NOT THAT YOU ASKED ME. . .. <i> by Andy Rooney (Penguin: $7.95)</i>

Although he poses as the champion of common sense, Andy Rooney is actually the defender of the commonplace. He does everything but snap his braces and light a corncob pipe from a pot-bellied stove as he dishes out folksy homilies: Never mind what the doctor says, strawberry ice cream is good for you. A syndicated columnist and network news writer posing as a cracker-barrel philosopher seems inherently false, like Marie Antoinette playing at milkmaid with silver pails and marble butter churns. Rooney is the Reagan era’s answer to Archie Bunker--not a blue-collar yahoo but a college graduate who wraps his prejudices in a cozily avuncular tone that makes them seem less narrow-minded and nasty than they really are. In a sadly divisive era, he prefers to extinguish a candle rather than curse the light.