Wednesday, December 5, 2007

Two minutes of '60 minutes'

In their "Best Week Ever" show, the "cool" kids at VH1 (where you go when you realize MTV is too young for you) tried to make fun of "60 Minutes"' commentator Andy Rooney (whose syndicated column appears in the Freeman on Saturdays).

Funny thing is, Rooney was dead on, which either means that the people at VH1 are not that "cool" or that I'm getting old.

Judge for yourself.



Andy Rooney vs. The World

The description of the video, posted by that other "cool" cable network, Spike, says "Andy Rooney rages against the jack-booted thugs behind the nation's catalog industry."

...

So yes, he's getting older, like all the other kids at the CBS news show (and all of us, mind you).

But I think Rooney has more than earned his right to complain about silly things. After all, he's covered huge events like World War II.

My favorite Rooney rant was when he needed scissors to open a package of scissors he had bought.

And yes, the fact that a lot of those catalogues are inserted in the Freeman has not escaped me.

Go get them Andy!
...

Tangent rant: What appears to be a massive copyright violation - by VH1, who copied CBS; and then by Spike TV, who copied VH1's copy of CBS -- is really nothing.
Viacom owns all those cable channels (and it used to own CBS until early 2006):

Here are all the other cable channels owned by the giant:
MTV
MTV2
mtvU
Nickelodeon
BET
Nick at Nite
TV Land
NOGGIN
CMT
Comedy Central
Showtime
The Movie Channel
Flix
Sundance Channel

And you were scared of Rupert Murdoch.
See all the giants, courtesy of Columbia Journalism Review, the folks who tripled the price of my subscription and tried to make it look like an offer.