Part of me feels bad. Because he felt it was necessary to keep from looking like he was ashamed and to be a role model. I want it to be a world where it isn’t anyone’s business who you sleep with (unless you choose to kiss and tell - or in Tim Gunn’s case, apparently not kiss and then tell anyway) and Cooper wanted his private life to be private.
It isn’t a shock, everyone “knew.” He handled it with grace and class, and I am happy for the scared 12 year old kid in Missouri if this helps at all (but really, its Andersen Cooper, can anyone identify with Andersen Cooper - if he were a character in a novel you’d be “yeah, right - born rich, good looking, smart, funny, professionally successful on his own in an adventurous and challenging field - I buy Jason Bourne being real too”) - but it shouldn’t have ever been necessary for someone who wanted their private life to be private to need to come out.
Me too. I don’t understand this. I remember hearing a very similar story as this a couple years ago and thinking to myself “Ahh, yeah, that does make sense”. I thought the “coming out” was over and done with. And if I had found out years earlier, how had it not?
I think the notion he had already come out might be his 2004 comment to Jerry Falwell. The Right Rev. had said something about how good decent honest taxpaying Americans shouldn’t have to pay for art or textbooks that included gays, to which Anderson responded “but we pay taxes too”. I don’t have the exact quote handy, but it was in a way that could have been him speaking as a gay man or posing a hypothetical retort gays could use, but in any case it was edited in the official transcript to “they pay taxes too”.
Did anybody watch his show tonight and if so, did he mention it? (I DVR’d it but haven’t been home yet.)
Looking at his Wikipedia entry, you may be thinking of either a 2005 interview where he gave an “I’d like to keep my private life private” answer to a question about his sexual orientation (a straight man almost certainly would have just said he was straight), or a 2007 Out magazine piece that listed him as one of the most powerful gay men in America.
Anyway, I don’t think it’s accurate to say Cooper was in the closet until now. He may not have been out to the public, but his sexual orientation became one of those things that “everybody knew” because he did little if anything to conceal it. He’s never said he wasn’t gay, and AFAIK didn’t object to being referred to as gay in Out. His friends and family have apparently known he was gay for years. I don’t remember ever hearing of him being romantically involved with a woman, but I have heard that he’s been seen around town with a man believed to be his boyfriend.
Good for you, Anderson, and welcome to the “Out Club.” We’ve been waiting for you.
But seriously, I wonder if this is going to affect his ability to report from certain locations in which it’s very hazardous to be gay. Like many of the countries in the Middle East or Africa, where there’s a death penalty for being out. I suppose this very question was one of the factors in his coming-out process.
This is as far as I’d read, so far, and thought I’d google a video of said incident. Fricking Hee-Larious!! Actually had to pause it a couple times, we were laughing so hard!
And now, I’ll finish reading the thread.
I read this on TalkingPointsMemo.com and wondered why I hadn’t seen a thread on the dope. Maybe I should start one? Nah, who cares really?
I may be the only one who didn’t suspect this. I don’t have cable TV, so only saw AC on rare occasions when someone linked a clip. My gaydar also has pretty poor s/n…gotta be really flamboyant for me to take notice. In hindsight, I can see it now, of course. Here’s hoping AC’s career stays on track, not just for him, but for what that says about societal attitudes.
Yes, we did have some hints. In this video with Anderson and Kelly Ripa, Kelly puts a picture of Anderson in her shirt, and Anderson’s response is, “Sweetie, that’s the last place I’d look.”
I don’t really understand this. Could you elaborate? I’m hoping the time is near that ‘coming out’, especially for someone everyone already assumes is ‘out’, is no longer newsworthy.
My first reaction was, “and this is news why?” I can understand the comments about how there are still people to whom it matters to see public gay people as inspirations, but it’s just a non-event to me. But I guess part of that is that I don’t follow Anderson Cooper. He’s just some guy on TV.
The point is that if people ask or make comments about your sexuality and you play coy, that suggests that you think it is a big deal. If it isn’t a big deal, then there’s no need to play games.
