CBS's Andy Rooney stirred up quite a response from his critique of Mel Gibson, both as a person and as a filmmaker, without making the effort to see The Passion of the Christ:

The "60 Minutes" curmudgeon said Sunday he got 30,000 pieces of mail and e-mail in response to his February 22 commentary, in which he called "The Passion of the Christ" filmmaker Mel Gibson a "wacko." ... "I think the mail was a good indication of how bitterly divided our country is right now," Rooney said on his Sunday "60 Minutes" commentary. "I hope I'm not contributing to that -- even though I'm right and everyone else is wrong."

Rooney, simply put, is a lousy writer and commentator; talking about how "bitterly divided our country is" is a cliche that rapidly has become one of the tritest and least informative phrases in punditry. Paying any attention to what he says only encourages CBS to keep his knowledge-deficient rantings on the air. Imagine what the outcry would have been had someone shown the temerity to call Steven Spielberg a "wacko" for making Saving Private Ryan without having seen the film, and you get an idea of what biases are at play at CBS.

I originally responded to Rooney's rant in this post, titled "CBS Decries Exploitation? Oh, Please!"

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