At Yale: Hangin’ With Mr. Cooper!

TVNewser contributor Maureen reports from New Haven:

“Anderson Cooper, Yale class of ’89, returned to his old stomping grounds for this weekend’s commencement — quite literally, in fact, very briefly pointing
out his room in Vanderbilt Hall (named for his family) across the quad.

Several members of the senior class were warned before the ceremony that their planned skit parodying ‘The Situation Room’ with ‘Fox’ Blitzer might offend the guest for its facetious treatment of the Very Serious TV news biz.

But Cooper was anything but reverent to Mother Yale as he addressed rain-drenched ‘parents, friends, members of the Taliban.’ (And asked in turn that no one bury his head in the sand for the throwaway reference.) There were ‘Mole’ jokes, ‘Lawrence of Arabia’ quotes, lots of cries from one guy of ‘ANDERSOOOOOONNNN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!’ A few aphorisms he Googled from previous college graduation speeches by Yoko Ono and Goldie Hawn.

Cooper advised the class of 2006 to ‘follow your bliss,’ and, as his mother once advised him, to wear vertically-striped pants (they’re slimming). Unable to remember much of his own Yale graduation, Cooper told Yalies to worry very little about what they accomplished in college, but to be proud of it anyway. Work at whatever moves you from here on out, he said. Seems the world is our ‘blank slate’ or something.

Everyone I talked to about the speech was thrilled with the result, maybe even a little in love. Well-wishers flocked Cooper after the ceremony, a few with copies of ‘Dispatches from the Edge.’ A group of Coop-crazed seniors even used the school tradition of wearing crazy hats to fangirl for CNN. Designs
featured Sanjay Gupta, Christiane Amanpour, Wolf Blitzer, Aaron Brown, Soledad O’Brien, ‘This is CNN,’ were in tow… and of course the Vanity Fair cover.

Uh, yeah. That last one was mine. I’ll admit it.”

> Update: 10:30am: Here’s the Hartford Courant’s Cooper speech wrap…

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