AC360 a Ratings Mess but Blogs are buzzing with Cooper
Andersen Cooper's sexuality is once again the hot topic amongst certain bloggers and websites looking to out the CNN newscaster. The New York Post, Gawker and Perez Hilton have all run stories about Cooper's recent dip in the ratings and how he and friend Benjamin Maisani traveled to India sharing a room at the exclusive Rambagh Palace where rooms can run $3,200-a-night.
Maisani, owner of the east village gay bar Eastern Bloc, complete with video porn action in the background and a DJ booth with the phrase "Free Moustache Rides" stenciled above, has often been photographed at Cooper's side leaving skeptics to question why remain in the glass closet?
Cooper is well educated, high profile and a well-respected journalist and newsman. He has always placed the story before himself and is cautious to not divulge personal information that would detract any attention away from the focus of the news he is reporting. He is clear about wanting to read the news and not be the news. Keeping the neutrality in his work, whether it's a line he's feeding the media or what he actually believes, is how he presents himself.
Yet critics believe his openly gay lifestyle should lead Cooper to publicly acknowledge his homosexuality and be the well-rounded, upstanding role model young gays today look for and need. Not to mention it would probably take some heat off that spotlight shining on his personal life all the time.
In 2007 Out Magazine ran "The Power 50" issue. The controversial cover featured a model holding up an Andersen Cooper mask to his face using a visual metaphor to convey the hidden message of his sexuality.
Editor-in-chief Aaron Hicklin tells Popeater, "Anderson Cooper is interesting because he so clearly doesn't go to great lengths to hide his sexuality. He's obviously comfortable in his own skin. He's not someone who's waiting to come out to his friends and family. I think that's why people are baffled by the fact that he won't publicly acknowledge his sexuality. That's why he's such a target. That's why so many people are disappointed that he won't make that relatively small step of just acknowledging his sexuality and moving on."
Still, in this celebrity obsessed world we live in where everyone and everything is seemingly fair game, can't a line ever be crossed? What ever became of a person's private life?
"I think it's really important to draw the line between what we were doing with that piece and the kind of stories you're reading about Anderson Cooper on Gawker and other Web sites," Hicklin added.
"We couldn't care less who Anderson Cooper's boyfriend is. That's not my interest any more than it would be my interest to reveal the private details of someone else's relationship. What my interest is, is to expose what I think of as the sort of phony argument around the closet and outing people. I mean, the concept of the closet and outing is a product of homophobia. The closet and outing people can only exist as long as homosexuality is seen as abhorrent and wrong. And since I don't see homosexuality as abhorrent and wrong I don't have any scruples calling it as I see it. As the editor of a gay magazine, I feel that it's incumbent on us to challenge the sort of preposterous nature around the phony outrage of outing people. I mean, switch homosexuality for religion and you begin to see how ludicrous it is."