Weekly Standard writer Matt Labash satirizes CNN's Anderson Cooper in the 6/5 issue:
...We now recognize the host of CNN's 360 the way we recognize the sun and moon, which are always before us, as Anderson is. He is silvery and sleek, the son of Gloria Vanderbilt, the friend of mankind. He is an enigma wrapped in a mystery ensconced in a French blue shirt, which really makes his eyes pop, by the way. Not that he cares about shirts. He doesn't really need one. In fact, if it were up to him, he'd probably do every show naked. Because that's how he comes to the story. And maybe because of that nakedness, he tells better stories. Which, strictly speaking, is a Nissan slogan. But I wouldn't be surprised if Nissan became one of his sponsors, since, they, like Anderson, understand narrative nudity.
Anderson goes where the news is, and even where it's not, sometimes bringing it with him in a carry-on bag, since he packs light, because he never knows when he's going to have to dodge a bullet or a hurricane projectile. Danger is his middle name. Actually "Hays" is, but "Danger" is so much more, I don't know, dangerous-sounding.
His first name is Anderson, which of course means "son of Andrew," as in the first disciple called by Jesus. And like our Lord and Savior, he is omnipresent. He's on two hours a night on America's News Leader, the second-place network CNN. He writes for Details, poses for Maxim, and is called one of the sexiest anchors alive by Playgirl magazine. There he is crying in New Orleans. Wait, no! Now his throat's tightening in Niger. Time out! Isn't that him vacationing in Rwanda at the genocide museum, since he says he hasn't been in a while? Hold up a second! What's that rustling? Is that Anderson under the bed, finding the news, emoting over it, smothering it with a pillow until its legs kick and twitch, then sliding out the bathroom window before anyone notices?
This is amusing...although I don't think it's cool to make fun of Cooper's mother to get at him. Making fun of Gloria Vanderbilt for being born rich is similar to how Democrats made fun of George H.W. Bush for being born rich (and he had a great riposte to that: he said he couldn't help where he was born, he just wanted to be near his mother at the time.) What's not so funny, if you're Jon Klein or Anderson Cooper, is the fact that Fox News Channel's Greta Van Susteren is just whipping 360 like a rented mule in the ratings. So here's my question: since it's incontrovertible that his ratings aren't great and getting less great by the second, why is the media paying so much attention to him? Negative attention is still attention. My point is that sometimes, there's something to the old adage of ignoring something so it'll go away.
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