Anderson Cooper has finally come out of the closet, glory be. In a letter to Andrew Sullivan’s website Coop confirms what we’ve always known. “In a perfect world, I don’t think it’s anyone else’s business,” he wrote, “but I do think there is value in standing up and being counted. I’m not an activist, but I am a human being and I don’t give that up by being a journalist.” VALUE IN STANDING UP AND BEING COUNTED? Did this suddenly just come to him in a vision? Where was that “value” when he was reporting on LGBT bullying? When it could have done some good? Anderson has long claimed that his private life is his own, that “as a journalist he didn’t want to BECOME part of the story.” I have always been puzzled by this. If you look at his career, you’ll see that he has a habit of inserting himself into every story he does ANYWAY. When he was covering Katrina, he was fishing people out of the water and sobbing that he was a HUMAN BEING who NEEDED TO HELP before he could report the story. When he was in Haiti, he was pulling children from the rubble. In Egypt he was punched in the face and made headlines around the world. HE’S ALWAYS PART OF THE STORY BY VIRTUE OF THE FACT THAT HE’S A CELEBRITY JOURNALIST. Suddenly, though, when it came to LGBT bullying he DIDN’T THINK IT WAS HIS PLACE to come out, to identify as gay, and be part of the story? Give me a break. By choosing to make LGBT bullying his pet project and then refusing to come out, he reinforced the notion that HE THOUGHT there was something WRONG or HARMFUL with being gay. Otherwise, why not just say “I’m gay, it gets better.” It would have helped a lot. Of course, you can say: “Better late than never. He’s out now.” I don’t know. I think it was cowardly to stay in the closet for 20 years. (via HuffPo)