R-E-S-P-E-C-T

All right, I admit it: I enjoyed Rodney Dangerfield.

No, he wasn't cool or hip or topical. Yes, his style was old-school Catskills resort instead of cutting-edge and streetwise. Yes, he was lowbrow and crass. And yes, he told some of the same hoary one-liners over and over again for decades.

But the man was funny.

As much as I liked his standup, my favorite memory of Rodney Dangerfield will be his role as Thornton Melon, the self-made garment tycoon who used his wealth from a chain of "Tall and Fat" stores to join his teenage son at college in Back to School. Only Rodney could get away with this exchange with a female student one-fourth his age:

He: What's your favorite subject?
She: Poetry.
He: Really? Well, maybe you can help me straighten out my Longfellow.

Or this one, with a sophisticated English teacher played by Sally Kellerman:

She: I'd love to go with you, but I've got a class right now.
He: Well, why don't you come and see me some time when you have no class?

Those lines may not look funny when read from a monitor screen, but when delivered with Rodney's impeccable timing and his signature "I don't care what anyone thinks about me, here I am" savoir faire, they were golden.

Maybe now, as the retrospectives and eulogies tumble forth from a million keyboards, old Rodney will, at long last, get some respect.