Anderson IS The News!

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Anderson Cooper becomes N.O. tourist attraction

Contributed by Like the Dew (Reporter)
Sunday, July 04, 2010 6:02

(Photo by Michael DeMocker, The Times-Picayune)

Tourists are flocking to Woldenberg Park in New Orleans to watch CNN’s Anderson Cooper report his nightly “A.C. 360″ take on the BP oil spill. Referring to Cooper as “the blue-eyed heartthrob of CNN fame,” the Times-Picayune reported that about 40 people showed up one recent evening to watch Cooper tape his introduction for the cablecast.

Cathy Parnell and her husband, from Peachtree City, Georgia, took time out from their New Orleans vacation to track down Cooper. “I knew he was here because I watch him every night and I recognized the bridge,” Cathy Parnell told the Times-Picayune. Her husband added, “She just kept saying, ‘That’s the bridge, that’s the bridge.’”

The Times-Picayune says Woldenberg Park is also used by anchors and reporters from ABC and Al Jazeera, apparently because of its view of the Westin Hotel and Harrah’s New Orleans Casino, and the bridge’s distinctive silhouette.

As she watched Cooper, Michelle Doroz, an Arizona physician, typed a Facebook entry to her sister: “I am watching Anderson Cooper putting on bug spray in front of the Natchez in New Orleans.” Doroz told the Times-Picayune that her sister is “a big Anderson Cooper fan, but she’s in Israel right now on a tour of the Middle East.”