the anderson cooper interview

ANDERSON COOPER is an American journalist, author, and television personality. Currently focusing on his Emmy award-winning show, Anderson Cooper 360°, this world renown news enigma broadcasts out of New York City's CNN studio. We recently had the opportunity to sit down and find out a little more about the man behind the coverage


Hugeskeleton: Thank you for joining us
Anderson Cooper: My pleasure
HS: Let's dive right in - you stand apart from any other news anchor we've seen in recent memory. What is your philosophy as a journalist?
AC: I think the notion of traditional anchor is fading away, the all-knowing, all-seeing person who speaks from on high. I don't think the audience really buys that anymore. As a viewer, I know I don't buy it. I think you have to be yourself, and you have to be real and you have to admit what you don't know, and talk about what you do know, and talk about what you don't know as long as you say you don't know it. I tend to relate more to people on television who are just themselves, for good or for bad, than I do to someone who I believe is putting on some sort of persona. The anchorman from The Simpsons is a reasonable facsimile of some anchors who have that problem.
HS: [laughs] That's an interesting way to put it. Now, you've had quite an accomplished career, working on World News Now under the ABC umbrella, CNN Newsnight, as well as CNN's American Morning, co hosting with Paula Zahn. Paula is a very endearing lady - What was it like working with her?
AC: Paula is a great girl, with tremendous character. It was an absolute treat being able to sit alongside her at the news desk during our broadcasts. You know, it's funny. We'd always get into some minor shenanigans - We had this game. Before the broadcast started every night, among other things we'd play footsie under the desk right in front of the camera, and really try to sexually tease each other. And believe me, it'd come right down to the wire, which is where the rush was. While they were counting down the, 'Five, Four, Three, Two', we'd see who could get the "last word" in, so to speak. The last night we ever did it was a really close call - The night prior she, through my trousers, managed to yank my taint hair right before we came on, and I had a really goofy facial expression because of it. Boy was I cross. So the next night I reached over to give her a truly egregious titty twister. The camera came on one second earlier than anticipated, and I was caught retracting my arm back to my side from across her breasts. Fearing the audience could've possibly tuned in, I hit my look. You know, my gaze. I feel like when I hit the AC gaze it's like the film Men in Black, where I can erase people's short term memory. I hope it worked.
HS: Wow, that's really a revelation! [laughs]. Given the professionalism of the American Morning broadcast I couldn't even fathom that
AC: Don't get me started on what we'd do with the expired cream in the break room
HS: Oh goodness.. I don't know, lets move on
HS: You didn't dive right into a successful broadcast tenure as many imagine - Word has it your first opportunity was simply answering phones over at ABC, which purportedly you failed at? Difficult to imagine - what was that like?
AC: In hindsight, journalism is a really tough field to get into. There is a lot of competition and not many open doorways, so when you find a door ajar you really have to kick it open. Unfortunately the ABC situation was a metaphorical dead end, although I did later go on to work for them. My desk and phone bank was actually located way downstairs in the ABC complex, down in the mail room. It was very chaotic down there. I've never really discussed it, but most people referred to it as not the mail room, but the "male" room
HS: Can you explain that?
It was a popular work haven for the late 80's New York gays to find a quick place of employment, through word of mouth. I left prematurely - I'd often work nights and after hours, which was the time when one of the employees with the key would let in several dozen men and they'd have a very. . . niche sort of party. That's really where the emphasis on "male room" came from, I didn't come up with the term myself. I couldn't handle it, it was an absolute mess every time. Lets just say we'd never have any cases where we lacked envelope adhesive, there was always plenty to go around. In an optimistic light, it really secured our documents. The night I walked out I remember clearly - It began when I found a pair of bedazzled assless leather chaps in my filing cabinet. The straw that broke the camel's back came when I picked up the phone and as I set it down there was an ooze connecting my hand to it still, like a sagging tightrope, or a string of hot cheese connecting the two ends of a freshly halved mozzarella stick. I was mortified.
HS: Understandably so! That all sounds very hectic. You must've felt like you really bottomed out work wise, no pun intended of course.
AC: It really didn't get more degrading. Whenever we'd go out for a coffee break they'd always cheers and say,"Bottoms up" while slyly winking at me. I'm not naive. I had two of these guys' desks on either side of me. The innuendo was relentless, and oftentimes not so subtle. Tate, on my right, would lean over and ask me to call Donald, 3 feet to my left, on phone number "69, 69, extension: buttfuck". I really don't miss that place.
HS: It's easy to tell!
HS: Switching gears here - As an international journalist you surely work under pressure - Describe to me the most stressful or perhaps even dangerous situation you can recall
AC: That's an excellent question - I can recall an incident that was both stressful and dangerous.
HS: Perfect!
AC: Surely you remember the documentary Planet in Peril we filmed for CNN in 2007. I teamed up with Wolf Blitzer and Jeff Corwin in association with National Geographic. We traveled to pacific southeast Asia to discuss the state of the earth and several human factors that have been detrimental.
HS: Of course.
AC: Well this all happened in Burma [Note: Also commonly referred to as 'Myanmar']. After several days of shooting interviews and footage on-location, Wolf, Jeff and I became relatively well-acquainted with our surroundings. One night after we got the shots, we went to a local bar near our hotel, and well.. We ordered some shots. Quite a few - In hindsight, a few too many. To make a long story short, well, we ended up back at the hotel with a few Burmese prostitutes. I have extremely little recollection of how it happened, in fact I'm fairly certain this was all Wolf Blitzer - in the journalism world it's pretty well known he has an insatiable sexual appetite.
HS: Well, this is all new to us
AC: This is where things get twisted. I'm slowly coming-to in the morning, and my vision is pretty blurry from the heavy drinking. I'm in a total daze. I roll over to see what appears to be Wolf awakening his girl from what we can call a night of. . . Passionate correspondence, with a bristly salt-n-pepper beard rub. The kind only Wolf Blitzer can deliver. Well, as his girl wakes up, I suppose it literally rubbed her the wrong way. She lets out a shriek and slaps Wolf across the face. I think he may have still been drunk, because he clocked her with the most impressive haymaker I've seen in years, a real mean left straight.
HS: I'm speechless
AC: And here's where it gets dangerous: By this point the other two girls are awake, and extremely alarmed. As one of them leaps over and starts pummeling Wolf, the other is digging through her purse. Lord knows what she could have in there - a knife, a gun, anything. Under normal circumstances I don't know what I would've done. . . But at this point the adrenaline was pumping and I grabbed the closest blunt object I could find, a potted bamboo plant
HS: A potted plant..
AC: Absolutely. It's my understanding that at this point Wolf had somehow been temporarily incapacitated by these two girls. From this point forward it was all a blur, but after what seemed like an eternity, the only thing left of my Bamboo plant and its ceramic housing were shards all over the room - the bed, the floor, everywhere. And more blood than you can imagine. It really looked like a B-grade horror movie in there. Wolf came to, and gave me shit for not doing anything sooner. I asked him, "Have you ever done this before, Wolf? Do you know how hard it is to kill three Burmese hookers with a potted plant? Because frankly if you already have that perspective, I'm worried, because this is a pretty damn unique situation we've got on our hands here"
HS: I don't even know what to say. Where was Jeff Corwin during all this?
AC: That's the great part! Jeff Corwin slept through the entire thing! That really kills me every time I recount this story. You'd really think the guy that spends his days and nights wrestling saltwater crocodiles and venomous snakes would be the first one up during a battle to the death with a gang of ornery Burmese street vixens. But he was out, ice cold. It was a really messy situation. We didn't get caught - we got lucky for several reasons. As I've been told, the night before, I was introducing myself to everyone as "AC the rock", or "Big 360". Nobody could really hear Wolf past his beard and level of intoxication. And Jeff, he was too wasted to even talk. We managed to wake Jeff up, and boy you should've seen the look on his face as he sat up only to wipe shreds of whore-meat off his once sleeping body. After some hungover deliberation, we cleaned ourselves up and made it to a nearby slum. We paid an equivalent of 4 US dollars to have a gang of vagrants burn the hotel to the ground! All before checkout at noon. Now that's quick thinking and cooperation.
HS: Maybe you should market the whole situation to Leadership & Teamwork conference speakers
AC: That's a slippery slope. You'll have corporate managers fighting for promotions based on how many prostitutes they've murdered! [laughs]
HS: [laughs] Yeah I'm sure the anti-prostitute-murder-lobby would be all over that. All over that like Wolf Blitzer on a drunk college girl
AC: I'm sure most universities already have a preemptive restraining order on him
HS: [laughs] OK we're getting a little off track here. Poor Wolf. Lets move on. Enough about your work - Here's a question nobody can answer, And we'd like the Anderson Cooper take on it. Why are manhole covers round, and not square?
AC: [pauses to think] Do you believe in extra-terrestrial life forms?
HS: Well, I'm not su-
AC: That's a rhetorical question, don't answer it. Consider this - Check AC out here - Lets say, hypothetically, a fleet of Aliens came to earth. I don't know, maybe from the planet Garflon. It doesn't matter, just to label them. What if these larger-than-life alien menaces had an unquenchable sexual desire to penetrate drainage systems? Do you really think it'd be wise to have shaped our manholes and sewers as squares? No, I don't - And what are your last words going to be as a horde of Garflonites comes leaping and bounding towards your home in a fit of sexually-frustrated rage, destroying everything in its path? That'd make the issues on Planet in Peril seem pretty tame. I bet you'd feel like a real boner.
HS: I guess I've never thought of it that way
AC: Hey, sometimes ignorance is bliss, but you can be thankful drainage and sanitation workers of years past had some serious foresight.
HS: Right. This interview has been much more colorful than I imagined - Lets end this on a positive note. You're a very well traveled man, having reported from nearly every continent. Where do you see yourself settling down, if you ever do?
AC: Well with advances in DNA forensics, any country that doesn't have an extradition treaty with Burma! [laughs]. Imagine that. The last thing I'd need is for that whole thing to boil over and have that whore Nancy Grace running her fat, cunt of a mouth on her show. How humiliating.
HS: Mr. Cooper, this has been truly eye-opening. Thank you very much for joining us
AC: My pleasure


Anderson Cooper 360° is simulcast live on both CNN and CNN world news at 10:00 EST