The opinion-driven world of cable news anchors can bring out some of the cattiest behavior on TV, and just because the world was celebrating the introduction of 2015 last night doesn’t mean snide remarks were a thing of the past. Shots were fired on CNN’s New Year’s Eve special, as Anderson Cooper hit former CNN personality Piers Morgan with an insult that wouldn’t feel out of place on a schoolyard, "Piers who?"
Cooper felt the need to chide after his New Year’s tag team partner Kathy Griffin was telling a story about having a conversation with Sidney Potier. She said someone wanted to take a picture of the two of them, and Piers Who? apparently stuck his hand into the frame for a five-finger photobomb. Those Brits are so polite.
Griffin warns Cooper that he’s probably headed for some trouble on Twitter, and Cooper says that the social media-frequenting Morgan is “dying for a Twitter war.” After Griffin calls him the “Heidi and Spencer of formerly CNN,” and the giggling Cooper then says he hopes Morgan gets a job someday, and that he’ll soon be gainfully employed. Then there’s some talk about crabs. For anyone who likes watching famous people ragging on other famous people (in faux good nature), this was a pretty good time. Morgan fanatics probably won’t think it’s so funny.
A former America’s Got Talent judge, Morgan was one of the more controversial hosts on CNN in recent years, perhaps most memorably for his staunch opinions on gun control. But being loud doesn’t always equal ratings, and CNN ended up canceling Piers Morgan Live in February of last year due to a lack of an audience. For an editorial on THR in October, Morgan partly blamed his low ratings on Cooper as his lead in, saying he’s “stiff in studio,” regardless of his quality reporting skills, although they've seemed chummy-ish on air.
I’m rather shocked that Morgan hasn’t responded on Twitter yet, unless complaining about soccer is a veiled attempt to insult Cooper.
Will 2015 be the year when Fox debuts a Celebrity Newscaster Boxing series where Anderson Cooper and Piers Morgan get to duke it out on live TV? Is there a kind of cabbage or black eye pea that one can eat in order to assure this will happen?
