The New York Post had a good catch today: the Oprah Winfrey Show seems to be having a little tempest-in-a-teacup-sized skirmish with Anderson Cooper's PR people...at least, that's my guess. Michael Starr writes:
WHO made Oprah Winfrey pull her little love note to CNN reporter Anderson Cooper off her Web site?
Early yesterday, oprah.com, the Web site for Oprah's show, was asking readers: "Does Anderson Cooper inspire you?"
It was posted to help find people willing to appear on a Winfrey show dedicated to the CNN anchor's new book, "Dispatches from the Edge: A Memoir of War, Disasters, and Survival."
The posting asked: "Did a story that CNN anchor Anderson Cooper reported on inspire you to take action? Perhaps his personalized Katrina reports motivated you to help hurricane victims?
"If Anderson Cooper has inspired you to take action, 'The Oprah Winfrey Show' wants to hear from you!"
But by late afternoon yesterday, the query had been mysteriously removed from the site.
And no one was saying who or why it had been pulled down.
"Anderson is coming on ['Oprah'] to talk about his book and it will air sometime [this month]," a CNN spokeswoman said.
Winfrey's representatives did not return calls.
All I'm saying is that hard news is not what has made Oprah wildly successful: it's exposes on what congealed macrobiotic brown rice thingie Gwyneth Paltrow is making for dinner, it's Kirstie Alley acting crazy while bra shopping, it's anorexic mothers willing to come on Oprah's show so she can tell them they're anorexic and make them cry...all of which is, indeed, featured on Oprah's site today. It's certainly not a mash note to Cooper, the epitome of poorly-rated hard news, that keeps Oprah's cocker spaniels in organic lavender doggie shampoo. No matter how you feel about Oprah, she's a smart, smart woman--just like with cable news ratings, numbers don't lie, and Oprah's bank balance says she mostly makes the right decisions. If Coop's been pulled from her site, it's because she knows that, in too large a dose, he's a turnoff to an audience going online to see, say, video of Jennifer Aniston boy-toy Vince Vaughn. So she pulled the Cooper thing. That's what's known in sports as a "great recovery."
