Star Jones claims Anderson Cooper came out as gay to improve viewer ratings
Star Jones appeared on The Professionals, a segment of the Today show , in July and questioned aloud whether Anderson Cooper came out as gay to improve viewer ratings. Following these allegations, Cooper lashed out at Star during a segment for Anderson Live with Bravo star Andy Cohen.
Anderson Cooper explained that he wasn’t even on air at the time that his sexuality became public knowledge. In fact, he was in Africa at the time on assignment for 60 Minutes. He came out by sending an email to a friend who put it on a website.
Cooper spoke out saying “That’s why it’s so annoying. If I was wanting to boost ratings, I would’ve waited to announce it on like ‘a very special episode’ that would’ve been promo’d for weeks and weeks. There would’ve been commercials [that said] ‘Anderson’s huge announcement,’ and you would’ve had a cutaway of the audience [gasping].”
The TV personality went on to bash Star Jones saying “I haven’t thought about Star Jones in I don’t know how long. I was unaware she was even on TV still…but she apparently shows up on a morning show.” He also continued to put her in her place by saying “As memory serves, in terms of boosting ratings, I seem to recall [Star] hocking her wedding every single day to get free products when she was on The View and I seem to recall her lying about her gastric bypass surgery and making everybody else lie about it as well. So for her to suddenly emerge out of the shadows and suddenly attack me for this, I couldn’t believe it.”
Moral of the story, don’t mess with Anderson Cooper.
Cooper even invited Star Jones to appear on Anderson Live and surprisingly, she turned the offer down. However, Jones wasn’t silent about the issue. She tweeted on Thursday to Cooper saying “I was wrong. @andersoncooper didn’t come out as a ratings ploy. He used ME talking about him coming out @todayshow as a ratings ploy. #mybad.”
