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Tom Foreman | Bio
AC360° Correspondent
Like an earth tremor on the San Andreas Fault, or the paparazzi behind Britney’s car, I could have told Miss California it was coming.
I had a long chat with Perez Hilton a few months ago and he made it screamingly clear that while he earns a living as a celebrity blogger, his life is about gay rights. So I was not surprised when he threw that ticking bomb of a question at her while he was serving as a judge during the Miss USA contest: “Do you think all states should approve same-sex marriages?”
The answer from Carrie Prejean, just in case you haven’t heard, was polite and in keeping with typical beauty pageant punditry. After saying she thinks it is great that people can choose their own mates, she added, “I believe that a marriage should be between a man and a woman. No offense to anybody out there, but that’s how I was raised.”
Often when people say “no offense,” what they mean is they are about to offend you, but you shouldn’t get all huffy about it. And that is precisely how many same-sex marriage proponents took her comment. They have been slamming the First Runner Up as intolerant on the blogs, YouTube, TV, and every other available platform.
And her supporters have been slamming right back by posting their own messages saying either that she is right to defend traditional marriage, or the critics are wrong to attack her free speech. One Alabama legislator even introduced a measure to commend her actions. Of course, he may just be snippy. The last time a Miss Alabama won the Miss USA crown was more than forty years ago, and this year she didn’t even make the top 15.
The real scandal in the contest, I should mention, is the extraordinary dominance of Texas: 8 crowns since 1985. Seems fishy. I’m just saying.
I digress. It’s easy to portray either side as the victim. But in the modern world of public debate, there are only winners coming out of this mess. Sure, Prejean did not win the crown, but she’s been on TV a heck of a lot more than the winner (who was that, by the way?) and even without a tiara, she’s being treated like royalty by people who share her views.
Hilton and his supporters are also getting what they want and that is another chance to publicize their struggle to have same-sex marriage approved coast to coast.
The fight is only going to get uglier, but the combatants on each side would have it no other way. As long as they are in the headline, they are sitting pretty.
Rock star Bono interviews George Clooney for a Time 100/Anderson Cooper 360 special airing May 1 at 11:00 p.m. ET.
Chuck Hadad
AC360° Producer
My days are never boring as a producer at AC 360’ but my latest assignment definitely goes down in the annals of producer history: shoot Bono interviewing George Clooney. Clooney is being honored by Time magazine as one of the world’s 100 most influential people and Time asked Bono to write the profile. As Time’s partner, we shot the interview and other famous pairings for an upcoming Time 100/Anderson Cooper 360’ Special aptly titled “The World’s Most Influential People.”
While Bono and Clooney are acutely aware of their own fame, it seems to be inversely proportional to the fanfare surrounding both of them. Clooney showed up to the interview solo: no security, no entourage, just a guy in combat boots and a leather jacket. I met him on the street in New York outside of our interview location and joked with him as I lead him to a green room that Bono was looking forward to getting him in the hot seat. I didn’t know it at the time but that was truer than I could have ever imagined.
Bono trailed him by a few minutes in a separate car and while I tried to keep things professional on the outside, on the inside I felt like the 10 year old kid who wore out his tape of U2’s “The Joshua Tree.”
The two stars are good friends and when I showed Bono to the same green room, he began to belt out the Beatles “Hey Jude” on a piano but changed the lyrics to butter up Clooney for the interview: “Hey George, don’t make it bad …”
I left them to catch up and ran out to be sure our crew was ready. As far as productions go, for this one we went all out and were shooting the interview at Rose Theater at Frederick P. Rose Hall, Home of Jazz at Lincoln Center.
Ten minutes later, Bono and Clooney walked into the theater, introduced themselves to the entire crew and Bono had the closest he came to a diva moment during the entire afternoon. “Could I get a clipboard so we can make this interview official?!” he said with a smile and a wink.
With clipboard in hand, he sat down, I called for quiet on the set and Bono began.
“You recently slept with someone that I have a crush on … tell me about that?” was one of his first questions to George Clooney and it set the tone of their nearly 40 minute interview: although they’re good friends, Bono would leave no stone unturned.
The special airs next Friday at 11 pm ET. Check out the video above for a sneak peak.
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Andrew Torgan
CNN Financial News Producer
Could Detroit’s Big Three soon be the Big One?
Ford this morning reported a smaller-than-expected loss for the first quarter, and the company says it remains on track to meet its internal financial targets despite the worst quarter for auto sales in 26 years.
Ford, the only American automaker that did not take any federal bailout money, posted net losses of $1.4 billion. Revenue plunged 37% during the quarter to $24.8 billion as vehicle sales in the U.S. dropped 43%. But revenue was also better than analysts' forecasts.
Still, the latest losses come on top of $30 billion in net losses the company reported from 2006 through 2008.
Ford CEO Alan Mulally says that the company is still confident it will not need a federal loan unless the economy gets significantly worse, or unless there is an uncontrolled bankruptcy in the industry that disrupts the flow of parts from Ford's suppliers.
Meanwhile, privately-held Chrysler has one week to reach deals with Fiat, unions and banks, raising doubts it can avoid bankruptcy.
The New York Times is reporting that the Treasury Department is directing the automaker to prepare a Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing as soon as next week.
[cnn-photo-caption image=http://i.l.cnn.net/cnn/2009/LIVING/wayoflife/04/19/college.credit.cards/art.nick.philliou.cnn.jpg caption="College sophomore Nick Philliou says he carries more than $10,000 in debt."]
Project on Student Debt
New federal data show that the percentage of undergraduate students who borrowed private student loans jumped from 5 percent in 2003-04, to 14 percent in 2007-08.
At proprietary (for-profit) colleges and universities, the percentage of students who took out these loans skyrocketed from 13 percent in the 2003-04 school year, to 42 percent last year.
Check out this analysis of the data by the Project on Student Debt.
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Olga Pierce
ProPublica
Take a look at this comparison of the recently released "torture memos," prepared by Bush administration lawyers, and a leaked Red Cross report in which prisoners were interviewed about being on the receiving end of the interrogation techniques. The chart is based on research by the ACLU, which filed lawsuits to get the memos released. Also, here is our list of still-missing Bush-era memos on prisoner treatment and warrantless wiretapping.
[cnn-photo-caption image=http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2009/WORLD/asiapcf/04/24/pakistan.taliban.control.gilani/art.tali.jpg caption="A Taliban fighter in the district of Buner, which is only 96 kilometers from Islamabad."]
Penny Manis
AC360° Senior Producer
Taliban fighters retreat back to their stronghold in the Swat Valley after moving into an area which is only 60 miles from Pakistan’s capital earlier in the week.
Are we near a ‘tipping point’ where Pakistan, a nuclear armed state, could be overtaken by Islamic militants? We'll ask Nic Robertson reporting from Islamabad if the Pakistan military thinks they have succeeded in keeping militants away from the capital.
The US gives the Pakistan military a lot of aid (read: money) each year, we'll ask what they do with that money and is it enough to help them stop the Taliban.
The Pentagon is set to release another batch of photos the ACLU says show prisoner abuse in Iraq and Afghanistan at the hands of US personnel. ACLU had filed a suit for the pictures to be released and they are expected end of May, according to the group. We’ll try to get information on what these pictures could show, and what could come from making them public.