including chocolate). The shoes I’m wearing are better and cost more than other shoes I looked at that were cheaper. The coffee I’m drinking, as I write, tastes the best because it’s the most expensive.

I’ve never had one, but I think that Cadillacs are better than Fords because they are more expensive. Maybe I should save my money and see. I’ve owned several Fords and eight or 10 other cars in my lifetime. I’ve never owned a Porsche, an Audi, or a dozen other brands of cars.

A lot of families have two cars because a car has become vital to American life, and one doesn’t seem to be enough for a family of two or more. I like the car I drive regularly, but I also own a great little sports car that I don’t drive often and I’ve owned it for 30 years. It would blow the doors off the car I drive every day.

You can’t go far without a car, and it’s hard to think what people did before cars were invented. You can be sure they did less. There’s just so far a horse can take a person. There are a great many places you can never go to if you don’t own a car. A 5-minute drive is a half-hour walk. I’ve worn out the heels of more shoes driving than walking.

Just for fun, I’ve tried to make a list of the cars my mother and father or some of their friends owned when I was growing up. Here’s the list, although I’m sure I’ve missed one or two cars: Packard, Reo, Durant, Hupmobile, Studebaker, Arrow, Chandler, Cleveland, Christie, Essex, Hudson, Lafayette, Marmon, Nash, Overland, Peerless, Singer, Reo, Star, Stutz, Terraplane, Whippet, Willys Knight.

The cars I liked best that we owned were the Packard and the Hupmobile. I suppose some of the cars we have on our roads today will be forgotten in 20 years.

I now drive a car known only by its three initials.

(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.

Post Footer automatically generated by Add Post Footer Plugin for wordpress.

It might be best to deny it, but I think people are smarter than they used to be. We know more because information comes to us more easily. With newspapers, television news and all the information available on the Internet, there’s no reason for anyone to be dumb about what’s going on in the world.

According to a newspaper article I read today, 14,700 Americans have told the Internal Revenue Service that they have money in foreign bank accounts. I want to be honest with everyone, so let me say, right out in the open, that I don’t have a bank account in a foreign country. I wish I did but I don’t. Having a foreign bank account is my idea of rich. If I were rich and French, I’d put money in a bank in New York.

Maybe if I knew how to open a bank account in a foreign country I’d have one, but I have no interest in finding out. What money I have — let me look here in my pocket — is hard enough to manage as it is. People keep getting more of it and it seems as if I keep having less. I ought to have a nest egg by now, but I don’t have a nest, and there wouldn’t be an egg in it if I did. I have a checking account but I don’t dare check to see how much is in there. The bank is good to me and I’m sure they’ll let me know when my money is gone. They keep track better than I do.

My salary is pretty good, but I’ve probably told you about the best money I ever made. A long while ago, I sold a book to MGM Studios for $55,000 and they also paid me a weekly salary for year. We all ought to remember what we did with our money but it gets spent and we forget. I forget where that MGM money went. We rented a house on Malibu Beach and ate in expensive restaurants. That’s where most of it went.

When I was very young, my mother gave me 35 cents a week to spend any way I pleased. There was a store next to the little post office where I went every day in the summer to get the mail and buy an ice cream cone for a nickel. A double-decker was 10 cents but I didn’t buy one very often because I couldn’t afford it. I had a nickel left over at the end of the week because I couldn’t buy an ice cream cone on Sunday. I forget what I did with the nickel, but I have more than that to spend now and I still can’t remember what I do with most of my money.

What do banks do with all the money people deposit? I guess they just keep it safe for us until we need it. As a friend told me, banks borrow the money that’s deposited in our savings accounts and give us, the depositors, a small amount of money for this practice. And as you know, the money they pay us as interest is getting smaller and smaller.

When I was little, I kept my money in a box, and it was the best bank I ever had. I knew where the money was all the time. My uncle often gave me money when I saw him every few weeks, and I kept it in the box. I don’t recall where I spent most of what I saved.

The value of money is always diminishing due to inflation. The $5 I had 70 years ago was worth more than the $5 I have today.

Our desire to buy things is sometimes bigger than the amount of money we have to pay for those things. It’s too bad that our money doesn’t increase the way our desire does. There ought to be banks where we could save desire. Interest would be high.

(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.

Post Footer automatically generated by Add Post Footer Plugin for wordpress.

(Andy Rooney is taking the day off. In his absence, we are reprinting a classic column originally published in 1984.)

We waste more in the United States than the people of most other countries even have.

Driving through the streets of any major city on the day the trash collectors come–or are supposed to come–is an experience the citizens of a hundred less prosperous nations would find difficult to believe. On trash-collection days, you pass enough furniture being cast out to furnish a four-bedroom house. There are couches, chairs, parts of beds, refrigerators and air conditioners.

When demolition experts move in on a building to be razed, they have no mercy, no sentiment. They tear it down, break it up and throw it away. They don’t much care what they’re breaking up or throwing out. It costs more to sort out the materials and save them than they could get for the stuff.

This practice of throwing things out seems wrong to me. In New York, you often see huge dumpsters parked outside buildings that are being gutted. Many times, you see the dumpsters heaped high with doors, plumbing fixtures, mattresses and pieces of metal. The discarded items must have been worth thousands of dollars when they were first installed — and it’s costing someone thousands of dollars to cart the stuff away. I think that much of the refuse is towed and dumped somewhere outside of New York.

In many depressed big cities around the world, there are shanty towns constructed of materials the residents have salvaged from waste dumps. If they had our waste heaps and trash containers from which to choose their building materials, they’d have shanty palaces to live in.

The homeless people who wander the streets of our big cities often have old shopping carts laden with bits and pieces of junk they’ve rescued from piles of trash by the curb. I understand their need to pick up stuff. When I see something good being thrown out, I often have the urge to stop and throw it in the back of my car.

As I was leaving my office recently, I noticed a note pinned to a somewhat battered computer. It read, “Please throw out.” I wondered who had written the note and why they were throwing out what looked like a perfectly good computer.

I thought that the person discarding the machine must have been an executive who didn’t want to waste a lot of time. The person knew something that I didn’t know. Maybe the machine was too old to be repaired; to get it back in use would have taken more time and money than it was worth. I suppose it was a computer that no one liked to use any longer and wanted no part of it. If it cost twice as much to upgrade the computer, I guess it would make sense to buy a new one. I think I probably would have tried to fix the thing. That’s why I’m not a president of a successful company or even an efficient office manager. I just hate to see anything thrown away.

(Write to Andy Rooney at Tribune Media Services, 2225 Kenmore Ave., Suite 114, Buffalo, NY 14207, or via email at aarooney5@yahoo.com)

Post Footer automatically generated by Add Post Footer Plugin for wordpress.

It’s a good thing for all of us that there are people who want to be politicians because you couldn’t pay most of us to take the job of mayor, governor or president of anything. Why are there people who want to do such difficult work? We’re all glad they do, but why?

Over the years, we’ve had politicians who were born for the job. Franklin D. Roosevelt was a born politician. Being President came naturally to him. There was nothing surprising about it. Al Smith was running for office when I was a little boy and he was different in every way from FDR except that he, too, was a born politician. Barack Obama is a good President but I don’t think he’s a born politician. Unfortunately, he’s learning the game.

I live in New York City and our mayor, Michael Bloomberg, has been in office since 2002. I fail to understand why he wants the job for a third term. His decision to run again is enough to make anyone wonder whether his decision about anything makes sense.

Why would anyone with brains and all the money he could ever need, want to be the leader of one of the most difficult, un-leadable cities in the world? New York has a great house called Gracie Mansion, which it provides for its mayor to live in, but Mayor Bloomberg doesn’t even live there because his own house is greater. He ought to rent the official mayor’s residence to a poor family and keep the change. I’d give him a little something for it if he’d throw in a few of his cars and drivers.

This year, the salary for the mayor of New York is $195,000. Next year, the job will pay $225,000. Most of us could squeak by on $195,000, but Mayor Bloomberg doesn’t take his pay, except for $1 a year. He does this because he doesn’t need the money. He probably doesn’t like to fool around with small change like that; it could get lost in his pocket.

The President of The United States, on the other hand, is paid $400,000 a year. Now, $400,000 is real money and keep in mind, the President never has to pay for anything. (I first wrote that and said “hardly ever” but I changed it to “never.”) When the President goes to a banquet or to dinner, which he does frequently, do you think he pays for the meal? Of course he doesn’t. You and I pay. I’ll bet Barack Obama and Michael Bloomberg don’t even bother to put money in their pants pocket when they go out at night. I wonder whether the President or Mayor Bloomberg carries money with them at all? I mean, for what?

If I ever got to eat with the President or the Mayor, I certainly wouldn’t suggest we split the check. Of course, a President rarely eats in the kind of place where you pay for dinner anyway. It must seem funny to a President once he’s out of office to have to pay for things again, back in the real world. Getting everything paid for all day the way a President does would be like doubling your salary.

Obama probably doesn’t pay for breakfast, lunch, dinner, newspapers, a shoeshine, a haircut, or anything the rest of us put out for every day. Even if the President did pay for his own haircuts, it would be difficult for him to know how much to tip. I think the answer is, he doesn’t pay for haircuts. It comes with the job of being President.

(”Andy Rooney’s 60 Years of Wit and Wisdom”(Public Affairs), a collection of columns, essays, ‘60 Minutes’ segments and other writing spanning Rooney’s entire career, is now in bookstores. 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.

Post Footer automatically generated by Add Post Footer Plugin for wordpress.