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Rooney is a man of awfully good habits. At home in the suburbs, he bakes his own bread, churns his own ice cream and makes his own furniture: at the office he keeps special machines to shine his own shoes and press his own pants. Still, he always looks as rumpled as if he had spent the night on a bench in Grand Central Station. Another raffish touch is the 1920s Underwood typewriter on which he has written everything from his first book, Air Gunner, to the article in a recent issue of LIFE about who the real campus protesters should be: the parents who pay the tuition. He is a father of four children, aged 17 to 21, and the title of his piece was a heartfelt "Burn, Bursar, Burn."
The underscheduling of news and documentary programming is Rooney's main complaint about TV. He thinks a minimum of an hour at night of prime time should be available for public affairs. Among other things this would make room for more documentaries —without colons in their titles. "There is never a day a light documentary has to be on," he says. "I don't mean to complain, but I just wish insignificance had more stature."