I'm writing this as I'm experiencing it so forgive me if I ramble just a bit as I sort things out in real life. Three minutes ago I got a message from a link from a friend that said Anderson Cooper said he is gay. I thought it was just another wish list post, a rumor that has always been out there about Anderson Cooper. I had my tweet scroller on the side of my computer and I didn't see anyone posting it so I was done with it. Considering the crowd I follow I would figure if he had it would have been posted.

Cut to now, I pulled the word processor up because I went to the NY Times to catch up on the news and on the front page was the story “Anderson Cooper Says, The Fact is, I'm Gay.” The post, according to the time, was done three minutes before I went to the page. If that's true this story broke the same time I got the message on Facebook. That, surprisingly, might explain why the tweets haven't caught up. Despite this being a rapid information society, things aren't as fast as we would think they are.

Alright, it's been about 15 minutes since I started writing this. I read the article and some of the responses on the NY Times website. I went through half of the 100 comments posted and apparently the bigoted yahoos haven't learned of the news yet because most of the comments have been no big deal about his coming out or happy that he is out.

So I figured it was a good time to check other sites to see if they posted about Anderson Cooper and to see the reaction. First stop is Huffington Post. The story isn't blaring off the huge banner, that was left for Romney's spokeperson being off track and saying the health care bill isn't a tax. Right under that was Cooper's face with words in red above his head saying “I'm gay.”

OK, something interesting about the Huffington Post article. While the NY Times article talked about how many in the news industry knew he was gay, how discussion of his homosexuality was done in hushed whispers (my words, not theirs) and how it was unknown if he was in a relationship, Huffington Post not only states he is in a relationship they have a picture of the two men together.

OK at 11am I just saw a tweet, the first one, from a colleague of Anderson Cooper, and no it's not from Don Lemon. I checked on earlier tweets and while there were some retweets from people commenting on the subject, the first person I saw with a tweet was Neil Patrick Harris, then going further back I saw Kristen Bell, Michel McKean, Dan Savage and now I have to take back what I said earlier, Don Lemon did tweet about it pretty early. In fact, from the group I follow he was the first to tweet about it, just minutes after the story officially broke.

Back to the Huffington Post article. It seems a bit odd to me that the NY Times would not talk about his personal life, and to be frank his love life, yet the Huffington Post feels free to give a possible person he is dating. At first, this bugged me because I thought to myself would an article to the same thing to a straight person. As soon as I said yes to myself, while scrolling down the tweets I realized they might not do this for a journalist but it this is done to celebrities all the time. So would it be progress for the Huffington Post to talk about Cooper's love life, or should it be unspoken like the NY Times did? It's just something interesting to ponder. Of course the Huffington Post article has a slideshow of recent celebrities who have “come out as LGBT.”

Ah, the comments. There are 3500 comments as of 11:18am my time and while most are of the 'who cares' or 'that's great' variety, there are a few anti LGBT comments and some slight flame wars going on. I'm still thinking the news is too fresh and that the real ugly comments will emerge, but with two hours after the story broke I'm beginning to feel an analysis from the NY Times is correct. Someone, and I can't remember if it was from a comment or in the article, mentioned that now it seems coming out of the closet is a low key and non-surprising event.

I shuddered a little bit as I clicked on the link to send me to Fox News. The headline stories don't mention anything about Anderson Cooper, but seeing an advertisement for Shepard Smith's broadcast halted me for a moment. OK, nothing in the Latest News area, nothing in the Features and Faces area, ah there it is, in the entertainment section. Odd to me since in the Features and Faces section there were articles about stars who play strippers and three articles on the TomKat divorce, all of which are duplicated in the Entertainment link. Anderson Cooper is the hot new story but isn't featured. I don't know maybe it's too new of news. I wouldn't want to spread any rumors of why he's not there. Odd, going to the article there is no comment link. I was sure Fox News allowed comments to be made on stories.

OK there we go. Fox News has a section called Fox Nation, which is where people are able to comment on stories. I kind of forgot about this area. Talk about crazy stuff. There is a quick vote people can make on this story and it ain't going good. So far the vote is the story is Offensive. The comments people are making, well the only way to understand is to share a few of them. Remember, this is from Fox Nation, a branch of Fox News which is 'fair and balanced' in it's information -

- Nice cover. Just like the HomoPresidentObama.

- If gays and lezzies want to be accepted by others, let them change their appearance and demeanor. Start with behaving normally. Most of you, behave like sexually frustrated compulsive freaks with the outrageous flaunting and taunting and the over-the-top emphasis on your sexual proclivity (waves Anderson!). Stop having 'gay pride' parades. Honestly, I've never understood why people who seek acceptance, will go out of their way every year to hold a parade and then dress and behave like flamboyant idiots. You certainly don't see any other group of people behaving this way. Start there and who knows . . . maybe if ya'll behaved like normal human being, you might come across as one, at least for the moment, however fleeting.

- Enough with the flaming narcissism of “Look at me! Look at me!”

- So when did he choose to be Gay? At the same time as Sandusky?

I know what you're thinking, I must have cherry picked the comments to show the worst. Actually no. Other than the first comment I saw on the page, which had to do with some Neo-Nazi rant that had nothing to do with the article, the rest of the comments I put down were all in line on the site. They had 1025 comment when I went on. Any love for Anderson Cooper were nothing more than backhanded negative comments, most of those comments being too bad he's gay so he can't get to heaven or he seemed like a good reporter.

I just saw a local reporter I follow tweeted about the story so thankfully I will leave the Fox Nation fun fest and check some local coverage. Well the local broadcast stations and newspaper do have the standard AP article about Anderson Cooper, but no local comments yet.

It has been an hour and a half since I started working on this article. I wanted to illustrate how I work on covering a fast moving story, where I go to find information and also I wanted to see what the reaction was going to be with the public. The Fox News response wasn't a surprise to me but it gives an example of how utterly separate the 'reality' of Fox News, and conservative commentary in general, is different from the rest of the world. I have to admit, the Anderson Cooper story isn't much of a news story to me. He's gay, so what, let's move along. I understand the significance of his coming out, but I was fascinated more by the coverage. You had the NY Times coverage which was pretty cold, which you would expect from a news story. The Huffington Post was mostly news but threw in some entertainment gossip for good measure. Fox News appeared to bury the story, considering how new it was and it was in the entertainment section and not the news, political or other section. The comments were refreshingly non-plus on the NY Times and Huffington Post sites while the Fox Nation section was vulgar, ignorant and sad.

Update: I decided to add a graphic showing the FoxNation page with the Offensive trending line appearing. I didn't get a screen capture at the original time I saw and was writing about it, but I will say it is slightly encouraging to see, while Offensive is still the most picked word to describe the article, Inspiring is now in triple digits, which was not the case about an hour ago.