Anderson Cooper is my God

Oh my God. I want to have Anderson Cooper's children.

That was some of the most fun I've had in years. Anderson Cooper just ripped Jeff Gannon to shreds. Not that I wanted to see Jeff ripped to shreds, but I wanted to see a real journalist ask Jeff the hard questions, and Anderson did.

In a nutshell, Gannon didn't say a thing. It was 20 minutes of bullshit. He wouldn't answer any real questions. Challenged us to get answers from the White House and from GOPUSA. First, Anderson asked him about his name, and he said he used a pseudonym because his real name is hard to pronounce. Anderson answered "Jeff is hard to pronounce?" Gannon said, no Guckert is. Anderson replied, yeah but you changed James to Jeff, James isn't hard to pronounce. That set the tone for the entire interview.

I'm sure Crooks and Liars and others will have the interview up shortly, but the highlights are:

- Gannon admitted to making a mistake of a "very personal and privatge nature." Well, no, you worked as a male escort from at least 1999 to, well, your profiles are still live today. What part of that was a mistake? The entire career? And why are many of your escort profiles still live, and why did someone update your other escort URLs you own just two months ago?

- Gannon said people are going after him simply because they "disagreed with the question I asked" the president two weeks ago. Hardly. I'm going after you because you worked for an incredibly homophobic publication and wrote articles defending horribly anti-gay positions while being a gay man and a gay escort. Others are ticked that you're not a real journalist, more on that soon.

- Anderson then said that the issues surround hypocrisy and the White House vetting. Gannon then answered pure Clinton: he said gave them all the info they asked for, the info they asked anyone who got a daily pass. But of course that begs the question of how he got a daily pass for two years. That's like getting a free afternoon pass to try out a new gym to see if you want to become a member, then you return every day for the next two years and keep getting the same free pass. At some point you're supposed to get the real pass and you didn't. Why not? And who let you in? We don't know.

- Then Gannon said "I suppose that they aren't interested in a reporter's sexual history either," Gannon said of the White House. Yeah? Love to see if they'd take him back now.

- No one in the White House was aware of his private activities, he said. Ok, well that's pretty definitive. Though of course, his other job isn't a private activity so he still may be hedging here.

- He can't recall when he first attended a WH briefing.

- He says he first attended the briefings working for GOPUSA. Anderson then skewered him saying GOPUSA wasn't a media organization, "GOPUSA was a clearly partisan organization," Anderson said, so how did he get in?

- When was your first article published? You'll have to ask GOPUSA. They won't answer our calls. Well I can't help you.

- Then Gannon defended his journalism, he used to take transcripts and press releases and report them unvarnished, the whole truth, so real people could judge the info for themselves. Anderson replies: "That's called faxing." I almost shat in my pants!

- Then when asked about the Plame memo, he said he never said he got the memo. Then when asked how did you find out about the memo, Gannon replied something to the effect of, you know the memo was referred to in a Wall Street Journal article. Well, yes, Jess, it supposedly was. But that wasn't the question, was it. The question was WHERE did YOU find out? That answer was pure Clinton.

- Then Gannon concluded by saying that if someone disagrees with you you're now fair game, blah blah blah. "People's personal lives" are now fair game, he says. Well, uh, this is your business and the profiles are still live, and the domain names were updated two months ago. So, how is this personal and how is this past?

I actually thought he might come clean tonight. He did nothing of the sort. It's not at all clear why he went on TV at all. He didn't really come clean about anything. And actually he kind of had a chip on his shoulder. I have no idea what he thought he was trying to do. He has no clue what he did wrong.

Very very sad.

PS I talked to a friend in NYC who knows Anderson and told him to pass along our thanks for being the first REAL journalist to grill this guy, and he's looking into options for us to get some flowers to Anderson.