Wow, I knew that Andy Rooney was an old coot but I didn’t realize that he was an awful writer as well:

“I love the books I have in my office. There are about 600 of them and if I knew everything in all of them, I’d be the smartest guy in the world. Well, I don’t know everything in my books. Sometimes when I get up in the morning, I can’t even remember where my socks are. I don’t really like dictionaries but I have several good ones and I’m always looking at those. One of the best reference books ever written, ‘Modern English Usage,’ is written by a man named Fowler. If you do any writing at all, you can’t be without this. We’re lucky to have English as our language because it’s the best language in the world but it’s not easy. One of my favorite books of all time is “A Preface To Morals” by Walter Lippmann. Lippmann was one of the best writers and thinkers there ever was.”

Man. If he came into the writing center when I was on duty I would’ve docked him many a style point indeed.

He’s still the one on national television every week, though.