'I' on America

And so Cooper, a beautiful man with a beautiful mind, has become a pop star, and in one indignant moment a hero to millions who had waited for someone to speak truth to power. It happened on the fourth day after Hurricane Katrina, in an interview with Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu, who was droning on about how great the president and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist had been in the crisis.

Cooper got right up in her grille: "There are a lot of people here who are very upset, and very angry, and very frustrated. And when they hear politicians slap--you know, thanking one another, it just . . . kind of cuts them the wrong way . . . there was a body on the streets of this town yesterday being eaten by rats because this woman had been laying in the street for 48 hours. . . . Do you get the anger that is out here?"

That was electrifying TV, and it turned out to be something of a watershed moment. After the storm, broadcast correspondents started to put aside their rote politeness in favor of a feistier interrogation of government officials. And Cooper, who had appeared overwhelmed and teary, invented a new kind of journalist: the newscaster as professional mourner.

I have no doubt that Cooper was deeply affected by the events of New Orleans. But news anchors get only one such episode to register their humanity. Walter Cronkite choked up the day JFK died. Dan Rather lost it on 9/11. Any more than that and they start to look unstable, emotionally opportunistic and, worst of all, unreliable.

A case in point is the Sago Mine disaster in West Virginia. I'll never forget the look on Cooper's face when, after hours on-air, he was told the trapped miners had not, as it was earlier reported, survived. Cooper had allowed himself to be caught up in the relief, the elation of relatives and friends--indeed, he had played to it because it made good TV--and that undercut him just as he needed journalistic objectivity most.

Curiously, even as Cooper has become a bona-fide MSM pop star--with talk of his taking over one of the big network anchor chairs--his rating have gone soft. With all his tragic intensity and killer looks, Cooper's ratings in April were down 23% from those of stolid old Aaron Brown, who had the same time slot in April 2005. It would be too much to correlate this drop with Cooper's maddening vulnerability. But I wouldn't dismiss the idea, either.

Look, I really like this guy and I hope he's in television news forever, because, hey, even for a straight man, I find Anderson easy on the eyes. My advice to Cooper? No more tears. Stay frosty. Your emotional response to tragedy is not the story. I don't need you to show me that you care. I need you to tell me what you know.