Anderson Cooper, hurricanes

A brief post before I go to sleep tonight... as you may know, tonight is the night that hurricane Milton (as discussed in the previous post) is striking Florida. I was watching CNN this afternoon and evening. As of last night, Anderson was still in the studio and I was thinking maybe he would just stay in New York while other reporters went to Florida to cover the hurricane on location. This evening, I saw on TV that he was in Florida; Bradenton to be specific (a city on the south side of Tampa Bay). 

I don't think I've necessarily written much about Anderson on this blog before, though be assured he certainly holds a special place in my mind. I've liked him for quite some time, really. I think he is cool and interesting, I admire him, etc. I would probably describe him as a significant factor in my interest of being a journalist. Just to get the backstory about my general thoughts on Anderson out of the way. It would be cool to meet him someday but that has not happened for me yet. 

Anyways, I happened to be scrolling through Twitter for hurricane updates and whatever else comes through on my timeline these days, and I saw that someone had retweeted the following tweet: 

"Why is a man apt to feel bad in a good environment, say suburban Short Hills N.J., on an ordinary Wednesday afternoon? Why is that same man apt to feel good in a very bad environment, say an old hotel on Key Largo during a hurricane? -- Walker Percy" 

Briefly, a little more context about the origin of that quote. It's from the book The Message in the Bottle by the author Walker Percy who wrote novels set in the American South and found hurricanes thematically interesting. I was not previously familiar with his work, so that description is just from what I saw with some quick searching and partially skimming parts of this essay about Percy's work. 

This was a quote-tweet of another tweet from the author Joyce Carol Oates, whose tweets can be a bit... wacky, shall we say. At least that's my fleeting impression having sporadically seen mildly unhinged tweets from her. Her tweet said the following: 

"Anderson Cooper started his career decades ago as a journalist / news person without an employer; traveled to trouble spots around the world, made videos which he then sold, or tried to sell, to TV stations back home. seems sad that he is now out in a hurricane putting himself in more danger." 

It was a quote-tweet of another tweet showing a brief video clip of Anderson while broadcasting live during the hurricane as he gets hit by some flying debris. At one point during the evening while I was watching him. he said that a lot of the debris consisted of palm leaves and styrofoam, which he was unclear about where all the styrofoam was coming from. [maybe it was coming from some debris pile of wreckage and garbage from Helene?] 

As an aside, Oates' description of the very beginnings of Anderson's news career is more or less accurate. Read Dispatches from the Edge, Anderson's first memoir, for more detail on this. Somewhat later into his career, once he was on CNN, he gained acclaim for his coverage of Katrina. He describes covering Katrina in that book too.  

There were some amusing replies to Joyce Carol Oates' tweet, which I'll transcribe for you here, and also for me so I can easily refer back to them in the future if I feel like it. 

"He's there because he wants to be. It's a point of pride for tv anchors to do such things. Get out from behind the desk. He's always covered both storms and wars. A real reporter, a hunting dog, not a show dog, despite those gorgeous blue eyes." 

That tweet reminded me of something I saw at some point, not when it originally aired, but some years later after I became interested in Anderson. It's from a skit on Saturday Night Live and I think they have Seth Meyers playing Anderson, and he says "see the news reflected in the shimmering blue pools that are my eyes." Coincidentally, this also happened to be an episode that Peter Sarsgaard hosted (!), so I think I may have watched it much later after I became interested in Peter Sarsgaard. 

Back to the amusing tweets... it is interesting to see others' impressions of Anderson. 

• At least he's getting paid for it. Some people do stuff like that for free.
• Maybe he wants to feel actually alive again. [I can't tell whether this is supposed to be a dig at Anderson or not...]
• There are not many people who I think care about others but I believe he does.
• i wish anderson was this brave when it comes to interviews with republicans...sadly, he's NOT...
• Postmodern Ernest Shackleton [from Wikipedia: "Sir Ernest Henry Shackleton CVO OBE FRGS FRSGS was an Anglo-Irish Antarctic explorer who led three British expeditions to the Antarctic. He was one of the principal figures of the period known as the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration." He lived during the late 1800s to the early 1900s.]
• he always works to prove himself because he's a Vanderbilt [there were multiple tweets mentioning his wealthy ancestry and how he is technically a nepo baby]  

*I know proper AP style is to put titles inside quotation marks, e.g. "Fahrenheit 451" but I kind of find italicizing them to be more aesthetically appealing. Anyways, this blog does not necessarily hew to any particular editorial standards other than "I find this topic interesting and want to make a post about it, or I want to write a review of something."  

AP style also instructs referring to people by surname on subsequent reference, but again, this is my random personal blog and I prefer to refer to Anderson by his first name.