Andy Rooney, Back on Top, Hero in Demand

Applause thundered through the hotel ballroom.

The speaker at the podium was Andy Rooney. The Andy Rooney. Remember? Accused of slurring blacks--denied it. Accused of slurring gays--acknowledged it. Suspended by CBS for three months and deleted from “60 Minutes.” Reinstated by CBS after three weeks and returned to “60 Minutes.”

Andy Rooney, landing on his feet.

It’s impossible to assess merely from watching “60 Minutes” how America regards the post-Rooneygate Rooney. So you look for evidence elsewhere, perhaps finding it at the Century Plaza Hotel.

The enthusiastic reception given him Monday night at a dinner sponsored by the Constitutional Rights Foundation (Rooney was keynote speaker) affirmed his status as another of America’s prominent yo-yos.

You just can’t keep a good celebrity down, no matter his or her offense.

Consider that on the very night Rooney was addressing an audience of about 1,000 in Century City (he would speak to the Hollywood Television and Radio Society the next day), Richard Nixon, the Richard Nixon, was on CNN’s “Larry King Live” speaking to millions. The latter was one of those mutual back scratchings peculiar to the way media, especially TV, do business, with King using Nixon to entertain his audience and Nixon using King to advertise his new book.

Consider also, meanwhile, that Ollie North continues to hit the speakers’ circuit masquerading as a hero despite his Iran-Contra-related conviction, that arrogant Zsa Zsa Gabor’s talk-show clout was enhanced by her cop-slapping incident and that even Jimmy Swaggart--after disclosure of his alleged visits to a prostitute--continues to star in his own TV show, voice still cracking, lip still quivering.

This is not necessarily to lump Rooney with any of these people or to equate his infractions with theirs, only to note that like them, he appears to have rebounded from self-inflicted adversity, flicking it away like a piece of lint on his lapel.

Unlike Nixon, Rooney did not betray America and feed growing cynicism about government and national leaders. And unlike North, Gabor and Swaggart, he is not a one-message billboard.

What makes Rooney so intriguing, in fact, is that in many matters he makes wonderful sense. You have to admire his message to the Constitutional Rights Foundation, whose goal is to teach youth a “deeper understanding of citizenship through values expressed in the Constitution and its Bill of Rights.”

He preached speaking out for one’s beliefs, regardless of the cost: “If you say what you think, you’re always going to make someone mad.” He wondered why America has “become a nation that doesn’t say what it thinks about so many things.” Why, indeed?

Moreover, let’s hope Rooney’s audience was listening when he declared: “There’s no sense having free speech if no one speaks freely.” Put that on Mt. Rushmore.

As an advocate of the First Amendment, Rooney can’t be faulted. Yet it’s sort of amazing the way all of this shifts the onus of guilt to CBS for ignoring Rooney’s freedom-of-speech rights by yanking him from “60 Minutes,” possibly because of those alleged statements about blacks he denied making and others about gays that he acknowledged making. That CBS was wrong on the First Amendment issue doesn’t make Rooney right on the gay issue.

Rooney said some rather demeaning things about gays in his infamous letter to a gay publication called The Advocate. And the some-of-my-best-friends-are-gay defense that he expressed recently to Times columnist Rick Du Brow included a warning that they “be more careful about their sex habits.” Either Rooney was being careless with his thoughts or he was implying that only gay sex, and not heterosexual sex, can transmit AIDS.

Based on some of his past statements, Rooney is a bigot when it comes to gays. The label applies regardless of how many others share his views. Everyone is a hero to someone.

Because he is also cute and funny (“If I anger you, don’t think you’re anybody special,” he said Monday, getting a big laugh), Rooney is perfectly suited to be America’s lovable homophobe, a sort of Archie Bunker for gays.

The disturbing thought is not that he has been welcomed back by a forgiving public, but that the public welcoming him back never thought he’d done anything that needed forgiving in the first place.