David Dreshfield CMC '11, over at The Middle Way Forward, neatly captures the Anderson Cooper speech. You should absolutely check it out. He even got mentioned on Anderson Cooper's own blog!
Naturally, I'm impressed, but then again I so often am impressed by David.
The one line I thought summed up the little bit that I saw of Anderson Cooper is the following: "You don't control how your born, but you do control how you live." Power stuff that is.
I disagreed with his characterization of the conflict in Congo as somehow due to the West's demand for cell phone parts. More appropriately, it has to do with tribalism and a history of ethnic divisions than with resource distribution. The DRC is the most resource rich country on the planet. There is no reason why it couldn't enjoy the material abundance of say, the UAE or Dubai, but I digress.
And yet, Anderson Cooper is, I find, part of the problem with mainstream media. Though he rightly criticized all of us for being a part of the lost blonde of the month television programming, Anderson Cooper got where he was largely from being a strapping good looking man at the right time, in the right place.
His characterization of the mainstream media as entertainment and not news was refreshing, but I still want him to explain the talking snow man from the YouTube debates!
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
Anderson Cooper As Seen From The Middle Way Forward
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6 comments:
Though he rightly criticized all of us for being a part of the lost blonde of the month television programming, Anderson Cooper got where he was largely from being a strapping good looking man at the right time, in the right place.
I couldn't disagree with you more here. Anderson Cooper has been covering wars/conflicts for the past 17 years without glory or fame. From his Channel One days to now, he has worked hard to get where he is right now.
yeah, but it's easy to go 'follow your heart's desire' when you have a trust fund to make sure the bills get paid. His street cred is damped a bit by the fact that most people don't have the option of simply not working. Yes he has worked hard to get where he is, but that dosn't justify a job based on looking pretty infront of a camera. If you want to laud him for hard work, why not ask why he's stopped reporting, instead of sitting in a studio.
I don't fault Anderson Cooper for having money and the means to do whatever he wanted with his life because he made a choice to do something significant such as becoming a reporter instead of going the Paris Hilton route and living a wealthy but completely pointless existence. Anderson doesn't just sit in the studio reading a teleprompter and "looking pretty". He still reports frequently from the field, sometimes in dangerous areas, to bring his viewers stories that you might not see on other networks.
Is he really worth the 4 million dollars he gets a year? http://www.tvsquad.com/2007/01/19/anderson-cooper-the-4-million-dollar-man/
I couldn't tell you what he's worth. But 4 million does pale next to what a lot of guys who are essentially retarded from getting their heads smashed repeatedly, get paid to run around with a football. Life really isn't fair, is it? :)
Anderson Cooper didn't characterize the war in Congo as being our fault because of cell phone parts. His point was that we have a stake in the conflict because of the parts, so we should care. He wasn't assigning blame for consuming, but consuming and being passive.
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