The Sexual Lives of News Anchors: A Guide
Jeff Toobin's fetish is too-hot-to-print. Outing Anderson is a national pastime and Barbara Walters has more sex than you do. If gravitas, hairspray, and that thousand-mile teleprompter gaze are your thing, here's your dossier for meth-smoking, anal-fisting, camera-loving news anchors.
Last weekend The New York Daily News reported that CNN legal analyst Jeff Toobin's sweet nothings were too dirty to print in a "family newspaper," and caused one woman to say, "I couldn't believe my ears. It was so disgusting. At the time, I never even knew people did that." After a rousing game of "guess that fetish," Foster thinks he figured it out—but the whole affair got us to thinking: The news anchor's necessary embrace of confidence, narcissism, and taking oneself very, very seriously makes for the perfect storm of splashy, sordid sex fiends. And, they're in your living room every night!
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Jeff Toobin: CNN Legal Analyst
Orientation: Straight, married but fascinated with swing voters
Turn ons: An alleged "anal fixation," propositioning strangers, the thrill of the chase. ("The woman says Toobin 'really chased me for a while. He called me at the office and left several sick messages.'")
Turn offs: Look out for sensitivity about the love child he had with apparent mistress Casey Greenfield (daughter of CBS News analyst's Jeff Greenfield), whom he is now battling in family court.
How to seduce: Meet Toobin at a party. Sidle up and whisper sweet nothings about your sphincters into his ear.
Anderson Cooper: CNN Anchor
Orientation: Glass-closet gay
Turn-ons: Firemen, Benjamin Maisani's biceps, club kids, bicycles built for two, saving humanity.
Turn-offs: Admitting the obvious.
How to seduce: Slide down the brass pole in his firehouse, work yourself to a lather about the plight of Haiti, then jump on a banquette with a pack of gay scenesters and begin gyrations. You're competing with Maisani, though, so you will probably lose.
Lara Logan: CBS News' Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent
Orientation: Straight, prone to love triangles
Turn-ons: Reporting from Baghdad, Logan ended up in a love triangle so complex, it was more like a prism: Two men—one a married State Department contractor, the other a CNN reporter—plus a bitter ex-wife freak-out, plus her own estranged husband. So I'm thinking drama, power, close proximity and dangerous geopolitical environments are Lara's favorite things.
Turn-offs: Be nice to her baby, born amid mama's stormy sex scandal, with all kinds of media watchers breathing heavily through the third trimester.
How to seduce Work your way up the ladder in an international bureau where war and terrorism run rampant. The hotties will come to you. Proffer war loot in lieu of flowers.
Bill O'Reilly: Fox News Anchor, Chief Antagonizer of Liberals
Orientation: Straight, bicurious for Greek cuisine, into polyamory
Turn-ons: I can do no better than The Smoking Gun's one-year falafel anniversary summary: "vibrators, phone sex, threesomes, masturbation, Caribbean shower fantasies, a Thai sex show, falafel, stewardess trysts, vehicular coupling, and Al Franken." Wait, what about "big boobs," oral sex, subordinates, talking about his penis. O'Reilly's libido: Vast as space, timeless as infinity.
Turn-offs: Nothing, actually. He doesn't even mind liberals, as long as they have vaginas.
How to seduce: Billo does not get seduced. Billo seduces. And if he aims his powers of seduction at you, there is unfortunately nothing you can do, other than press charges.
Richard Quest: CNN Reporter
Orientation: Gay, stranger-sex-friendly
Turn-ons: His 2008 Central Park meth bust revealed a passion for bondage (rope tied around his genitals), erotic asphyxiation (same rope was also around his neck, think "kinky bolo tie"), insertables (carried a dildo in his boot), all of which suggests one of those old-fashioned gay bacchanalia milieus, like they had back when Edmund White was a young, hot whippersnapper.
Turn-offs: Kissing and telling. After going through rehab and making a comeback, Quest is presumably high on only life, now—and lamenting the loss of "prih-vuh-see." (That's British for "privacy.")
How to seduce: Tap twice in a public restroom. Pretend you don't recognize him.
Barbara Walters: Anchor, Reporter, Grand Dame of The View
Orientation: Straight, thrice-married and thrice-divorced, reveling in the glory of an orgiastic youth
Turn-ons: Power. This includes powerful senators, powerful economists, powerful television executives, powerful military men, powerful leaders in the arts, and powerful McCarthyite closet cases. Must be "fascinating."
Turn-offs: Sex tapes (unless she can use them to humiliate you), weakness.
How to seduce: Score Tiger Woods' first post-rehab interview for her, and you'll be Baba's king.
Collin O'Neal, CNN iReport Citizen Journalist
Orientation: Gay, capable of keeping erections for long periods of time in front of rolling cameras
Turn-ons: Sure, he's not an anchor yet, but he's got the best wet t-shirt look at CNN, so if cable news is still trying to win back young demographics (and if they want to just quit while they're ahead, who blames 'em) this man is your future! And, yes, he's a gay porn star. Which means the performative part of his sex life is well-documented.
Turn-offs: Catty queens.
How to seduce: You'll need a studio and klieg lights. The man is a professional.