Ha ha, dig CNN golden boy Anderson Cooper's subtle dig at competitor Rachel Maddow's show in the LA Times today: He thinks she's great, he just finds her show boring and cliché. Oh, OK!
• Rudy Giuliani is reportedly in negotiations to take over Bill O'Reilly's syndicated radio show when he steps down early next year. Whether Rudy could handle sitting still for three hours a day and what effect this would have on his rumored plans to run for office, remain unclear. [P6]
• Jennifer Aniston is "bizarrely obsessed" with Angelina Jolie, says OK! The proof: She wore a dress that was "almost an exact copy" of something Angie once wore, and she can't stop talking about the couple to friends. [OK!]
• Madonna now says the financial details her publicist Liz Rosenberg released last week concerning her divorce settlement with Guy Ritchie were "misleading and inaccurate." [People, Mirror]
• Anderson Cooper was supposedly spotted shopping for sweaters with a "young Frenchman" at Barneys Co-Op. Wait, what happened to Julio? [P6]
Liev Schreiber carrying son Alexander on his back in NoHo ... Sean Lennon taking a walk ... Agyness Deyn carrying two cups of coffee in the East Village ... Andy Dick arriving at JFK ... Naomi Campbell smiling for photographers ... Natasha Bedingfield getting into a limo outside her hotel ... Jennifer Connelly and Anderson Cooper outside the David Letterman show ... Katie Holmes walking with a bodyguard outside her Village apartment building ... and David Duchovny and Tea Leoni attending a Knicks game with their kids.
Gloria Vanderbilt's youngest son has been using his mother as a foil since he appeared on the Tonight Show with her at age three. Anderson Cooper more recently brought his mother onto CNN to passive-aggressively scold him on Mother's Day and to provide the silver fox some sensible, embarrassing advice on the occasion of his 40th birthday. So when Cooper recently declined to invite his mother on a holiday trip to Egypt — "No! I wasn't going to take my mom," he told a befuddled David Letterman — she was ruthless in her revenge. You might not acknowledge that's what's going on, Anderson, but it's plain as day to the rest of us. (We're speaking of the revenge, of course.) Video after the jump
Last night on 60 Minutes, a middle-aged man spent fifteen minutes attempting conversation with an inarticulate bohunk until the younger man finally agreed to let him come over. Or, as it was promoted, "Anderson Cooper interviewed Michael Phelps."
♦ Michael Wolff's biography of Rupert Murdoch goes on sale tomorrow, as you probably know thanks to the torrent of coverage over the past couple of days. Among the juiciest bits: Murdoch despises Bill O'Reilly, his wife Wendi Deng occasionally reads his email, and he's fond of sleeping pills. [NYT, Gawker, Politico, NYO, Portfolio]
♦ The third quarter of 2008 was a punishing one for newspapers. Ad revenue plunged 18.11 percent, the steepest decline in four decades. [E&P]
♦ Tina Brown's pick for host of Meet the Press: Rachel Maddow. [TDB]
♦ Four Christmases was No. 1 at the box office over the weekend, racking up an estimated $31.7 million in ticket sales. [THR]
Anderson Cooper has to consider it one of the highlights of his career thus far, a thoroughly pleasurable counterbalance to his weeks of depressing Hurricane Katrina coverage back when the CNN anchor was still paying his dues: A flirty interview with champion Olympic swimmer and fellow heartthrob Michael Phelps, complete with shirt removal, medal-fondling, a cozy little nap together and the line, "Mind if I hold one? They're very heavy!" Viewers of Cooper's own AC360 are used to being brought in on this sort of innuendo; it was only a matter of time before the 60 Minutes contributor started beating CBS' larger audience over the head with the "boys make me giggle" routine. So to speak. (Clip after the jump.)
A Thanksgiving dinner almost seems superfluous after the feast that was last night's Real Housewives of Atlanta reunion special. There were almost too many highlights to name, though we're sure that noted NeNe aficionado Anderson Cooper was squealing when the buxom breakout went flying at adulteress Kim Zolciak, screaming, "CLOSE YOUR LEGS TO MARRIED MEN! CLOSE YOUR LEGS TO MARRIED MEN!" (She then had to be sat on to avoid further confrontations.) Still, Kim proved her worth in one head-spinning, wig-justifying anecdote:When Bravo figurehead Andy Cohen related an email sent by viewer "Murtice, from Oakland" inquiring about Kim's suspicious hairdo, the Housewife collapsed into a dizzy-making story about how she only had to wear a wig because she had... well, if someone else would like to say "cancer," then she'll go with that. However, after milking what little sympathy she could out of a stone-faced, skeptical NeNe, Cohen pressed Kim further, forcing her to relate a breakdown at Chili's (!) where she discovered that actually, she never had cancer in the first place. It's a fictional miracle! Videogum's got the clip: Click to view
When we posted this photo of Anderson Cooper walking through LAX yesterday, we didn't pay attention to the man trailing behind him. But Jossip.com points out that it's none other than Julio Recio, who was first connected to the CNN anchor back in 2006 and who was living with Cooper at his West 38th Street apartment as of last year as far as we can tell. Are they still together? It looks that way, although don't expect to see Cooper's name pop up here—at least the Anderson we're talking about—in the near future.
Anderson Cooper arriving in LA after a flight from NYC ... Ed Westwick leaving his trailer on the Gossip Girl set ... Matthew Broderick helping son James with his scarf in the West Village ... Kiefer Sutherland signing autographs outside NBC ... Kirsten Dunst walking down the street... Katie Holmes getting out of an SUV outside the Schoenfeld Theatre ... Alec Baldwin and Salma Hayek standing on the set of 30 Rock ... Madonna's daughter Lourdes walking with her father Carlos Leon ... Madonna carrying son David into the Kabbalah Center and later visiting a preschool on the Upper East Side ... Twilight star Robert Pattinson leaving his hotel ... Rosie O'Donnell and Becky Newton outside the Conan O'Brien show ... and Alex Rodriguez getting into a cab in Midtown and having lunch with music manager Guy Oseary at Da Silvano yesterday.
Beyonce's latest video has sparked a YouTube dance craze. Anderson Cooper pretends to be confused about it to hide the fact that he's probably been grooving to it all day ("Do they still call them 'albums'?"), yet, he already knows that it's a "bouncy tune, as Lawrence Welk used to say—I'm quite partial to it myself." We know you are, Andy. We know you are.
Long-distance love affairs conducted only in the press are difficult to maintain — even moreso when one of the parties is carrying around a little bitty secret. So it is, then, that the relationship between CNN newsman Anderson Cooper and Real Housewives of Atlanta breakout NeNe Leakes appears to have culminated after weeks of Ellen-assisted flirting. At first, Leakes seemed flattered by Cooper's ardor, but in her current interview with People magazine, she appears to know exactly what she's up against:
Chris Matthews is becoming the Rodney Dangerfield of TV news hosts. Even his NBC colleagues at the Tonight Show give him no respect. Host Jay Leno just last week led with dashing Matthews competitor Anderson Cooper of CNN, who was first to sit on Leno's couch and got extra time to chat after a commercial break. Matthews? After flying to LA for the appearance, he came out last night after a segment called "Things We Found On eBay," two turns on the couch by self-styled redneck Larry The Cable Guy AND after a special skit involving Larry. Then Larry insulted Matthews with a joke about "The Chris Matthews Show," not realizing the program is known as Hardball (UPDATE: Joke's on me — that's an actual show! I guess Matthews looked annoyed at being interrupted so crudely, or somesuch). Leno awkwardly tries to salvage the situation in the clip after the jump.
