(SLATE) -- Anderson Cooper came out as a gay man this morning, via a moving statement on his friend Andrew Sullivan’s blog.
The news was met with a whole lot of “duh!” and a little bit of bitterness. It’s not like Cooper’s sexuality was a big secret—just last week I referred to him as “openly closeted.” Still, he had always refused to answer questions about his sexual orientation, and he didn’t mention it in his memoir. He told Sullivan that he had wanted to maintain his privacy, to protect his safety and the safety of those accompanying him on reporting trips, and generally to put the focus on his subjects rather than on himself. All of which is very admirable and reasonable, but once he took up residence on a daytime talk-show’s sofa, his desire for privacy was almost certainly doomed. Well, he could have stayed schtum about his private life, but that probably would have doomed Anderson: The modern talk-show format requires the host to offer the audience an endless series of tiny glimpses into their fabulous lives, a very slow-motion striptease of secrets.
