Aging & Wisdom Quote by Andy Rooney

Rooney’s jab lands because it treats boredom as a measurable substance: if you can sit through televised golf, you’re already halfway to enjoying literal vegetation. The joke isn’t just that golf is slow; it’s that the medium of television turns slowness into a kind of civic nuisance. “On television” is the scalpel. He’s not attacking the game itself so much as the way broadcasting packages it: hushed voices, reverent close-ups, long dead air punctuated by polite applause. It’s leisure portrayed as ceremony, and Rooney’s American skepticism toward ceremony kicks in.

The intent is classic Rooney: puncture the self-seriousness of a popular pastime by framing it in an absurd comparison that feels uncomfortably accurate. “Grass grow on the greens” is slyly chosen. Greens are the most manicured, obsessively controlled part of the course; the idea that their grass is “growing” hints at golf’s obsessive maintenance culture, where the smallest natural process becomes spectacle and status symbol.

Subtext-wise, he’s also needling the audience: the people who watch golf aren’t just patient; they’re complicit in turning privilege into programming. Golf on TV often functions as ambient wealth - clean landscapes, expensive quiet, rules everyone pretends are sacred. Rooney’s line exposes how TV can anesthetize viewers into accepting boredom as sophistication.

Context matters: Rooney’s era of mass broadcast monoculture prized shared experiences, and he made his living questioning which shared experiences deserved reverence. This quip is a consumer review disguised as a wisecrack: if the product is “nothing happens,” don’t be surprised when your mind wanders to the lawn.