It seems that his reporting on Katrina is a significant turning point, where his display of personal emotion as a correspondent was socially acceptable in a way that disrupted the idealized norms of anchor objectivity without overtly critiquing the irony of the system. As a physically attractive grey-haired man, he at once brought a kind of traditional levity that coded his teary-eyed, choked up reporting from New Orleans as a perfectly acceptable response for any human being witnessing that reality as opposed to an “overly emotional, too personally involved, unduly subjective” critique that might have been levied against correspondents of other genders, races, or ages. And that worked for him in a way that seemed to increase his popularity and open his career path. ANyway, all that is to say Cooper is a rich case study for the simultaneous transgression and policing of all kinds of American cultural norms – and I especially appreciate your take on how his “outing” contributes to that.