Those <i>60 Minutes</i> Pack Rats
A weekly commentary by CBS News Correspondent Andy Rooney:
When this broadcast begins every Sunday night, you are shown pictures of the other correspondents: Morley Safer, Steve Kroft, Ed Bradley, Lesley Stahl and Mike Wallace, sitting there all dressed up with their hair combed.
They look as if they've got it all together, don't they? I have a tawdry story to tell of life behind the scenes here at this revered old television news magazine.
With a hidden camera, we have obtained pictures of the offices from which this broadcast emanates. Some of these pictures we are about to show you, are so disturbing, that you might want to ask your children to go to their rooms — which probably look a lot like the ones we are going to show you.
If child laborers worked under conditions like these, protest groups would demand the goods be banned from the American market.
This is the office of the award-winning reporter Morley Safer. The management here at CBS probably spent $5,000 furnishing this sumptuous office - and look at it, a veritable pigpen of a place.
Lesley Stahl, always beautifully coiffed, elegantly attired, spends her days in these squalid circumstances. Where would the lovely Lesley lie down if she were suddenly smitten with a siege of fatigue in the middle of her day?
Mike Wallace's office. His couch runneth over with plaques and awards he has won. He toots his own horn for blowing the whistle.
Steve Kroft has a chair that looks as if it wants to sit on his couch. His office is a combination clothes closet, file cabinet and waste basket.
Ed Bradley has turned his little piece of 60 Minutes real estate into a veritable zoological garden. Bradley likes the lights down low. If you go to Ed's office, you have to bring a flashlight to find him in there.
The office of the producer of 60 Minutes, Don Hewitt, is a different matter. Don is orderly. He's the only writer I know who works wearing a coat and tie.
If you melted down all Don's Emmys, you could make an anchor for the Queen Elizabeth.
This leather lounge in Don's office once belonged to William S. Paley, the revered founder of CBS who died nine years ago.
Don treasures the couch but he was so scared of Paley when he was alive that, to this day, he won't let anyone sit on it.
It would be less than honest of me to suggest that my office is in apple-pie order.
Several years ago, I put up this table. I was going to use it just temporarily as a place to put things. Never plan on putting something someplace temporarily.
All this stuff is not really worth keeping - it's just too good to throw away. The fact of the matter is, we all acquire more things we want to save in our lives than we have space to store them.
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