Unlike hosts at MSNBC and other liberal bastions of media, CNN’s Anderson Cooper claimed his use of the “teabagging” double entendre wasn’t intentional a little over a month after the fact.
Cooper, speaking at UCLA’s Daniel Pearl Memorial Lecture Series on May 17 and was asked about the “teabagging” comment he made on CNN’s April 15 “Anderson Cooper 360.” Cooper told he audience he regretted making the “wry comment or crude remark.”
“If people took offense to that and felt that I was disparaging their legitimate right to protest and what they were doing, that is something I truly regret because I don’t believe in doing that and I certainly regretted even saying that because there was no point,” Cooper said. “So, having this discussion just takes away from the real story.”
Cooper called making his “teabagging” comment an instance of being caught up in the moment of live TV and said it is something he wouldn’t repeat.
“So, it was a one-line wry comment that just popped in my head and I said it,” Cooper added. “It’s something that hasn’t been repeated, nor would it. So, I certainly understand why some people would be offended. You’re on TV a lot of times and you end up saying things – some of the things sometimes you regret and sometimes you don’t. So, I hope that explains my thinking on it a little bit.”
The CNN host also took a shot at “other networks” for active disparaging or encouraging the protests.
“I don’t think it’s my job to disparage or encourage, which oddly other networks seem to be doing protests,” Cooper said. “I think, protest is the great right of all Americans and … it’s not my job in anyway to try to make fun of other people or disparage what they were doing and I don’t believe that’s what I was intending to do.”
Cooper did say it found it odd and mildly humorous the phrase had happened to be adopted, however.
“If a group is going to adopt a term which has other meanings that has long been established, it’s not completely out of the norm to at least comment on the fact that there is an alternate meaning to this phrase,” Cooper added.
