Anderson Cooper revealed he was gay back in July, via an email to longtime friend and Daily Beast columnist, Andrew Sullivan.
“The fact is, I’m gay, always have been, always will be, and I couldn’t be any more happy, comfortable with myself, and proud,” Cooper said in the e-mail, which Sullivan said he had Cooper’s permission to share with the world.
Cooper received a largely positive response from the public to his announcement, however the day after he revealed he was gay, ex-View co-host Star Jones made an appearance on NBC’s Today Show and suggested that he came out of the closet to boost ratings for his syndicated daytime talk show, Anderson Live.
During an interview with Andy Cohen on Anderson Live, Cooper revealed that Jones’ comments annoyed him because “if I was wanting to boost ratings I would have waited to announce it on a very special episode, that would have been promotes for weeks and weeks and there would have been commercials, ‘Anderson’s huge announcement.’”
Cooper continued, “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 pointed out instances years ago when Jones attempted to boost ratings for The View when she was a host.
“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.”
Cooper says he invited Star to his show to discuss her comments, but she turned him down.
“I would think she would want as much publicity as possible given her penchant for wanting publicity.”
Jones clearly wouldn’t let Cooper’s comments go unnoticed and took to Twitter yesterday to have her say.
“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
Follow Chris Witherspoon on Twitter at @WitherspoonC