I don't know a ton about Andy Rooney but I remember trying to watch Black's standup special like 10 years ago and a lot of it was just an old man complaining about not understanding phones. So incredibly out of touch.
What I'm saying is that they are to Millennials as the other guys are to Boomers. Yeah, they're both Gen X, but both Rooney and Cronkite were older than Boomers, too. Jon Stewart is probably the most trusted person in news among Millennials, and I got my Boomer dad to read an entire book series on Cronkite's recommendation.
His comedy albums are mostly awesome. There’s dated material, but if you lived through it, it still works. He, David Cross, and Daniel Sloss are my faves right now. David Cross tickets go on sale here in one hour. Of course I’m going.
I loved Lewis Black back in the day. He doesn't have the energy, and he's pretty clearly reading off the prompter, although it does feel like his words coming through. Its hard to do that angry white-guy schtict if you can't really get that angry.
I think his presentation would come across stronger if he had been able to work the bit more continuously as he aged. This one was good, but he seems a bit out of practice. The jokes were also good, but it took him a minute to not seem like he was reading off a teleprompter.
He is dealing with some sort of immune disorder. I don’t know what, but he did a standup special after COVID became less of an issue and talked about having an illness that would end up killing him if he got COVID.