Shut Up Andy Rooney

I was taking it easy today, Sunday, taking in some afternoon football and enjoying my 1 day off this week and after San Diego beat up on the Miami Dolphins, I got up to get something to eat. I don't normally watch Sixty Minutes but it came on after the game so I just left it on while I fixed my dinner. When I got back to the TV, Andy Rooney was on "complaining" about how hard it is for him to be on vacation.

Now, I'm sure he thought this sarcastic, tongue in cheek bit he did about being on vacation was funny but it just didn't strike me that way. As a matter of fact, while he was whining about how planning his vacation was such a chore and how he didn't like having all that unstructured time off to have fun and do whatever he wants, I was thinking just how ridiculous he really is. He stated that he is on vacation during the off season of the show, basically from sometime in May until September. Somewhere between 4 and 5 months.

So basically, while he's whining about having all that vacation time, I got to thinking, he works about 7 or 8 months out of the year. Then I got to thinking about how much money he makes, so I did a little research and found a news story about his pay being suspended back in 1987 because he was refusing to work in support of writers that were on strike. It stated he got paid about $7700 per week. I figured if he got even a 3 percent raise per year, he should be making over $12,000 per week today. Hmmm...

Now, I know he's not really complaining about it. He's making a joke of complaining about it, which means he's really bragging about it. Either that or he actually thinks that everybody gets 5 months vacation every year. Maybe that's funny stuff to spoiled, rich people but it's kind of an insult to us regular folks that have to work all year and only get two or three weeks vacation every year, maybe 4 if we're lucky.

So basically, here's a guy that works, what, 5 minutes a week for maybe 30 weeks out of the year and makes probably, oh somewhere in the neighborhood of $350,000 for his really tough, demanding work schedule. His job is to whine and complain about something or other, whatever strikes his fancy. It's not like he has to spend any time researching his topic or do any investigative reporting. This week he's whining and complaining about having too much time off from work for leisure and he got paid $12,000 for this diatribe, bragging about his excessive vacation time.

Good work if you can get it I guess... But I wish he'd just shut up.