RIP Andy Rooney: '60 Minutes' Commentator Dead at 92

When CBS News announced in September that Andy Rooney would be retiring from his duties as a regular commentator and essayist on "60 Minutes" at the age of 92, it was the end of an era.

Rooney practically defined the word "cantankerous" as the television news world's quintessential grumpy old man, and today, just a few weeks after he begrudgingly stopped doing his weekly segments, he has died.

According to CBS, Rooney was in the hospital for minor surgery for an unspecified condition when he developed “serious complications," which ultimately led to his death.

As CBS explained in its release about the announcement, "Rooney wrote for television since its birth, spending more than 60 years at CBS, 30 of them behind the camera as a writer and producer, first for entertainment and then news programming, before becoming a television personality - a role he said he was never comfortable in."

When the network announced his retirement from weekly commentating in September, Jeff Fager, the Executive Producer of "60 Minutes," said:

"There's nobody like Andy and there never will be. He'll hate hearing this, but he's an American original. His contributions to '60 Minutes' are immeasurable; he's also a great friend. It's harder for him to do it every week, but he will always have the ability to speak his mind on '60 Minutes' when the urge hits him."

It never happened.

RIP Andy Rooney. Whether we wanted to hear it or not, you always spoke your mind, and that is a  truly commendable thing.

Watch Andy Rooney's last segment on "60 Minutes":

Watch Andy's last interview about his career: