Newsmaker

Every Friday, we choose an alum who has been making headlines—for better or for worse.
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2/4/11: Anderson Cooper ’89

While Connecticut-based Yalies chopped their way through an ice storm this week, a famous fellow alum was fending off a hotter onslaught: attacks by Egyptian crowds defending the reign of embattled dictator Hosni Mubarak.

“We’re showing you this not because what happened to us is particularly interesting or particularly important,” CNN correspondent Anderson Cooper ’89 told his audience Wednesday, but because “it shows you just how quickly a crowd can turn and a situation that seems fine can turn deadly.”

Given Cooper’s celebrity–news-guy status, we suspect that—disclaimer notwithstanding—CNN was counting on other media outlets to find the assaults interesting, if not particularly important. And they did. “Halle Berry fights for custody; Anderson Cooper attacked in Egypt,” read one headline, while celebrity-gossip blogger Perez Hilton gasped: “OMG! Katie Couric Also Ambushed In Egypt!”

Leave it to Jon Stewart, however, to get down to what really matters. “All right, Hosni,”The Daily Show’s host bellowed. “Now you’ve gone too far. Hands off Anderson Cooper! There is not to be a silvery wisp out of place on that man’s glorious head.”

Filed under television, celebrity, journalism
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