Weekend Fun: My (Indirect) Interview With Anderson Cooper

Have you ever wondered what you might say if you ever ran into a journalist or politician in an airport or someplace? Just me then? See, after watching the country more or less go to crap over the last few years I've increasingly been thinking of things I'd like to say or ask of those in power and those holding those in power accountable. However, I live in St. Louis and I've only ever even been on an airplane twice in my life, so I figured I would never get the opportunity.

Then last spring I found out that Tonight Show intern Ross Mathews would be interviewing Anderson Cooper for his blog and he was requesting questions. I thought to myself, "hey, I've got questions. What the hell?" So I emailed Ross some questions I had been holding in my head for quite a while, just waiting for a journalist to cross my path. Ross, BTW, is a really cool guy. Very enthusiastic. He then emailed me back right away to say he received my questions and they were really good. After some waiting, I found that one of the questions Ross used in the interview was mine:

My Question: Lately there seems to be an endless strain of depressing news - Iraq, Katrina, corruption, scandal, global warming, and the list goes on. As someone who is immersed in all of this on a daily basis, how do you keep yourself from getting down?

Anderson's Answer: I think it’s easy to focus on the bad news, but it’s important to remember that human beings are capable of anything. Great acts of brutality and barbarism, but also extraordinary acts of kindness and compassion. I find that comforting. Terrible things happen, but the world keeps spinning.

So that was pretty cool. Then a few weeks back my pal Stillife went to a talk Anderson had with Charlie Rose at the 92nd Street Y. She mentioned they might take questions, so I decided to send one with her. And guess what? It was the first one they asked. Anyway, here's excerpts from Stillife's most excellent recap:

The auditorium was packed. We had good seats – Row G near the center. As we were seated, we were given index cards to write questions for Anderson – I wrote Eliza’s question, “Do you think it’s more important to tell stories that people want to hear or stories they need to hear?”
...

Then came the Q&A session. My (Eliza’s) question was the first one that Charlie read. Both Anderson and Charlie said that it was a really good question. Anderson said (are you listening, Eliza?), “Realistically, it’s gotta be a mix - if all you’re going for is ratings it’s pretty easy to program a whole show” on that basis. He said that fortunately, CNN says that not all ratings are crated equal. He talked about staying in Israel after other reporters had gone home and said that people weren’t writing in begging him to stay there. “I’d rather be able to sleep at night.”

That left him wide open for the next question: Charlie asked him, “What have you done that prevented you from sleeping at night?”

Anderson said, “A lot! Why do you think so many people use Ambien?”

Okay, so nothing groundbreaking here. The answers have been pretty much what one might expect, but now I've got the bug. My new completely pointless goal is to somehow get a full interview out of Mr. Cooper. I figure ten questions total ought to do it. So, assuming my math is correct and assuming I will continue to be able to indirectly ask Anderson a question every three months or so (and what could possibly go wrong there?), I expect to have the interview completed sometime around September 2008. Stay tuned!

So what was the point of this post? Well, not all that much actually, but I thought I'd open up the floor. What career related question would you like to ask Anderson, or any journalist for that matter?