Anderson Cooper Blog Posts | Comedy Central Indecision

I appreciate all the nice tweets. I am in Botswana working but want to wish everyone a great 4th of July!

— Anderson Cooper (@andersoncooper) July 3, 2012

Tags: 4th of July, Anderson Cooper, Tweet Untweet, Twitter

Tom Friedman Finally Faces Consequences for Being Constantly Wrong

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May 21, 2012 11:32 AM by Ilya Gerner | Comments:

Thomas Friedman is a New York Times columnist whose commentary is distinguished by the frequency with which it bears no resemblance to any kind of external reality.

There's the infamous Friedman Unit, or the F.U., a phrase coined to make light of Friedman's bi-annual contention that "the next six months is critical" to the American war effort in Iraq. And there's his insistence that a policy of placing stiff tariffs on fossil fuels and improving the quality of high-end train service between New York City and Washington, DC enjoys overwhelming support in the nation's heartland but is being squashed by the power of Democratic special interests, when in fact, the opposite is true.

So it was a shocking to see Friedman put himself on Jeopardy!, where unlike the op-ed pages of the Times, being wrong has a price…

By the end of the show, he had amassed a pitiful $1,000 placing him third behind CNN's Anderson Cooper and NBC’s Kelly O’Donnell…

With the category "21st Century Lingo," the answer was, "In 2011, BusinessWeek said European government bonds were this 'poisonous' kind of debt."

Friedman responded, "Sub-prime." I guess he missed the clue in quotation marks "poisonous."

The correct response of course was "toxic."

If only there was a call-a-friend option on Jeopardy!, Friedman could call up the cab drivers and seatmates on international flights who populate his columns and get the answers he needed. As it is, we're left to wonder if a game show humiliation will make Friedman a more careful political analyst.

The next six months will be critical.

Photo by Kris Connor/Getty Images Entertainment/Getty Images

Tags: Anderson Cooper, New York Times, Thomas Friedman

Is Chris Matthews Smarter than a Sarah Palin?

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May 15, 2012 06:30 PM by Lisa Beth Johnson | Comments:

MSNBC's trash talkin' Chris Matthews recently had the opportunity to put his brain where his mouth is, and it was not pretty. Let's face it, in the looks department he's no Anderson Cooper. And as it turns out, in the brains department he's no Sarah Palin…

On at least four occasions, MSNBC's Chris Matthews mocked Sarah Palin for how he felt she'd do if she were ever on the hit television game show Jeopardy!.

In a delicious example of instant karma, the self-proclaimed brainiac got his chance to show America how smart he was in a special "Power Players" version of the show Monday, but came up quite short finishing dead last with the paltry sum of only $2,300.

For those that missed it, Matthews was matched up against CNN's Lizzie O'Leary and former Obama White House press secretary Robert Gibbs.

Of course, it would have been an even more delicious karmic victory if Matthews had actually lost to Palin. We can only imagine how humiliating his incorrect answers would've been next to hers.

When the following clue came up: "A U.S.D.C is one of these, charged with the jurisdiction of a specific region," Matthews answered, "U.S. attorney." Wow. OBVIOUSLY the answer is "What is District Court?"

Based on what we can glean of Palin's understanding of the U.S. court system, she would have likely answered, "The United States Deity of Christianity."

Hopefully, Chris Matthews has learned his lesson about throwing stones in a glass house. Next time, I hope Jeopardy puts him and Sarah Palin in the same house and gives them each a slingshot and plenty of ammo.

Photo by Stephen Lovekin/Getty Images Entertainment/Getty Images

Tags: Anderson Cooper, Chris Matthews, Judiciary, MSNBC, Sarah Palin