[4] He was one of six correspondents who flew on the second American bombing raid over Germany in February 1943, flying with the Eighth Air Force.
[10][11] Rooney rated the capture of the bridge as one of the top five events of the entire European war, alongside D-Day.
[6] He was one of the first American journalists to visit the Nazi concentration camps near the end of World War II, and one of the first to write about them.
During a segment on Tom Brokaw's The Greatest Generation, Rooney stated that he had been opposed to World War II because he was a pacifist.
[5] In the segment, Rooney typically offered satire on a trivial everyday issue, such as the cost of groceries, annoying relatives, or faulty Christmas presents.
In February 1990, CBS's 60 Minutes suspended Rooney for three months in part because it was alleged that he had suggested that black people were less intelligent because they "watered down their genes".
[23] Rooney wrote a column in 1992 that posited that it was "silly" for Native Americans to complain about team names like the Redskins, saying, in part, "The real problem is, we took the country away from the Indians, they want it back and we're not going to give it to them.
"[24] In a 2007 column for Tribune media services, he wrote, "I know all about Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig, but today's baseball stars are all guys named Rodriguez to me."
"[25] In 1990, Rooney was suspended without pay for three months by then-CBS News President David Burke, because of the negative publicity around his saying that "too much alcohol, too much food, drugs, homosexual unions, cigarettes [are] all known to lead to premature death.
I felt terrible about that and I've learned a lot.In a 1994 segment, Rooney attracted controversy with his remarks on Kurt Cobain's suicide.
he asked, adding rhetorically to a young woman who had wept at the suicide, "I'd love to relieve the pain you're going through by switching my age for yours."
In addition, he asked "What would all these young people be doing if they had real problems like a Depression, World War II, or Vietnam?"
[30][31] Rooney's shorter television essays have been archived in numerous books, such as Common Nonsense, which came out in 2002,[32] and Years of Minutes, probably his best-known work, released in 2003.
[33] He penned a regular syndicated column for Tribune Media Services that ran in many newspapers in the United States, and which has been collected in book form.
[35] Rooney's renown made him a frequent target of parodies and impersonations by a diverse group of comic figures, including Frank Caliendo, Rich Little and Beavis.
[citation needed] Rooney's final regular appearance on 60 Minutes was on October 2, 2011,[36] after 33 years on the show.
Increased speculation on this was brought to a head by a series of comments he made regarding Mel Gibson's film The Passion of the Christ (2004).
Emily's identical twin, Martha Fishel, became chief of the Public Services Division at the National Library of Medicine in Bethesda, Maryland; her son Justin works as a producer for ABC News.
His first daughter, Ellen Rooney, is a former film editor at ABC News and is now a travel and garden photographer based in London.
[48] Rooney was hospitalized on October 25, 2011, after developing postoperative complications from an undisclosed surgical procedure,[49] and died on November 4, 2011, at the age of 92, less than five weeks after his last appearance on 60 Minutes.