A Few Minutes With Andy Rooney

Here we go again...

Demeaning remarks about blacks, which a Los Angeles publication says were made by television’s Andy Rooney, have led to a three-month suspension without pay for the caustic commentator of the CBS network’s show “60 Minutes.”

In a telephone interview with the Los Angeles-based national gay newspaper the Advocate, Rooney is quoted as saying, “I’ve believed all along that most people are born with equal intelligence, but blacks have watered down their genes because the less intelligent ones are the ones that have the most children. They drop out of school early, do drugs and get pregnant.”

The Advocate sought the interview because many gays were upset that Rooney, 71, had previously stated on a television program that “many of the ills that kill us are self-induced: too much alcohol, too much food, drugs, homosexual unions, cigarettes.”

For his part, Rooney categorically denies making racial slurs, saying he was just talking generally about people with less education having more children. But after meeting with Rooney, CBS News President David Burke announced Rooney’s suspension, and said he made it clear to Rooney that CBS News “cannot tolerate such remarks or anything that approximates such comments.” Powerful as the punishment is, Rooney got off easier than CBS sports commentator Jimmy (the Greek) Snyder, who got the boot for his rambling, erroneous and absurd discourse on African American genetic history two years ago.

We trust that the network has very good reason to discredit Rooney’s disavowal and that the suspension does not mean that an image-conscious CBS, still smarting from the Snyder embarrassment, would jump the gun with Rooney in order to save face. That would be a big mistake.

Only one mistake would be more egregious: having responsible people at CBS or anywhere else make excuses for the insidious stereotypes on which remarks like those attributed to Rooney are based.