Andy Rooney, 60 Minutes tonight, 3-11-07

[MatthewVanitas]

I don't think it's all that offensive, but I don't agree with it either.

As I understand it, large number of the "moral waivers", at least in the Marines, are for folks who did some drugs at some point in their life. I have no problem with the military taking in folks who used to smoke weed in the past, but no longer do so. Same for youthful petty crime, provided we're talking nonviolent crime with a reasonable expectation that the enlistee wants to reform himself.

Though a lot of folks I knew in the military thought that a military-type national service requirement could be a great bonding/levelling experience for Americans, almost none wanted to actually serve in combat with some surly drafted 7-11 clerk from Indianapolis.

-MV

 

[Titan6]

It's Clobbering Time

I have kind of been ignoring this thread because Andy Rooney is well you know a flaming left wing socialist and all. In any case he can say his piece but as usual when someone is less than honest I get a little annoyed. So what did he say?


'There have been stories recently about the problem the Pentagon is having recruiting enough soldiers to do the fighting that we're committed to do in Iraq.'

--- Not exactly true. All services met/ exceeded recruiting goals last year accept the Army Reserve which was at 98%. That is not too bad; better to have 100% but still decent.

'They have reduced the educational standards, for example, so that they're getting more soldiers who didn't go to high school, let alone graduate from High School.'

--- Not true. The Army has always let people in who did not have a HS diploma. But you still have to have a GED. Note what he says later.

'Recruiters are granting thousands of what they call "moral waivers". A "moral waiver" it turns out means they'll take someone who has committed a crime or even someone who has been in prison. Last year a total of 8,129 "moral waivers" were given to men who volunteered for the Army.'

--- Absolutely true. They always have. However I don't think anyone in this forum will disagree that there are more people being convicted of petty crimes these days. This paints a very false picture that the military is recruiting criminals. In truth the numbers are much lower than the General population.

'Are these the people we want representing us? As American soldiers, they're going to give the people they meet around the world the impression that they are what all Americans are like and if they have been taken from the bottom of the barrel, they are not what we're all like.'

--- Wow. Well yes actually I do. I think the world also has a much more favorable opinion of American Soldiers than that of a certain pompus loudmouth TV talking head I can think of.

'I hated everything about Army life. I hated the Field Artillery regiment I was assigned to. Most of the guys in it were high school dropouts and the Army wasn't using the term "moral waiver," yet but a lot of them would have needed it.'

--- No surprise here.

'They had joined before the draft so they had already been promoted to being corporals or sergeants and they were in charge of the rest of us.'

--- Sounds like someone has a 60 year old axe to grind. Get over it college boy. They were better than you. You probably whined repeatedly since you hated everything about it.

'In 1942 we were at war with Germany and it wasn't long before drafted college students and high school graduates dominated our military.'

--- This is a flat out lie. HS graduates and college graduates already dominated the military when he joined.

'It changed the United States Army for the better and in two years made it the best fighting force there has ever been. The Army and Navy were no longer made up of losers.'

--- A lot of things happened to make the US military the best fighting force in the world. Andy Rooney being drafted was probably not the key. This also repeats the display of contempt for the military for the military that he keeps repeating throughout.

'Now comes the part of this I never thought I'd hear myself say: Whenever we, as a nation, decide to fight a war – in Iraq or anywhere else – it should be fought by average Americans who are drafted.'

--- This is totally laughable given the rest of the write up. You hear this craziness all the time from the left. It gets old...

 

[marksman13]

Titan6, I agree with you on every account. Your very thourough breakdown hit the nail on the head. Andy Rooney has outlived his usefulness in television journalism. It is time for him to retire and find his way to a nice nursing home. Here's to Andy Rooney... playing bridge, ranting to his high school drop out, WWII veteran comrades about how he saved the Army from itself, and choking on a bowl of green jello.

Damn THR, we got Zumbo canned and now if we could just gather a little more support, who knows, maybe Mr Rooney is next.

 

[Titan6]

We can't get Rooney fired.

He is doing exactly what his bosses want him to do. He serves as the left wing media attack dog hypocrite. CBS fully supports this as do their advertisers.

The day he becomes irrelevant is the day he will go. Not before.

 

[Satch]

Andy Rooney

Haven't watched 60 Minutes in over 5 years,and don't think I've missed a thing. That programs relivence ended about the same time the Network News shows clout ended also. Network News and these News Hour shows are a passing thing these days,the problem is the MSM don't realize it yet and keep trying to prop them up,(ie),Katie Couric.

 

[Cliff47]

Andy Rooney is proof that there is life after death (considering how many of his rants have died the Monday after).

 

[JohnL2]

Volunteers. Forget the draft.
Serving should be an honor. Not a requirement.
I think there should be more attractive benefits to serving in the armed forces to heighten the incentive to serve.
There were a few jackasses that we'd get fresh in from Basic Training and they didn't want to be there. It's like then why did you join the Army let alone the Infantry??? You either ended up carrying them or tolerating them until they did something so overtly stupid that Top would throw them in jail. Royal pain in the ass.

 

[xsquidgator]

I checked out Rooney's book on WWII from the library last year, which decribed his time as a Stars and Stripes correspondent. Rooney's writings are consistent with what people here are saying about his piece last night. In the library book I checked out, I noticed that (apparently) some WWII vet had the book before me and had penciled in a few remarks on the flyleaf, and in portions of the book...

Flyleaf comment penciled in: "involuntary participant, reluctant to serve, typical REMF"

During a portion of the book where Rooney is railing against Gen. Patton for being a jerk during the Battle of the Bulge, in Rooney's opinion, again penciled in "I saw General Patton at the Bulge, Andy. I didn't see YOU there"!

I'm not a WWII vet but I echo the sentiments.

 

[ViniferaVizslas]

They put Andy Rooney at the end of the show so that you can change the channel without missing anything.

 

[Ratzinger_p38]

Alot of you are calling him 'flaming left socialist' and such but he doesnt fit into that. Andy, while he can be funny, is just out of touch. He's a liberal of the 1950s, an Adilai Stevenson liberal perhaps.

Few things Ive noticed about him -

1. He doesnt seem to like alot of the modern gadgets we have, I call recall one segment where he complained about Windows (OS).
2. I remember one segment a year ago where he seemed supportive of Bush's want to define marriage between a man and a woman, but not a consitutional ammendment.
3. Seems to dislike the large growth of America's cities, and the slow of the country/rural areas (I totally agree with him there) but stops short of blaming Wal Mart for that like most lefties do.
4. I also recall a segment where he bashed modern art, another one against rap music.

None of those are things I'd expect to hear from a modern socialist liberal, but an old fashioned liberal of a time gone past. That said, he remarks (mainly the bottom of the barrel thing) pissed me off, esp as a veteran. I also have no idea where he stands on 2A rights, I dont recall even 1 segment on them.

 

[wooderson]

Much ado about nothing. He's wrong about the draft (if not necessarily about other things) - but I fail to see where he burned an American soldier in effigy or something.

 

[glummer]

I hate to admit it,

but he raises an issue I’ve been undecided about lately.

I hate the draft. (I was drafted.)
My line of thought was, any country that NEEDS slave-soldiers to defend itself, doesn’t deserve to be defended. If you can’t fight a war with volunteers, it’s probably a bad war.

But then I got really into the 2A discussion, and the militia vs. standing army argument.
And I worry about a professional army. The JBT’s at Waco had Army backup. It was Army armor that triggered the last catastrophe there. If the SHTF, I’m very afraid that much of the military will just obey orders.

Maybe it’s better if the Army hurts; like taxes.

Anybody got a solution?

 

[Titan6]

I like the Swiss solution. A fully automatic weapon with ammo in every home.

- No war in more than 300 years. - Very low crime. Much better than gun free England.
- Trained militia.
- Even the Nazis were not crazy enough to attack them and they invaded Russia!

It could work here if we made it work.

 

[tincat2]

rooney

i saw the rooney segment in question last night-i tape the later shows and i get the last of 'sixty minutes' as an overlap. i watch to see what he's complaining about. i'm not sure what he adds to the show unless it's some form of comic relief as an odd looking old curmudgeon who rails against everything without being a threat to anything. the bit last night struck me as a situation where the issue is simply too complex for an aging mind to assess rationally and he felt compelled to lash out in some form of generalized ad hominem attack. rooney and his relevance are of no consequence, but i would like to comment on this holier than thou thing we seem to have going on in politics and the public service arena. first of all, certain legal violations do not make a person immoral. secondly, from a moral aspect, what happened to forgiveness and starting over? every sob, man or woman, running for any office is portrayed as the next coming by supporters while opponents rake through every record of any age for evidence of the slightest perfidy(or any possible connection to same) with which to smear said sob. the entire exercise then becomes a soap opera about doings that have little to do with the ability to do what needs to be done. human beings have accomplished a lot in their history and a good bit of it was the result of ordinary sinners doing the right thing at the right time. it's time to throw out the pharisees and their pretensions and get on with it. anybody worth having running things would be in hiding from the responsibilities and consequences of governance today. put me in a unit with people who 'have a past' and i'll make up my own mind whether and to what extent i rely upon them for what. past and even current failings won't make that decision, i will. money and the media it commands may already have made discussion moot and that's why we have such as rooney posing as opinion that matters.

 

[Malone LaVeigh]

I'm sure we'll get to what this has to do with guns or other civil rights sometime soon...

 

[FW]

Time to play an old Merle Haggard song,

 

[longrifleman]

CBS

I'm sure we'll get to what this has to do with guns or other civil rights sometime soon

This kind of thing is a telling insight into what the people who run the MSM think about American institutions like the military. It' no suprise they are also constantly trying to undermine the private ownership of firearms. I don't see them doing much to support any individual rights except for their own 1st ammendment privileges.

 

[mmike87]

If you can’t fight a war with volunteers, it’s probably a bad war.

I think there is a lot of truth to that. If the cause is truly just, then you'd have no trouble with volunteers. I'd take one volunteer over two conscripts, any day of the week. History supports the fact that professional soldiers typically form a far more effective fighting force than conscripts.

If the SHTF, I’m very afraid that much of the military will just obey orders.

Well, look at it this way. Most of the military if out of the country, and even it it were not it's not nearly large enough to enforce a damn thing within a county this size. The downside is that it's also not large enough to defend the country against a full scale invasion, either (although that's a pretty impractical task for most nations on Earth right now.)

 

[Titan6]

+1 Mike.

How is this a civil rights issue? Some people view the draft as indentured servitude to the state. I don't completely see it that way myself but I fully understand the argument.

A few have said Rooney is a socialist. Why do I see this as socialism? Someone said Rooney is more like an old time liberal... Old libbys were fully against the draft. It is almost an oxymoron to say that one support it now.

- Left wing + Required Service to the State... implies socialism or worse.

 

[wooderson]

This kind of thing is a telling insight into what the people who run the MSM think about American institutions like the military.

Two problems there:
1. The vaunted "MSM" is run by a series of competing and overlapping corporations. The same ones that, say, build weapons for our military.

2. Andy Rooney has as much sway with "THE MSM" hive-mind as any columnist in your local paper: which is to say, not much.

 

[langenc]

"Moral wavers"--just heard a statement by Gen Page. He had some things to say about moral of military persons-at least what he 'personally' believes about them.

The fan is really dirty-all those responding to his remarks. The fan will run for several days over his statements.

 

[langenc]

"Moral waviers"--just heard a statement by Gen Page. He had some things to say about moral of military persons-at least what he 'personally' believes about them.

The fan is really dirty-all those responding to his remarks. The fan will run for several days over his statements.

 

[Old Dog]

What I find somewhat ironic here is that CBS is pretty much the only network that's actually had long-running shows that represented members of the armed forces as intelligent, honorable, patriotic, and hard-working (not to mention good-looking) people: Magnum, P.I., JAG, NCIS, The Unit.

Hmm.

 

[gezzer]

I love how we draft soldiers but when our enemy does it we call them conscripts.

The only truth there is they are all conscripts.

 

[RevolvingCylinder]

I have read through the transcript of his show and I don't find any slander towards our current people in the military. Rooney clearly pointed out that the military has, for some time, been allowing more moral waivers into the military to meet its recuriting goals. He clearly is in support of having strict recuriting standards to recruit the best of the best. But since this war has dragged on, and few people are interested in serving, the military is having a difficult time meeting its recuriting goals and needs to its lower standards.

You either support libel or you're truly that oblivious of the facts.

It sickens me that this scum and all the other scum in the radical leftist media constantly partake in the defamation of the character Soldiers, Marines, Seamen, and Airmen on a daily and the ignorant, drooling "American Idol" watching numbskulls in front of their TVs accept it as fact. I can almost see this as an attempt at Anti-American psychological warfare but I think they're really trying to recreate Vietnam and the mistreatment of members of the Armed Forces again.

I am completely against the draft. I do not want to serve with somebody who does not want to be there and will get us killed with his cowardice. Even worse, I could end up with someone like Andy Rooney.