Anderson Cooper Blasts Star Jones, Says Gay Announcement Was Not A Ratings Ploy [Video]

Anderson Cooper admitted earlier this year that he was gay. According to Star Jones, the announcement was all about ratings.

Jones said previously on Today:

“I’ve been in daytime television for a long time. He’s a daytime talk show host and when the ratings slip in daytime, the hosts tend to tell you lots of things about them…There were times that you generate information for ratings.”

Well, that didn’t sit too well with Cooper. The talk show host was filming a segment of Anderson Live this week when Andy Cohen asked him about how life out of the closet was treating him.

Cooper said:

“I will say and I actually haven’t mentioned this, the only thing that did kind of annoy me and actually it annoyed my mom who brought it up to me, Star Jones of all people … 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. Out of the blue Star Jones … said this was a ratings ploy by me to boost ratings.”

Cooper points out that he made the announcement in an email to a friend of his. His friend then posted the message online. According to the Silver Fox, if he really wanted to boost ratings he would have made the announcement on his show.

Cooper said:

“If I was wanting to boost ratings, I would have waited to announce it on ‘A Very Special Episode’ that would have been promo’d for weeks and weeks and there would have been commercials … ‘Anderson’s Huge Announcement.’ “

Cooper then turned the attack around on Jones saying that the talk show host has used her wedding and a surgery to help boost her own ratings.

Cooper said:

“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. I would think she would want as much publicity as possible given her penchant for wanting publicity.”

Here’s the video of Anderson Cooper and Andy Cohen talking about Star Jones.