Andy's Views On The News

(CBS)  The following is a weekly 60 Minutes commentary by CBS News correspondent Andy Rooney.

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I read a lot of newspapers. Well, I don't actually read a lot of them. I look at a lot of newspapers. Most of us read about 250 words a minute. It would take us more than ten hours to read the average newspaper.

We don't read everything in any paper of course. That's what headlines are for. They tell us about stories we're not interested in reading so we can skip those.

One Turkish paper had something to say about President Bush that I can't read. You can usually tell where a newspaper stands on President Bush from the picture they use of him. If he looks good in the picture, they like him.

I wanted to read a story in the Hartford Courant about body armor but I was afraid someone would think I was just looking at the (bra) ads.

There was a great picture of a Connecticut player who was partly responsible for losing to George Mason University.

I never heard of George Mason before. I don't think it does the reputation of a college any good to have a basketball team that's better known than it's academic standing.

The Miami Herald had an interesting story about the man in Afghanistan who was sentenced to death after he changed from being a Muslim to a Christian. Now they're making him leave the country.

Imagine what would have happened to him if he'd said he thought all religion was nonsense and he was going to be an atheist.

Another headline you see a lot is "Home Sale Prices Fall." Home sale prices are always going down when you're selling a house and they're always going up when you want to buy one.

There's a lot of news about the start of the baseball season. I notice that none of the stories say much about the fact that our U.S. All Star baseball team, with our best major league players on it, lost in a World Baseball championship a few weeks ago.

When the Major Leagues have what they call The World Series, they don't let the rest of the world play of course. I think they're afraid they'd lose.

There are lots of car ads. The Los Angeles Times had twenty solid pages of cars last Sunday.

I like the Sunday book sections. I read about books more than I actually read books.

Just for fun I compared The New York Times bestseller list with the Los Angeles Times bestseller list.

Under fiction, the novel called "The Fifth Horseman" was first in New York; it was eighth in L.A.

In non-fiction "Marley And Me," a story about a Labrador retriever, was first in New York also first in Los Angeles.

I watch the news on television every night but in the morning I read the newspaper to find out what really happened.
By Andy Rooney