Yes, Anderson Cooper is verging on totally overexposed. So many of his shows are the tug-at-your-heartstrings puff-pieces that I can't stand. But I thought his work on Hurricane Katrina, as being one of the first reporters to say "We are really f*cking up here!" was pretty inspiring.

Scherer seems to have some obsession with Cooper, but I could care less. War Room is for Politics. Let's keep ad homing talking heads out of it. If WR is going to go the way of The Fix, will Rebecca Traister be posting her latest celebritology?

And to think that CNN fired Aaron Brown to give his time to this piece of crap.

I'd rather have Rather.cooper book is downpriced already,he was ok at New Orleans during the Katrina disaster but otherwise? as selfcentered as they come in journalism. That says it all.

I had to double check that I'd clicked on The War Room. The post seemed more of the style I'd find on that pink blog (I can't remember the name). But I suppose if I stretch my imagination I can maybe see how this little missive on AC might fit here. Afer all, he supposedly is some sort of news reporter.

Since we're snarking on Anderson, I'll throw in my 2 cents. I recall seeing him on the Colbert Report a while ago. What struck me most about him was that when he smiles he completely loses any semblance of the required news person gravitas (if he has any to begin with). When he smiles he looks just like a little boy.

I didn't know CBS decided to let Anderson Cooper ride the 60 Minutes bus the rest of the way to Hell.

This is the epitome of network news. Hello Katie, hello Anderson, hello sensationalism, goodbye whatever was left of network journalism.

is his complete inability to be critical of himself. This was most evident on The Daily Show, when he couldn't seem to fathom that his work might be seen as exploitive to some people. Instead, he worked in a weak slam against MSNBC and sat there doe-eyed while Jon tried to have a conversation with him.

Don't tar with blue states with this narcissistic twit.

I by no means disagree with the content of this war room piece, but I was surprised (and disappointed) to find it here at all. Is war room in the habit of "wow, this guy really pisses me off" pieces? The only analogous war room piece that I can recall is the response to Ann Coulter's slanderous press tour, but I felt that the war room entry had merit on account of Coulter's slanderous and ethics-free comments. I started turning to Salon when the MSM decided to cover nothing but the MSM. Please don't make me turn elsewhere!

for the off-topic post, which does contain, admittedly, a bit of The Fix's flair. (Although Anderson is political, in that he is trying to be the face of journalism.) It is not every day that I get to blog, so I tend to wander where I get interested. For the rest of the day, I will try to hew to the political roots of War Room, with posts that will make Tim proud.

Next up: bombing North Korea!

Now back to work.

Your humble blogger stand-in,

I'm all cooped up. I'm totally cooped. I'm too cooped to cop.

Jon Stewart had his media frenzy after he left-hooked Tucker Carlson on "Crossfire." But thankfully, Stewart relies on a gang of good writers, and that has resulted in staying power. He's not dependent on nepotistic media contacts like Carlson is. Anderson Cooper is just another case of nepotism, a mediocrity embued with star power. Sound like anyone else we know? Like, maybe a politician or two? Or several thousand?

Europe declined for a number of reasons, one of them the fact that they had a gaggle of inherited power. Generations of spoiled, mediocre and below-average brats made up an ossified aristocracy which stultified culture and resulted in disasterous wars and a fed-up peasantry. Thanks to these factors, Europe destroyed itself several times (hullo, Nicky and Willy?) and allowed the once-egalitarian US to seize its day in the sun. But America is now firmly in the hands of its own feckless aristocracy. The White House, the Senate and the media are treading water in a trance in this country due to the fact that the peasantry is happily sucking on beers and "reality TV"", content to let connected incompetents run the show. Whenever I see Jon Stewart or Stephen Colbert interview one of these walking emblems of nepotism, I wonder how they - both men who made it on their own, without the help of family ties and even without their own fathers to help them get along in life -- keep from reaching out and throttling these people.

Man, we are sooooo cooped.

I was getting worried about content sloshing from page to page . . .

You're all forgetting how awesome he was when he was host of The Mole.

What a disappointing and mean-spirited article. Not only is it entirely inapproprirate for this section of Salon, but swiping at the guy for getting "teary eyed" and calling him "exploitative" of his brother's suicide smacks of Coulter's recent comments about the 9/11 widows.

Anyone who has had a suicide in the family could tell you that while YOU may not approve of how or where he talks about it, that doesn't mean his grief isn't genuine. Sorry he's not mourning appropriately for you.

i'm a big fan of this blog - i find an opportunity to read it twice a day (once, then again just to see if there are updates), and am almost universally in agreement with the perspectives herein. but this entry on anderson cooper is a little much. everything you're saying in there might even be true at its core, but the amount of time/space devoted to simply ripping down a guy who is largely a pretty good anchor (he's no cronkite, but for christ's sake, he's no bill o'reilly either) is unnecessary, and is emblamatic of the reason why the right gets its own tv news network while the left can't figure out how to even define itself. that is, too many left-leaners are chomping at the bit to be critical that they'll spend five paragraphs mocking a reporter who is at worst annoying or gratuitous, at best a popular and effective voice (and i do remember him on the ground in new orleans, since you mentioned it, ripping apart a louisiana senator (via satellite, since she wouldn't go near the city) for wasting time patting other politicians on the back while people are literally dying around him. and it was kind of a great moment). moreover, the right's willingness to get behind it's ridiculous talking heads may be morally repulsive (and not something the left should emulate) but when the left spends 5 paragraphs just to say that a guy is a little self-gratifying, you start to understand why there is no liberal unity.

i don't want to write here and just stand up for anderson cooper. he's not that important to me, frankly. and if you want to throw a blog entry up about him being solopsistic, go right ahead. but it seems to me like there are bigger fish to fry. going after cooper for this seems a waste of time to me.