Most Talkative: Stories From the Front Lines of Pop Culture (37 page)

Your limo ran over my weave.

[The ladies are all getting teary.]

RACHEL

We have to get past this! We are a fambily. And we will always be a fambily. It’s time to make amends.

ANDY

Don’t you think part of all this is about being funny people? To be funny, don’t you have to be a little bit crazy?

[They all turn on Andy. Rachel stands. Andy stands. Rachel pushes Andy. Several of the ladies go over and turn over a table. Several more ladies storm off. Tina stands and begins to sing her song.]

TINA (singing):

I wanna spend some time witcha

I wanna spend some time witcha!

ANDY

Stay tuned! We’ll be right back!

OUT

SINGING MUNCHKINS

People sometimes ask me if my life is different now that I’m on TV. Here’s the extent to which things have changed: Sometimes I can get into a great restaurant, sometimes people want to have their picture taken with me, and sometimes people come up to me and say something that they perhaps intend to be nice or funny, but that leaves me feeling … sweetly bludgeoned. Something like: “You are cuter than I thought you would be!” Or, “The Housewives are the end of civilization!” It also took becoming kind of famous for me to realize that I’m actually kind of short. Just like with my wonky eye, I didn’t consider myself a shrimp until I went on TV and read a flood of comments about my height online. (I’m five nine, by the way, which
might
make me taller than Seacrest, but don’t tell him I said that.)

Usually, though, I forget that anyone knows who I am. But something happened in 2010 that made me realize that I had indeed become something of a public figure. And I wouldn’t mind giving this moment back. It involves a terrible storm, Diana Ross, and a bunch of Munchkins singing. And I know what you’re thinking: Didn’t
The Wiz
come out in 1978?

The story really starts my senior in college, on Academy Awards night—the gay Super Bowl. That night I was bored to tears:
Dances with Wolves
cleaned up, winning award after award. I hadn’t seen the movie and I never will. Then finally, somewhere along that evening’s endless march to the obvious Best Picture result, there was a performance that gave me an Oscar® boner!

Since then, I’ve watched the moment online so many times that I know it by heart. It begins with a black-and-white clip from
The Wizard of Oz
. Judy Garland is in Kansas, plaintively singing “Over the Rainbow.” A few lines into the song, another voice joins in, and a glorious duet erupts, as Miss Diana Ross appears onstage in a white sequined dress. Slowly, the Judy clip dissolves and it’s all Diana. The music swells, and Diana says, “Sing with me, Los Angeles …
sing along!
” as images of the audience appear behind her on a massive screen. Jessica Tandy is singing. Lovebirds Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman are singing. Slowly people in other cities appear behind Ross. And they are singing, too!
The world!
Tokyo! London! Moscow! Diana is leading a live, global sing-along of “Over the Rainbow”!

It would be hard to create a moment like this today—we’re all so jaded and steeped in irony—but that number was pure, glorious theater. At the end, Ms. Ross struck a pose that suggested she might’ve just brokered world peace. It was her signature move: hands in the air, head back, legs in sort of a lopsided, tilted almost-curtsy. The silhouette was iconic Diana-Triumphant-Showbiz-Lady for whom there Ain’t No Mountain High Enough.

I was devastated that I hadn’t recorded it on my VCR. I was too enraptured to coordinate the remote. Back then, YouTube was only a futuristic gleam in a young nerd’s eye, so I was forced to face the possibility that I would go through life only seeing that clip one time. (So, if I didn’t already thank you in the acknowledgments, shout-out to the person who invented YouTube for allowing me to watch this and, naturally, Susan Lucci’s Emmy win—and cute pandas—any time I need a pick-me-up.)

Fast-forward twenty years. I’m at my bestie Bruce’s place in Los Angeles putting on my tuxedo as another interminable Oscar broadcast is coming to an end. I’m in a hurry to get ready because I’m lucky to have invitations for what I know will be two great parties:
Vanity Fair
’s annual bash and then a more intimate affair hosted by Madonna. I half-watch the proceedings over my shoulder in the mirror as
The King’s Speech
wins Best Picture and I work against the clock to sculpt my hair into something less Q-tip-ish. Then I turn toward the TV and see a group of children clad in royal blue and lime green T-shirts trooping onstage and mounting a set of risers. Their mouths are open and they’re gesticulating wildly, in a re-imagination of Miss Ross’s glorious rendition of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” but to me it looks like a lip-synched catastrophe.

I cannot lunge for the “mute” button quickly enough. My friends and I are all scowling. What happened to the Oscars being Hollywood’s most glamorous night? Clearly, I’m a fan of a good Oscar sing-along, but my beloved Diana moment featured pageantry and celebrities and formal wear! Kids on risers wasn’t doing it for me.

Thirty-six hours later I was back in New York and booked on MSNBC’s
Morning Joe
, which I like to think of as a current-events version of
Watch What Happens Live
, serving Starbucks instead of Maker’s Mark. This time, I was determined not to indulge too heartily at
Mo’ Joe
’s free coffee bar, because in the past I’d guzzled so much that I shvitzed my way through my segments, thus ensuring a barrage of “Your upper lip is sweaty” tweets when I left the studio. (Slightly less embarrassing than the time I walked off the stage at
The Wendy Williams Show
to see that I had several hundred tweets waiting. I’d come on to surprise Wendy’s special viewer co-host Carole from Mississippi, allegedly a big fan of mine. And at some point during the hysteria of our greeting, Carole’s cheek transferred a large swatch of her [very brown] foundation to my cheek, which made me look like Carole had beaten me up instead of kissed me. Suffice it to say that I don’t love anything involuntary happening to my face on live TV, but now, with social media, you have to relive the humiliation as various time zones live-tweet the experience in waves throughout the day. But I digress.)

My segment on
Morning Joe
was called “Oscar After Party with Andy Cohen,” but it was essentially a pop culture free-for-all. We talked about Charlie Sheen and I referred to his two latest “goddesses”—as he called them—as “whores.” The minute it came out of my mouth I regretted it. This was mean, potentially slanderous, and hurtful. I mean, I did think the women might, in fact, have been prostitutes, which is why I used that term, but still. I shouldn’t have said it. My mother had raised me better than that. In the back of my mind I wondered if I’d just derailed the whole appearance.

Then Willie Geist asked me for my lowlight of Oscar night. The show had been widely panned as a bomb as far as Oscars went, and I could have chosen from a plethora of lowlights. But, without hesitation, I told him it was the public school kids who sang.

“I don’t know why you don’t like public school children,” Willie joked.

I clarified that I in fact loved public school children. I reminded him that I was a graduate of Clayton High, a fine public school. But then I compared the kids to Up with People, the unctuous choral group from the seventies that performed at Super Bowl halftime shows and the like. Everybody at the table was laughing. Cohost Mika Brzezinski gasped, “Did he really say that?” which is exactly what you want to hear on a TV panel show. Joe Scarborough, thinking he had me pegged, told me, “You just don’t want to see uplifting stuff.”

“No, that’s not what I’m saying, either,” I said. “The media twist your words. You are twisting my words. I know how this works.” I was joking around, but was also kind of serious. And, it turns out, prophetic.

Joe started to make the point that I was the man who made
The Real Housewives
—meaning, who was
I
to provide meaningful social commentary—but I interrupted him. “If I wasn’t going to go out to some parties I would have slit them [my wrists] right then. I was looking for a knife. I was looking for a knife to stick in my eye. It was terrible.”

The table cracked up! From the first time I ever succeeded in making people laugh as a kid, I loved it, and as long as they’re laughing, I will continue talking. And, of course, the hosts of a
talk show
weren’t about to stop me. I told the
Morning Joe
crew that everything had its time and place, and that the end of the Oscars was not the time for nonprofessional singing children. “Those kids ruined everything!” I told them. I further stated that the children lacked appropriate attire for a sacred institution. “They’re wearing
T-shirts
at the Academy Awards,” I said. “Is this a
telethon
?”

When my segment was over, everyone smiled and shook my hand, and we parted with promises to see each other again soon. I left the studio feeling good. I hadn’t over-caffeinated, and I’d not only made some astute observations, but was witty and entertaining to boot.

Back at the office, I saw Lauren and reported that I’d been mildly hilarious on
Morning Joe
. She took my word for it. My mom e-mailed and told me I shouldn’t have called those women whores, but that she thought I was “very funny talking about the kids.” More affirmation. Then, on my way to lunch, I got an e-mail from Bravo’s head of publicity, Cameron Blanchard. I assumed it was just a quick congrats on my appearance earlier. Nope. She was asking if I’d really said unkind things about the kids from the public school.

Apparently, there was already an item on
New York
magazine’s website reporting on my rant. I replied that I absolutely had said those things, that they were hilarious, and that every sane person agreed with me. She said I was wrong and that we’d discuss it after lunch. I felt like I was being called to the principal’s office. (And that’s one of the weirder things about being a “personality” on the network where you are also an executive. I was about to be lectured for crossing the line by a coworker who is now working on my behalf and on behalf of the company for which we both work.)

By the time I got back to work all hell was breaking loose. Our PR department had to explain to me that these kids, whom I had never seen nor heard of before the Oscars, were in fact beloved all across the country. They were apparently America’s freaking Sweethearts, viral video sensations who’d also been on
Oprah
and performed at the White House. While I was logged in to YouTube watching an endless loop of Diana Ross’s sing-along, apparently everyone else in the country was watching clips of these kids. And everybody but me, Mr. Pop Culture, knew that their appearance at the end of the Oscars was some big aspirational American Dream moment. And now the
New York Post
had sent a reporter to their school on Staten Island—and the
New York Times
was at the airport to greet the kids when they returned from LA—and both wanted responses to my remarks. Of course, the kids hadn’t actually heard what I’d said, but the reporters helpfully filled them in.

I felt terrible for the kids and at the same time angry at the moralistic reporting on what I’d thought was just lighthearted cultural commentary. I wondered why anyone even cared what
I
thought of the Oscars or those kids anyway. Cameron told me that I could no longer just babble anything that was on my mind and expect it not to have repercussions. (You might think a pitcher of iced tea dumped over me years earlier would’ve taught me this lesson.)

That was the day I realized I was kind of famous … and I wish I could’ve enjoyed that moment instead of having it forever tied to the nauseous feeling in the pit of my stomach, growing larger as it became clear that I would now be world famous for being a child-hater. Some people get to bask in the glow of the spotlight, but others of us have it shine on us while we are stepping in poop.