Let me start by saying that I appreciate Anderson Cooper’s passion and his dedication to the Gulf. I do have an issue though with the fact that he’s turned Billy Nungesser and Julia Reed into his co-hosts.
Almost nightly he gives Nungesser an entire segment to scream and rant about who’s not doing what in his opinion. I have no problem with that but Cooper just kind of stands there and doesn’t really challenge him on anything which makes it seem as if Nungesser’s opinions are cold hard facts. Everything is moving to slow for Nungesser. The federal government stops to checks this, has to approve that, etc... Unfortunately Mr. Nungesser, I’m pretty sure that Thad Allen doesn’t want some new technology that’s being introduced to blow up and kill a bunch of people on the government’s watch. (You think the media’s out for blood now) Look, I understand Nungesser's frustration and I’m not saying that the government’s not making mistakes but that doesn't mean he should be given a free pass. He's still a politician and one who doesn't belong to the same party as the President.
The same can be said for Julia Reed. She’s not even an expert on anything related to the spill but CNN and Cooper brings her on nightly because I think she’s the loudest person that they could find. She yells and screams about the President like someone insane. The other night she even said that President Obama "must be out of his cotton pickin' mind". Wow. I know its slang but it was a pretty poor choice of words. http://www.eyeblast.tv/... I’m pretty sure she has never liked President Obama http://www.wowowow.com/... and I think this just gives her the opportunity to yell at him on national television. She hasn’t liked one single thing the President has done including even coming down to the Gulf. Last night she wanted to talk about MMS, but only the past 18 months as if the previous eight years at MMS were irrelevant to this disaster. Once again Cooper just sits there. He asked her about Joe Barton’s comments and she gave a quick "of course he’s wrong but let’s get back to this Obama bash fest" answer.
In fairness to Cooper he does invite BP on every day but c’mon, even they aren’t that stupid. He also does talk to Tony Allen and other officials but the tone is nowhere the same as with Nungesser and Reed and he usually shows a clip of him talking with an official earlier in the day and then lets Nungesser and Reed blast off on the interview. With the revelation that Nungesser is getting his marina fully refurbished by BP I wonder will Cooper at least ask him about that? I won’t hold my breath.