The Bottom Line on Rooney’s Return to ’60 Minutes’ : Television: CBS cuts short suspension of controversial commentator after ratings go down. But it’s just another episode in a network fiasco.

Someone should do a gene check at CBS.

It’s obvious there’s been extensive watering down. No other explanation is possible for the shockingly vacuous, hypocritical and ultimately cynical role of CBS executives in the Andy Rooney fiasco.

What jerks.

This is supposed to play? CBS suspends Rooney for three months for being an alleged racist or gay basher or both or none of the above? But he is reinstated more than two months early because, as CBS News President David Burke says, “It is time Andy Rooney returned to his proper place on “60 Minutes”?

Come again?

For a man whose business is communications, Burke has been incredibly uncommunicative, retreating behind a thick smoke screen of evasive platitudes and unfathomable generalities. Who’s writing his public statements these days, Prof. Irwin Corey?

If CBS thinks Rooney wasn’t guilty as implied, why was he suspended in the first place? But if CBS thinks he was guilty, then why was he brought back so soon?

He received time off for good behavior? He’d been reborn? Rehabilitated? Oh stop it. The Rooney affair proves that CBS needs an integrity check too.

Setting aside the alleged racism and homophobia for the moment, everyone familiar with the driving motivation behind commercial television knows exactly why Rooney was allowed to return to “60 Minutes” Sunday.

Ratings.

Rooney’s suspension came after disparaging remarks about homosexuals and blacks were attributed to him in a Los Angeles-based gay publication, The Advocate. He acknowledged having made the comments about homosexuals in a letter but denied saying that blacks had “watered down” their genes through excessive reproduction by those who were least intelligent.

CBS didn’t publicly defend Rooney. CBS didn’t publicly attack Rooney. CBS just suspended him.

It would be nice to report that CBS had returned Rooney to the air when it did merely because it decided it had wronged him, a reason you could respect. But the absence of a CBS apology to Rooney, coupled with the timing of his return--on the crest of a backlash against CBS--scream otherwise.

Public response to Rooney’s suspension had been overwhelmingly negative, and that--combined with some recent ratings slippage by the usually dominant “60 Minutes”--delivered a message that those arbiters of ethics at CBS obviously felt they could not ignore.

The moral judgment that CBS seemed to have made against Rooney by innuendo--one it never articulated--swiftly passed into oblivion. It wouldn’t have made any difference had Rooney been an ax murderer. The call of the buck echoed resoundingly and emphatically. This sucker was coming back.

Now instead of quarantining him like a leper, CBS embraced him like a returning Nelson Mandela, cynically seeking to exploit the Rooney controversy to its own advantage by basking in its neon glow. And if a resurfacing Rooney could help “60 Minutes” have an especially big Sunday (it attracted a robust 36% of the TV sets in use Sunday, according to Nielsen ratings for the nation’s 23 largest markets), perhaps that would boost that night’s entire CBS schedule.

The following was typical of the promos that CBS ran Sunday advertising the return of Rooney: “Yes, he’s coming back tonight, Andy Rooney, on ’60 Minutes’!”

And here was Jim Lampley at the top of the 6 p.m. news on CBS-owned KCBS Channel 2: “Andy Rooney spends a few minutes defending himself on ’60 Minutes,’ and we’ll have a preview of his remarks.” Following additional strategic teases of this preview, it finally arrived nearer the end of the hour, with Bree Walker giving a brief summation of Rooney’s remarks.

CBS may ultimately see the Rooney debacle as a prototype for escaping its low-ratings ghetto.

Dan Rather is slipping? Have him insult the homeless, then suspend him without explanation, have him serve a few meals at a shelter and bring him back a week later with a ticker tape parade.

Pat Sajak and Connie Chung can’t get arrested? Have them publicly insult Andy Rooney, then pull them off the air for exercising free speech and wait for the angry backlash from civil libertarians.

After all, it does appear to be the self-serving position of CBS, as Mike Wallace put it on “60 Minutes” Sunday, that “all’s well that ends well.” Earlier in the week, Burke said “we have all learned a great deal” about “how deeply people and groups can be hurt if great care is not taken in public discourse.”

Just how much CBS has “learned” remains in doubt, however, for in announcing Rooney’s return, “CBS This Morning” reported Friday that he had been suspended “after derogatory comments against blacks were attributed to him.”

No mention was made of the remarks he admitted making about gays, remarks far more derogatory to them than the refuted quote about “watered down” genes was to blacks. This is the new CBS sensitivity?

Despite his attempts at humor, Rooney was sort of a sad figure when he returned at the end of “60 Minutes” Sunday. He was right--he shouldn’t have had to defend his record as a non-racist and supporter of black rights.

However, his words Sunday about gays sounded more than a bit insincere.

He hadn’t realized what he had said about gays “would hurt them”? He perhaps thought they would applaud his comments in a CBS special last year that lumped “homosexual unions” with cigarettes, alcohol and other “self-induced ills” that often lead to early death? He thought he was being complimentary in writing The Advocate that homosexuality was “ethically or morally wrong and abnormal behavior”?

With freedom of thought and expression comes the freedom to be thick.

In another example of that Sunday, Rooney recalled the time he kicked someone out of his home for repeatedly saying “nigger.” Admirable. But then he added: “I’d feel the same today if someone used an insulting word about homosexuals.” After what he’s said about homosexuals? Go on, get outta here, you big palooka.

Meanwhile, life at CBS goes on, with Rooney on Sunday asking the only question that really mattered in this muddy episode: “What do I do to justify the action David Burke . . . has taken in putting me back on the air?”

Get ratings, Andy. Get ratings.