ICON: Andy Rooney Dead at 92!

(AP) – Andy Rooney, the curmudgeonly commentator who spent more than 30 years wryly talking about the oddities of life for 60 Minutes, died last night at age 92. Just a month ago, Rooney delivered his last regular essay on the CBS newsmagazine. The network said he died in New York from complications from a recent surgery. Rooney began his 60 Minutes commentaries in 1978 (see his first one in the gallery at left) and was still at it three decades later. (CBS has a best-of-collection on its site.) 

Rooney, also a syndicated newspaper columnist, talked about what was in the news. But he was just as likely to use his weekly television essay to discuss the old clothes in his closet, why banks need to have important-sounding names, or whether there was a real Mrs. Smith who made Mrs. Smith's Pies. He won three Emmy Awards, including one for his story revealing there was no Mrs. Smith. "I obviously have a knack for getting on paper what a lot of people have thought and didn't realize they thought," Rooney once said. "And they say, `Hey, yeah!' And they like that."