It was only a matter of time before the wingnuts at Fox News came for Anderson Cooper for grilling Florida attorney general Pam Bondi last week. In the wake of the massacre at Orlando’s Pulse nightclub, Cooper took Bondi to task for her past opposition to same-sex marriage.
In a recent appearance on Fox News’s Media Buzz, Bondi complained that the openly gay CNN journalist “flipped out” on her, and suggested that questioning her positions on LGBT rights was inappropriate after the most deadly mass-shooting in American history was aimed specifically at the LGBT community.
Related: Anderson Cooper Rails Against Florida AG: Are You Really A ‘Champion’ Of Gay Rights?
While never coming right out and saying it, host Howard Kurtz and Fox contributor Guy Benson danced nimbly around the suggestion that Cooper’s sexuality compromised his objectivity in covering this particular story.
How about we take this to the next level?
Our newsletter is like a refreshing cocktail (or mocktail) of LGBTQ+ entertainment and pop culture, served up with a side of eye-candy.
“Do gay journalists feel a special anguish over the senseless slaughter of 49 mostly-gay Americans?” asked Kurtz, while Benson suggested that Cooper was acting more like an activist than a journalist with his line of questioning.
Related: All Those Other Times Pam Bondi Was Not A “Champion” For The LGBTQ Community
This is just another example of the insane identity politics favored by many conservatives that imagines that only straight white men can do their jobs objectively — whether that’s judging a lawsuit brought against a presidential candidate widely acknowledged to be racist, or covering possibly the most horrific act of violence perpetrated against the country’s gay community. It’s the sort of suggestion that keeps mainstream journalists in the closet while their straight colleagues feel no similar pressure. Cooper himself famously avoided coming out publically until 2012. If we can all agree that Donald Trump suggesting that federal judge Gonzalo Curiel is incapable of being impartial in the fraud case against Trump University because of his of Mexican heritage is the textbook definition of racism, we have to be able to acknowledge the blatant heterosexism in Kurtz and Benson’s attack on Cooper’s journalistic integrity.
h/t: On Top Magazine
DCguy
Fine, then that would mean FOX News can no longer report on anything having to do with White people or the Republican Party.
Because, can white republicans report objectively on that?
DDstar1me
Wowzers…..I’m done!
Paco
Anderson Cooper was doing his job as a responsible journalist by confronting Pam Bondi about her anti-LGBT past. There is nothing “activist” about it.
All the anti-LGBT republicans that are offering empty platitudes after the Orlando tragedy, need to be publicly confronted about the real harm they inflict on our community.
Baba Booey Fafa Fooey
FOX News is conservative activism – so I don’t get their point.
Jim
Faux News doesn’t have a clue.
Kieran
Would Howard Kurtz ever dare to suggest that a Jewish journalist like Wolf Blitzer couldn’t cover Israel objectively?
Chevelter
Faux News is biased so they assume everyone else is too.
Brian
I’d love to see Anderson Cooper tell an imam at a mosque the same thing he said to Pam. Doubt he’d have the guts to do it.
He BGB
She is so bitter that Anderson exposed her hypocrisy. You can see in the video she was expecting to shine and be praised as a hero but he is a good journalist who did his homework on her. I admit his being gay did make it more than what a straight journalist might have done but more conservatives need to be exposed for the terrible people they really are underneath their scales and reptile skins.
Brian
Anderson Cooper clearly over-stepped the mark and was unprofessional in my opinion.
Hermes
@Brian: Nonsense. As a person who protested outside the Iranian embassy to the UN over Iran’s slaughter of gay teens back in ’06; who has directed Interfaith vigils that specifically mentioned the homophobia of fundamentalist Islam; and who does not hesitate to speak out about extremism wherever it is found – let me say that if I – though not a journalist at all will do those things, a decent professional journalist will do the same. Let me also say that the problem is not Islam, is not Christianity, is not any given faith community. The problem is fundamentalism, regardless of the word following that descriptor. Fundamentalism, of whatever sort – tries to bring forward outdated, bronze age or early iron age prejudices and defend them based on myth. I have Muslim friends whom I love very much, and who love me, and have zero problem with my sexuality – but they lack that deadly word – they are not fundamentalist.
Regards
AJAnders
This is so typical from the propaganda machine that Fox News is.
A hypocrite gets called out for her convenient timing of fake sympathy and now she cries as the victim. Forget about the 49 people who were killed, the 53 who were injured and the loved ones who are now scarred for life. No, no, no. SHE is the victim.
If Fox News had their way, they’d end all memorials for the victims and start having them for Pam Bondi. That is where their priorities lie.
coffeeaugur
Well Fox News is too bigotted to cover it so there … pttt
Dave Downunder
I was going to post the comment does anyone ever take anything Fox News reports seriously but then remembered that the slack jawed masses out there aren’t sharp enough to distinguish bad biased reporting from credible news.