Don’t you just love it when people establish the relevance of their positions with phrases like, “There’s been a lot of talk about my topic lately” or “Don’t you just love it when people establish the relevance of their positions with some circularly-logical premise”?

It makes me wonder whether or not Andy Rooney is still alive.

Since X-Files left the airwaves I haven’t had cause to crowd around the TV on Sunday nights, and I miss the comfortably-challenging insights of that meanderingly-ponderous complainant. I would be lying if I said he wasn’t deserving of a citation somewhere in my pantheon of personal heroes. And I don’t fancy myself a liar.

I imagine Andy Rooney to be the triumphant revitalization of Atticus Finch after he suffered a uniquely-curious brain injury in a particularly-disturbing motor vehicle collision. The other driver was obviously at fault. Atticus Finch had a sterling driver’s abstract. And I don’t think Andy Rooney ever got his license back.

Brain injury is no laughing matter. Unless that’s exactly what it happens to be. It’s funny that way.

But it seems to me that when Andy Rooney dies—if he hasn’t already—he will part with fewer regrets than Atticus Finch.