We all love Anderson Cooper. (It would be UnAmerican not to!)
And no one wants to make America’s silver fox out to be some sort of hypocrite or anything – he’s certainly a good, down to earth journalist, but can we just pause and call bullshit for a second?
Eminent Victorian
For crying out loud, where’d this idea he was a good journalist come from? Channel 1? The Mole?
Nitesurf
Everybody hates Anderson (except me).
kevin
I agree Eminent One. He ain’t a journalist. He’s a commentator. His “reporting” is so biased that he sinks to the liberal level of Bill O’Reilly. Mind you, I usually agree with his position. But a unbiased journalist? Hardly.
St. Francis Of-a-sissy
And how much did anyone know about Walter Cronkite’s personal life? Or Dan Rather’s? Or Tom Brokaw’s? Seems to me that Anderson’s desire to keep his private life private is in keeping with a long journalistic tradition. The man (from what I hear) doesn’t give a rip if people see him in a bar, so I see no great need for him to announce on AC360 that he’s gay. Leave the guy alone!
Another thing: I’m getting sick and tired of bitchy queens criticizing some gay-but-not-out public figure’s talents just because they’re not out. It’s very immature. Or is being immature now an integral part of gay culture? And what will happen when he comes out? Will he magically become the greatest newsman since Ed Murrow?
Dacato
I totally agree with St. Francis. Why do all these queens think that just because he is on TV every night that they somehow have a right to know everything there is to know about him?
I personally think Anderson is a great journalist. How many other journalists do you know that put their own lives at risk to cover a story? Have any of you actually watched some of his early work or even seen his Planet in Peril documentary? He has won awards for his journalism and is one of the only CNN anchors with a show named after him. That’s got to say something.
I am sick of all the bitchy queens dissing Anderson without any legitimate arguments. It’s just like being back in High School where all the ‘cool kids’ picked on the quiet ones. So what if he is in the closet. He has every right to keep his personal life to himself. Know why? IT’S HIS LIFE!
Jenna's Bush
Anyone who goes into the television business knows that the culture is all about having every aspect of your life displayed to the world. If you don’t want that, then choose a different career.
Nitesurf
I rarely hear Anderson whining about a lack of privacy, whatever he does regarding of publicity, he does on his own terms, but he’s not going to offer up any details about his life that he doesn’t want anyone to know.
Jim
“Or is being immature now an integral part of gay culture?”
Sadly, toots, it always HAS been in many circles–stereotypes may be a bad thing, but they’re usually based, at least somewhat, in some sort of truth.
“Anyone who goes into the television business knows that the culture is all about having every aspect of your life displayed to the world. If you don’t want that, then choose a different career.”
Now THAT is absolute bullshit as far as most journalists are concerned. We’re not talking about some assinine twink on appearing in a tweener series, the type who live to be on weekly rag covers. It’s like No 4 said–how much do/did we know about the private lives of Rather, Brokaw or Conkrite? Zip. Why should we EXPECT to be privy to the private life of Cooper? One reason: he’s become popular since the advent of blogs.
Chuck
When you’ve got Vanderbuilt money, you don’t need the hoopla. So he can just play journalist (not that he’s bad at it) and can hide in the gilded closet. Easy for him, of course it gives nothing back to the community, doesn’t serve anyone but himself, and is logically a source of irritation to many because of the good he could be doing.
So he’s a closeted gay man of the same ilk as Mark Foley and Larry Craig. He may wear Prada in the midst of horrific poverty and present a liberal news stance, but in the end, he has decided to be a part of the problem instead of truly being brave.
An Other Greek
Everyone on their own time.
If he’s gay :), I would prefer him to be a happy out man.
My bigger concern is binary polarities. In addition, the passion of our gay brothers and sisters judging AC for some perceived identity politic failure, seems like a mirror reaction to a lot of the prejudging and intolerance we claim we stand against…
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seitan-on-a-stick
He should have put a Yoga mat down before he sat his tuckus on a dirty New York street. Love the sepia-toned photoshop of the Quick CNN Silver Fox!
go to girl
Nobody who has hosted a reality show and in Anderson’s case it was THE MOLE can be considered a journalist. He is eye candy who reads a teleprompter. The greats like Murrow, Cronkite, Jennings would never have had a journalism career if they had sold out in a genre like reality shows. Oh, how the times have changed.
Alan down in Florida
Anderson Cooper is whoever he chooses to be and does whatever he chooses to do and guess what – HE DOESN’T GIVE A DAMN WHAT YOU BITCHY QUEENS THINK ABOUT HIM!!! Worry about your own lives and leave him to live his.
ben
Cooper’s not closeted the way Larry Craig is. He doesn’t beard, he’s out in his everyday life, and everyone in the industry knows he’s gay.
He’s also one of the few American cable news anchors who actually is still a reporter instead of an editorializing commentator. He plainly tries hard to adhere to journalistic neutrality. Considering right and left BOTH complain he’s biased against him, I think he does a decent job of that. He doesn’t do opinion piece rants like OReilly or Olbermann. He also manages to maintain a civil tone to the discussion portions of his show, which is better than the scream-fests seen on a lot of other shows.
Go To Girl – aren’t you forgetting that Murrow had a very popular light celebrity talk show he hosted during the years he anchored the news? If somebody “sold out” it was Murrow because he was already famous when he started the talk show and he didn’t like fluffy celebrity chat but kept doing it anyway. Anderson didn’t have a big name to sell when he hosted the Mole, he LOVES reality TV, and he stopped doing it after deciding it wasn’t something he enjoyed doing.