Monday, October 07, 2013

Anderson Cooper 360 & AC360 Later, Monday 10/7/13

8:00 PM AC360:
* Government shutdown
* Delta Force & Navy Seal's terror raids
* Captain Phillips, Maersk Alabama
* Elizabeth Smart interview, part 1


10:00 PM AC360 LATER:
* Government shutdown
* Justice Scalia interview (here's the link if you want to read the full interview)
* Movie talk: Gravity & Captain Phillips

 An interesting article came across our desk today about some taxidermy that Anderson is having done.

According to the taxidermist AC is making a tribute to Teddy Roosevelt (seriously?) in his firehouse.
Here's the article, for more pictures of the poor deer just click on this link. 

A Lee County Taxidermist is putting the finishing touches on a year-long project for CNN's Anderson Cooper.
Grayson Roberts never expected to get a call from a celebrity. He says he's doing the same thing for Anderson Cooper that he does for all his customers, working hard to make sure he does a good job and makes them happy.
Hundreds of deer mounts and other animals cover Grayson Roberts taxidermy shop in Lee County. He's been in the business since 1996 even winning a Grand National Championship for his whitetail deer mount, but when he received a call to work on a project for CNN's Anderson Cooper, Roberts couldn't believe it.
" I thought it was a joke at first," said Grayson Roberts. "I was like alright its Anderson Cooper and all this, but then Anderson called me and we started talking and he told me what he wanted."
The brother of one of Cooper's co-workers lives in Lee County. Roberts has done work for him, and that's how he was recommended to the CNN personality. Cooper is creating a tribute to Teddy Roosevelt in his home and wants Roberts to complete it with two fighting life-size whitetail deer.
"Something like this, and it's actually like the one I'm holding is gone be pulling him in, you know because when deer start fighting a lot of times they'll fight til the death," said Roberts.
Each deer is about seven feet long and 60 pounds. The price tag is more than $9000.
"He wanted a competition mount so that's why the price is a little bit more but it's dramatic and I mean you could take a flashlight up and look at the mouth and you couldn't tell it was a fake jaw set," said Roberts.
Roberts says he's completed 60% of the project. One deer mount still needs eyes and its skin washed and put on allowing at least 4 to 5 days to dry. Roberts says Cooper has been pleased with the results so far.
"So when I got the first one done I sent him a picture and he was all pumped up he was pretty excited about it so it's been pretty neat," said Roberts.
 Roberts says the entire project should be complete within the next couple of weeks. Roberts says it usually takes five to six hours to create a regular shoulder mount costing around $3000. To create Cooper's life-size mounts requires more than 45 hours of work. Roberts plans to ship the mounts to Cooper's home but says if Cooper has trouble fixing the mounts the way he designed them he'll fly up to help him out.

 There was one social media sighting of AC from this weekend:

And this was posted on Instagram, taken when filming his piece for 60 Minutes:

AC360 Transcript
AC360 Podcast



Jaanza said...

I really liked the first segment of 360 on Monday. Although I didn't like seeing again the staged "private" conversation between McConnell and Rand Paul, I did enjoy the montage of Republican politicians stating 'of course we want to negotiate!' And I absolutely loved the clip of Rep. Mike Doyle (D-PA) reading the internet 'burn down your house' quote about the way Republicans are acting during the shutdown.

Anderson was great when interviewing Rep. Paul Labrador (R-ID), lots of pushing back. I especially liked the part when Labrador was making an analogy from political negotiations to Anderson's contract with CNN. Anderson pushed back so much that Labrador pretty much accused him of being biased, 'you don't like there being so many Republicans in the House' , Anderson, " job is to ask you questions you don't expect.

Anderson also asked some tough questions to Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD). Wow, an actually balanced segment with one Republican politician and one Democratic one; it's been a while since we've seen that. Anderson asked Cummings about Republican promises to end Obamacare during their campaigns so why shouldn't they be doing what they promised? Cummings had a good answer about the people who really need health insurance and even better he brought up that the Affordable Care Act is LAW! And Representatives pledged in their Oath of Office to uphold the law and the Constitution.

And that was all in the first segment.

During the second segment on terror raids in Libya and Somalia I was mostly distracted by other stuff here. But I did see that there were two good guests: Ali Soufan, former FBI special agent, and Chad Williams, former Navy SEAL.

Drew Griffin's report on how the real Captain Phillips differs from the movie 'Captain Phillips' was okay. Basically, the real Captain Phillips had orders to sail further away from the coast but didn't do so.

Anderson interviewed Elizabeth Smart about her kidnapping and recovery. That's great, Liz, but I turned to Hayes. Just not interested enough to see the 360 stop on your book promotion tour.

Isha was back in the Bulletin. No mention anywhere in 360 about the new riots in Egypt yesterday or the situation in Syria. Those places have completely fallen off the radar.

My first thought when I read about Anderson's two fighting deer taxidermy project - that's going to freak out his dog Molly.

aries moon said...

On 360 Anderson handled GOP rep Raul Labrador, explaining to him the meaning of journalism--good to see Anderson challenging Republicans. He did the same with the combative/frustrated Elijah Cummings (who I agreed with), but it's especially gratifying to see AC not going as easy on the GOP as he's done in the past.

Never been interested in Elizabeth Smart's story, but AC has always appeared to be fascinated with her. I knew as soon as she announced she had a book coming out, AC360 would book her instantly.

Grover Norquist and Ana Navarro were simply horrible guests on 360 Later, couldn't stand listening to either one and why even have someone like Norquist on in the first place? Thank goodness Peter Beinart was on to fight back against Norquist and Navarro's talking points. Dana Bash and Tina Brown annoyed me with their remarks that it was time for Democrats to negotiate with the House--who are they kidding? It's Boehner who should be crawling to the President with the Clean CR agreement. He does not have to negotiate with them on anything. Beinart may have similar feelings as Bash and Brown but he was correct in saying that doing that would only give the GOP permission to continue to use hostage taking tactics when they don't get what they want. Amazing that these so-called intelligent people just don't get that. We'll see what happens later in the week, but I hope the Dems stand firm. It was good to see Jeff Toobin back, but I wish he had been in the studio instead of Geragos, who tends to talk over everyone. Toobin had a great shutdown comeback for Navarro when she excused Scalia's bigotry/homophobia because of his age--Toobin pointed out that Ruth Badar Ginsburg is slightly older than Scalia but is far more open-minded.

Head-scratching report about AC's Teddy Roosevelt home tribute! Seems like something a Vanderbilt WOULD do, but I still wouldn't have expected it of him, it just seems odd. I wonder what it is that AC admires about Roosevelt exactly--he is a legendary figure but he had a dark side of racism that many of that time period shared--at the same time he could sometimes sound broad-minded, but I'm not exactly sold on him, but whatever, at least it's not a Ronald Reagan tribute! The firehouse apparently is huge enough for that sort of thing, but it's kind of strange, IMO. I think someone very close to him *may* have gotten him interested in taxidermy.

Anonymous said...

I agree with aries moon about the taxidermy. I wonder if the taxidermy is a (not so secret) gift for his partner?
- J

Anonymous said...

animal cruelty.

Shame on AC!