We’re living in the future’s good ol’ days

Is there anything that doesn’t annoy, chafe, bother or peeve Andy Rooney?

I love reading Rooney’s column twice a week and catching his shtick on “60 Minutes.” It’s lively, entertaining and usually good for a chuckle or two. To hear him tell it, nothing was as good as back in the good ol’ days. Then, the air was cleaner, women prettier and men more manly.

How many times can he tell us about how shampoo just isn’t what it used to be, baseball just isn’t what it used to be, professional athletes aren’t what they used to be, and journalists just don’t report the news like they used to?

I’ll be the first to admit Rooney has earned his privilege of being America’s liveliest curmudgeon. Our “battles” over land-use issues and coal-fired electric generation plants pale in comparison to his front-line reporting during World War II. But being of a later generation, it’s disheartening to learn that no matter what, my life will never be as good as in those good ol’ days.

There is something to be said for watching old-time baseball and trundling through town without passing a McDonald’s every 37 seconds. I agree that the Olympics was probably much better before being bastardized by professionalism and commercial sponsors.

It’s also good that many things just aren’t what they used to be, especially in my profession.

As I sit here typing this column on a more than adequate Macintosh G4 computer with 512 megabytes of RAM and an 80-gigabyte hard drive, I realize how, like most other industries, technology has revolutionized journalism for the better.

The device of choice for Rooney’s generation was the popular Remington portable typewriter. I have one purchased at a garage sale several years ago. The laptop of its age.

Today’s journalist can generate stories more quickly, with more accuracy and in greater detail.

The slogan “news travels fast” was simply a figure of speech in Rooney’s day. Today, the news travels faster than many ever thought possible. There’s nowhere on this planet that something newsworthy can happen that we can’t know about it within minutes or hours.

Sports are also better today than in Rooney’s good ol’ days. Sure, there are the few bad apples, but we’re watching better baseball, better football and better basketball than a generation ago. Today’s athletes are bigger, stronger, faster and compete at a skill level that far exceeds athletes of the past.

Rooney’s nostalgia for the past doesn’t seem to include most personal grooming products. I’m sure he’s grateful for the demise of powdered toothpaste and that deodorant no longer comes in a messy paste.

Truth be told, whether it’s today or a generation ago, we live in a pretty amazing world. In a few more decades, I’m sure I’ll be lamenting these as the good ol’ days.

Fearless World Series prediction: Rockies defeat Yankees in 6 games.