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The Current Transcript for July 6, 2016

Host: Mike Finnerty

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Listen to the full episode

Prologue

[Music: Theme]

SOUNDCLIP

[speaking through translator] This street is one of the most beautiful streets in Baghdad -- it's like the Champs Elysees in France. We were smelling flowers from a distance in this street. Now, we are smelling dead bodies.

[Sound: car horn beeping]

MIKE FINNERTY: More people died in Baghdad this week than in the attacks on Paris and Orlando combined. And that wasn't all: in the past week, there were attacks in Saudi Arabia, in Turkey, in Bangladesh. As Muslims gather to celebrate Eid after a month of fasting, good deeds, and devotion, they are confronted by a Ramadan that has ended drenched with blood, mostly the blood of other Muslims. Today, why these targets, why this much blood in Ramadan? What effect on hearts and minds? We assemble three voices to discuss, that's coming up. Also today...

SOUNDCLIP

I said to her the other day, "You still think there's a guy on a boat, like, off the coast of France waiting to whisk you away, don't you?" And she said, "A boat? A yacht!"

MF: Anderson Cooper reflects on life with his famous mother, Gloria Vanderbilt, in the new book they wrote together. I'm Mike Finnerty. Welcome to the summer edition of The Current.

What's behind Ramadan terror attacks?

Guests: Bessma Momani, Rukmini Callimachi, Amarnath Amarasingam

SOUNDCLIP

[Shouting, commotion]

[Explosions]

[Sirens]

MIKE FINNERTY: An audacious attack at Islam's second holiest site, the burial place of Prophet Muhammad in Saudi Arabia. On Monday, four security guards were killed as they broke their fast at sundown near the Prophet's mosque in Medina. But that was just the latest in a string of attacks that punctuated the final week of Ramadan, the Muslim holy month. Iraqi authorities now say 250 people in the Karada neighbourhood of Baghdad, out shopping and eating on Saturday night, were killed after a massive truck bomb -- the biggest to strike the Iraqi capital in years. A Friday night attack on a cafe in Dhaka, Bangladesh, killed more than 20. And more than 40 died last week in Turkey, at Istanbul's Ataturk airport. Today, we look at each of these attacks in turn to understand the unique dynamics at play. And we have three guests standing by to help us. Bessma Momani is a Senior fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation and Professor of Political Science at the University of Waterloo, and she's in Waterloo. Rukmini Callimachi is a foreign correspondent for The New York Times, focusing on al-Qaeda and ISIS. She's in Paris. And Amarnath Amarasingam is a Fellow at the George Washington University Program on Extremism. He's in Toronto. Hello to all of you.

ALL: [mixed greetings]

MF: Rukmini Callimachi in Paris, could I begin with you and with that attack on Medina, which has been roundly condemned in capitals around the Islamic world. The head of the Shura Council and Saudi Abdullah Al Sheikh called it an attack that causes goosebumps and could not have been perpetrated by someone who had an atom of belief in his heart. What do we know about who did it and why?

RUKMINI CALLIMACHI: The reality is we don't yet know who did it. Of course, it has some of the hole marks of ISIS and what is interesting is if it is ISIS, which has not yet claimed it, we're seeing the same dynamic as in Turkey. Saudi, like Turkey, is of course a majority Sunni nation, and in these theatres, ISIS tends to be more careful about what they hit and what they claim. As you know, they have not yet claimed the Turkey airport bombing, even though everybody believes it was them. They also didn't claim several other large-scale suicide explosions including in Ankara, which killed a lot of the civilians, including Sunni Muslims. And in Saudi, if it is them, it seems to be the same dynamic at work. They have created mayhem, they've carried out an act of slaughter, and yet they haven't claimed it.

MF: Bessma Momani, what do you make of the, I guess the sheer amount of violence we've seen in the last week alone, leading to this attack in of all places Medina?

BESSMA MOMANI: Well obviously, the attack on Medina is very brazen. Of course, hitting the heart of Sunni Islam. The very city of Medina is sacred, so for them to go out and try and hit this very sacred city at the time of the last few days of Ramadan, which are also quite holy, is really sort of a double whammy here. I think in trying to analyze what ISIS is doing, it seems to be related to the fact that it is losing territory. It's lost Ramadi, Fallujah, of course, and as we see this, we're also watching many of these fighters now basically dispersed. And where are they going to go? Many of them are going to go to frontline states. I think what we're seeing here is a shifting in ISIS's strategy from what we saw in the early days of consolidating territory, building a positive message, really kind of distinguishing it from al-Qaeda; and now, to one where it is lashing out against enemies. Of course, in that it's trying to also increase its notoriety to stay and remain relevant, but it now becomes sort of the classic terrorist organization, far more like al-Qaeda than ever. And to do that, it is going after soft targets and enemies, is who it's lashing out against, and of course, the list of enemies is long.

MF: Amarnath Amarasingam, I know in the in some cases as we've been discussing, ISIS has not taken responsibility for the attacks, particularly in Saudi and in Turkey. But ISIS apologists are justifying them. For instance, the attack at the site of the Prophet's Mosque, what are they saying?

AMARNATH AMARASINGAM: Yeah, I mean that's an interesting little dynamic that happened very quickly. Initially, there was a lot of rationalization saying actually, you know, it happened in a parking lot, only Shia security guards were killed. And eventually, what we've seen on ISIS channels or media channels is that they've started to, even a lot of the fans of ISIS started to walk it back saying, you know, I don't think it was us, it was probably some false flag by some other organization, or another group of people, and so on. And so I think they were a bit, maybe they're a bit taken aback by the pushback around the world, and they're starting to walk it back quite a bit, quite quickly. In terms of the kind of upscale of attacks, I would also add that, you know, it is the month of Ramadan, and based on a few of the ISIS supporters that I've been interviewing this week asking that very question, the month of Ramadan is quite important, and it is seen as a holy month, and not only for mainstream Muslims who see it as important religious period, but also a holy month of jihad for a lot of jihadists who see them following the example of the Prophet during the Battle of Badr, for example, where it was a major victory for the for the Muslims against the forces of Medina and then things like that. And so the month of Ramadan is a time when we usually see a kind of increase in attacks in general, so it wasn't too surprising, I guess.

MF: Are they unpalatable even to extremists?

AMARNATH AMARASINGAM: I mean, in a sense, yeah, but what Adnani called, for example, to make Ramadan this year a "month of calamity," right, just before the month started. And so people were expecting a slight increase in attacks, and as the month went on, it was pretty quiet. But then you know, the last week, as we saw, it was quite bloody. So I think around the world, you're seeing disgust, I guess, at this kind of maneuvering, but what has been interesting with the Saudi attack, as Rukmini mentioned, was a kind of interesting pushback from the Taliban, interesting pushback from Jabhat al-Nusra, the al-Qaeda groups inside Syria, and you know, just a pushback to say this isn't what we're about, and this isn't what the Syrian revolution was supposed to be about, either.

MF: Okay, let's come to the attack, the truck bomb attack in Karada, which is a shopping district of Baghdad, and we now have 250 people confirmed dead from the Iraqi authorities. Here's a clip of a survivor of the attack, lamenting that people who were preparing to celebrate Eid buying new clothes and the like, were instead now having to buy coffins.

SOUNDCLIP

[speaking alternate language]

MF: Rukmini Callimachi, Baghdad, of course, has seen so many attacks, but this one was different: by the numbers killed 250; it's led to the resignation of the interior minister; but it really is, as well, was one of those two attacks that hits an area of the city where people of different backgrounds really mixed and socialized, there were cafes and that sort of thing. What do you think inspired this particular attack on Baghdad?

RUKMINI CALLIMACHI: Well, if you take ISIS at their word, what they claim that this was an attack on a Shia target. Of course, either they're misinformed or they're lying, because that area did include other groups of people. But to me, that that attack, like the attack in Turkey, like the attack in Bangladesh, like Jordan, and possibly like Saudi Arabia if that turns out to be them, is like Amar said, a response to the ISIS spokesman's call for Ramadan violence. That was just the most catastrophic of the explosions we've seen in the past month.

MF: Amar, this big attack on that neighborhood of Baghdad, how do you see it?

AMARNATH AMARASINGAM: Yeah, I mean, you know, places like Iraq, for example, if you just look at the global terrorism database in terms of the Islamic State's focus on Iraq, there have been thousands of attacks over the last couple years. And so Iraq has always been a target, and it is a kind of active war zone, of course, and you know, these attacks from the Islamic State's perspective, do focus just on Shia targets who they consider to be not Muslim. And they did come out and say this is a Shia area, but of course, it is a large Shia population, but also a whole bunch of Christians, and it's a time when a lot of these people were out shopping for Eid. And it's just an unbelievable attack, to kill that many people on the on the eve of such an important day.

MF: Bessma Momani, on the Iraq attack?

BESSMA MOMANI: Well, I think it's a message, again, to the Iraqi government and the Iraqi army, who went to Fallujah to liberate it. Of course, there's definitely a number of allegations against the Iraqi army for how they left the city of Fallujah, number of sectarian, possible sectarian type of incidences. And so I think this is a message also to Abadi, to the Iraqi army, that we can penetrate Baghdad. This was a truck bomb that was driven several-- not very far from Karada itself and into it, and I think it's also a message about Mosul, which is the city that really many talk about, because it is the second most populated city in Iraq, and so it's the real prize. And of course, we've heard many statements by Abadi and the government about how Mosul is next and we're going to do it soon. It's a message to say if you continue to come after us, we're going to hit you hard.

MF: So a much more strategic attack.

BESSMA MOMANI: I think so. I mean, of course it's not insignificant that they hit what is viewed to be a predominantly Shia middle to upper middle class neighborhood. It's a way of saying look, we can penetrate your safe zone of Baghdad. And of course, the reaction of the public to this has been all about the corruption of the government in how they manage security, including those very infamous fake bomb detectors. So interesting that the response hasn't been from the people about stopping the fight against ISIS, but more about why aren't you better protecting us, and that including those security checkpoints and the very detectors that aren't working.

MF: Let's come to Bangladesh now, where a siege on a cafe last weekend led to the death of more than 20 people, most of them were Westerners, some of them had been held hostage. This is the father of one of the men behind the attack.

SOUNDCLIP

[Through translator] My son used to pray five times a day from a young age. When I was searching for my son, I found that many of the boys are missing. Well-educated boys from good educated families: children of professionals, garment offices. We do not know how this is happening.

MF: Amarnath Amarasingam, this is quite a particular domestic situation in Bangladesh, but what do you make of this attack and the fact that the young men involved were in most cases private school educated young men, multi-lingual in many cases?

AMARNATH AMARASINGAM: Yeah, I mean, I think that comes as a surprise to many people who view radicalization or view terrorism as a kind of, you know, they look for a certain kind of profile of the individuals who are involved. But you know, research over the last decade and more says basically that there is no such profile, that people who are radicalized come from all kinds of backgrounds, all kinds of ethnic backgrounds and socioeconomic backgrounds, so I don't think that that particular aspect is all that surprising. But what is interesting about Bangladesh is the way in which the Islamic State has found a niche with a lot of the older movements like Jamaat ul Muslimeen, who were active a long time ago for a long time in Bangladesh, and they're kind of using these older networks to penetrate into the country and compete with similarly kind of foreign groups, like al-Qaeda on the Indian subcontinent and things like that. So I think we'll see increased attacks as these two organizations vie for hearts and minds, and credibility, and things like that.

MF: And Bessma, do you see these young men involved in the attacks as ISIS recruits, or people inspired by ISIS?

BESSMA MOMANI: I would say it's inspiration by ISIS, even though there's some mixed reporting about that. But I think what's really important here is that it is perhaps a unique case, in that we're seeing a shifting of messaging, or more importantly, tactics here, in that the Bangladesh group is trying to become ISIS. It's trying to get the seal of approval of ISIS. This is, as was noted, a self-declared Wilayat, a self-declared province of ISIS. And ISIS has often, of course, benefited and tried not to, let say interfere or-- basically accepting and wanting that kind of notoriety, because it adds to their brand. But in this particular case, I think it's a way for this self-declared province of ISIS to say hey, don't forget about us, we are here and we're loyal subjects of ISIS. So I wonder if this is not a shift of the Bangladeshi typical al-Qaeda jihadist into basically a call for recognition as part of ISIS.

MF: And then preceding those attacks, the ones we've just been talking about, was the attack on the third biggest airport in Europe, in Turkey Atatürk Airport. This is what it sounded like.

SOUNDCLIP

[Shouting in alternate language, commotion]

MF: Rukmini, if ISIS was, in fact, behind this attack, and we've said it already through the course of the interview that they haven't claimed responsibility for it, how significant is it that they would target a Sunni Muslim majority country, Turkey-- and for that matter, Saudi Arabia-- but the very group of people it claims to be protecting?

RUKMINI CALLIMACHI: I think we need to notice is that when they are targeting Sunni majority countries, they're doing one of two things: either do or not taking credit for the attack, even though they're suspected, that's the case with Turkey and now possibly Saudi Arabia; or they're being extremely careful, I would say, and extremely targeted in their violence. Take Bangladesh: the cafe attack was the nineteenth attack by ISIS, that was claimed by ISIS, in the past nine months. The first 18 were targeted assassinations, mostly of religious minorities: Christians, Hindus, Buddhists, a Baha'i person, a Shiite site, of course, they don't consider Shiites to be to be Muslims, and the cafe itself was an area that was known to be very popular with ex-pats. If you look at the body count, there were 22 people killed: 18 of them were foreigners, two of them were security forces, and two were Bangladeshis. So according to their sick calculus, they succeeded because the vast majority of the dead were people that they would consider to be disbelievers.

MF: Bessma, on Twitter yesterday, Hira Syed of Ottawa asked why Facebook hadn't activated its safety check figure feature after those attacks-- the ones, for instance, in Turkey that were just talking about in Baghdad, in the way it did in Brussels, and Paris, and Orlando, and why social media hadn't been filled with flags of Turkey, Bangladesh, Iraq. She says the hypocrisy in the Western world is strong. I wonder, what's your view on the way this group of attacks is playing more broadly amongst Muslims?

BESSMA MOMANI: Well, it's true, and I saw that not just from that one tweet, but many of the same feeling. You know, je suis Baghdad, etcetera. I think part of it is that people become numb to what's happening. And of course, that's not a justification. 200 and some lives killed in Baghdad in one day is a catastrophe we all have to mourn, but I think what we're seeing here is the West is pretty fatigued. You know, it's sort of assumed that violence happens in Iraq, and it's been Iraq for the past 10 years that way. Of course, that doesn't take away from the fact that as we sit here, there's also a very damning report coming out of the U.K. about how important it was, both the British and the American involvement, in making that situation chaotic as it is today. So there is, I think, an understandable reaction here in the West to why it doesn't garner the same kind of empathy. But of course, I think for many Muslims who are again, a time of the last few days of Ramadan and today being Eid, you know, there is this recognition that people don't seem to see that, in fact, this so-called self-declared Muslim organization is targeting Muslims themselves. And on that principle alone, therefore, one should recognize that this organization has nothing to do with Islam. At minimum, it's a perversion; it's a deviant form of Islam that is nothing like the vast majority. I think that's the kind of acknowledgement that comes with that empathy that would happen for Turkey, for Saudi Arabia, and for Baghdad.

MF: Amar, one of the mourners who showed up at Karada in Baghdad today has made this comment as reported by Reuters: "I made a promise to myself not to wish a happy Eid to anyone before I came here, because today is the Eid of martyrs who Daesh bombed with the cooperation of the government and everyone knows that." And I wonder, I mean, how do you think Muslims more generally view this increased bloodiness of the last week of Ramadan?

AMARNATH AMARASINGAM: I don't know. Whenever I'm asked that kind of question, it's always following dozens and dozens of attacks throughout the year, and I always say, you know, these attacks aren't going to stop and aren't going to come to a come to an end anytime soon. And so I think what needs to happen is the kind of broader dealing with ISIS and understanding these networks in play, whether it's in Turkey, whether it's in Bangladesh, and you know, to learning to kind of look in the right places and tackle these organizations properly.

MF: Rukmini, if I could give the last word to you. I wonder what you're watching for, now it's ended?

RUKMINI CALLIMACHI: Well, like Amar and like other researchers, I'm on the telegram channels where ISIS is messaging, and I'm just watching for their next claim of violence. I don't think that this is going to end anytime soon.

MF: Rukmini Callimachi, Bessma Momani, and Amarnath Amarasingam. Thank you, all three of you.

AMARNATH AMARASINGAM: Thank you.

RUKMINI CALLIMACHI: Thank you.

BESSMA MOMANI: Thank you for having us.

MF: Bessma Momani, who is Senior fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation, and Professor of Political Science at the University of Waterloo. She was in Waterloo. Rukmini Callimachi is a foreign correspondent for The New York Times, focusing on al-Qaeda and ISIS. She was in Paris. And Amarnath Amarasingam is a Fellow at the George Washington University Program on Extremism. He was in Toronto. I'm Mike Finnerty, you're listening to the summer edition of The Current.

[Music: Sting]

ENCORE: Anderson Cooper opens up about mom Gloria Vanderbilt and their history of love and loss

Guests: Anderson Cooper

MF: Hello I’m Mike Finnerty. You’re listening to the summer edition of The Current.

[Music: theme]

MF: Coming right up, a Vanderbilt-Cooper collaboration on life, love, and loss.

SOUNDCLIP

GLORIA VANDERBILT: I find it reassuring knowing the rainbow comes and goes. It helps me accept the way things often are. In every life you have moments of blinding beauty and happiness and then you land in a dark cave in there is no colour, no sky. Then the rainbow returns. Sometimes only briefly, but it always does come back. You have to believe that it will even in the darkest moments. That belief is what is really important.

MF: That is Gloria Vanderbilt, the author, artist, and designer reading from a new book she co-wrote with her son. There are many 92-year-olds writing new books, but Gloria Vanderbilt has always been special. She and her family are about as close to royalty as Americans get and she’s been in the spotlight all her life. Her birth made news and when she was nine a bitter court battle involving her mother, grandmother, and aunt led to Gloria being nicknamed “the poor little rich girl.” Today, it’s her son who is a familiar presence across the country and around the world, CNN journalist Anderson Cooper. In April, Anna Maria spoke Anderson Cooper their book The Rainbow Comes and Goes: A Mother and Son on Life, Love, and Loss.

ANNA MARIA TREMONTI: Hello.

ANDERSON COOPER: Hey, nice to be here.

AMT: You know, that clip and the discussion around the rainbow coming and going in your book made me cry.

ANDERSON COOPER: Oh. It's interesting, the phrase the rainbow comes and goes is from a Wordsworth poem and it's interesting in the writing in this because my mom and I both have a very different perception of what it actually means. For my mom, as you just heard her say, she believes it's this very hopeful, optimistic phrase which is the rainbow comes and goes but it's going to come back. There will be dark days, there will be difficult times, but the rainbow always comes back. It comes back in nature and it will come back in your life and you just have to wait for it to come back and be there when it does. I feel like it's there's a little bit more of a hint of resignation in it. When people ask me like oh how's it going, I'll say, meh, the rainbow comes and goes. Meaning like, you know, there's good, there's bad and the rainbow may come back in my opinion, but how do you know you're going to be in the exact spot where it comes back? You might come back like you know, if you're in Toronto right now it may be in Ottawa and you're not going to see it, so I want to prepare for the darkness. I want to prepare for the winter that's coming and store up my supplies.

AMT: What do you call that, a catastrophist?

ANDERSON COOPER:[laughs] A catastrophist.

AMT: [laughs] I can’t even say the word.

ANDERSON COOPER: I’m not even sure it is a word. I don't like to call myself a pessimist because it sounds so negative so, where my mom is the eternal optimist, I view myself as a catastrophist. I want to prepare for the worst and if good things happen, then I'm pleasantly surprised, but I'm not disappointed if they don't.

AMT: You know, to write this book, you and your mother emailed each other over the course of about a year and you learned so much about her. Why did it take this correspondence to open up that communication?

ANDERSON COOPER: Well, I think a lot of us would like to change our relationship with a parent and really learn about them and often times we don't do it until it's too late. You know, we don't think to sit down and actually ask questions and my schedule, you know I travel all the time and so we started when my mom turned 91. She got sick for the first time and when she recovered I realized I don't want to wait any longer, we need to do this now and when my dad passed away I was ten and I used to imagine that he'd written me a letter that would come in the mail when I turned 18 or when I graduated college and would tell me all the things I didn't know about him and about what he hoped for my life and giving me life lessons. Of course there wasn't a letter and I didn't want to have that same fantasy with my mom when she's no longer here. So, we decided we're going to change the conversation. I'm going to start asking her questions and she was totally on board with this and she wanted to learn about me in a different way as well and something about doing it over e-mail, not only made it more convenient but it made it easier because there wasn't the awkwardness. A lot of these things are very awkward to talk about or difficult and something about e-mail is like writing a message, putting it in a bottle and sending it out only another bottle would return very quickly or sometimes days later with a response and so that's really how it began. We didn't know it was going to be a book but we just, you know, about three or four months into it, it was having such a profound impact on our lives that we thought this is something we really like to encourage other people to be able to do this with, whether it's an aging parent or somebody else in their lives.

AMT: Not everybody's 91-year old, now 92-year old mom can e-mail, so that was good too [laughs].

ANDERSON COOPER: That’s true. Going back to my mom, I got a friend of mine to teach my mom e-mail when she was about 89, so she's relatively new to it but it's totally changed her life. It's the main way she communicates now and she loves it.

AMT: You've never been comfortable with the idea of being known as a Vanderbilt. Why?

ANDERSON COOPER: Yeah, it just doesn't have any reality for me. I mean Vanderbilt is my mom's family's ancestry and my dad grew up poor on a farm in the city and I always felt much more connected to the Cooper side. What was interesting in writing this book is I learned my mom never felt connected to the Vanderbilt side either. She felt like she was an impostor. She didn't really know about the Vanderbilt family until she was forced to live with her aunt Gertrude by the courts. She was the subject, as you said, of this terrible custody battle at the height of the depression, which at the time in the United States was referred to as the trial of the century and so she grew up kind of disconnected from that family and I always just felt no good can come of paying attention to the Vanderbilt side. It's not as if there was a Vanderbilt trust that I was living off of. I was very motivated by taking care of myself and making something of my own life and I just felt like a lot of kids who come from famous families don't do very well and I don't want to be one of them and so I'm just going to ignore the fact that there's this kind of family history. I'm just going to focus on the Coopers who you know, there's nowhere to go but up.

AMT: It’s interesting because so many people talk about family and what family means and if you look at the Vanderbilt side, I mean you really do come from American royalty. Cornelius Vanderbilt helped build America.

ANDERSON COOPER: Yes, he was incredible businessman. He created a steamship empire in the 1800s and then moved into railroads, created a railroad empire and when he died, he was one of the richest men in America and certainly in the world. It was a kind of wealth that's difficult to imagine in this day. I think he had more than 100 million dollars when he died and this was in mid-1800s which would be billions and billions of dollars today, at a time when very few people had that sort of wealth.

AMT: And you even said that you thought at one point all kids’ grandparents turned into statues.

ANDERSON COOPER: You know my dad once showed me a statue, I guess Cornelius Vanderbilt, I think he's my great-great-great-great grandfather, four greats, and my dad once took me down to Grand Central Station in New York, which was built and created by him and showed me a statue of him and I got the idea when I was six or seven that all grandparents turned into statues when they died.

AMT: You make the point that you are also a Cooper and your dad died when he was 50, you were ten. How did his death motivate you in terms of what you wanted to accomplish growing up and what you thought about?

ANDERSON COOPER: It really, I mean changed my life forever. I think the death of a parent early on really does alter the course of one's life and there's a saying by a writer named Mary Gordon, and my mom often quotes it, said a fatherless girl thinks all things possible and nothing is safe. And I think it applies to boys as well, it certainly applied to me that after his death everything seemed suddenly possible, both terrible things but also kind of remarkable things. Anything seemed possible, but at the same time nothing ever felt safe and I still very much feel that. I think it's one of the reasons I still am very much focused on planning for the future and trying to anticipate what's coming down the pipe and preparing for it.

AMT: And you know, even though you say you and your mother see things differently when it comes to the rainbow, that sense of loss is great in both of you; that feeling as a young child that the world is changing and nothing can be safe.

ANDERSON COOPER: It is. I think we both grew up speaking the language of loss and I think once you speak that language you never really forget it and it's something that does shape your life. I always knew my mom, there was a sort of sadness behind her eyes that when I was younger, I didn't quite understand the origins of it, or the reasons for it. But in the writing of this book it certainly became very clear and yet my mom is incredibly optimistic. She's the most optimistic person I've ever met and she at 92 believes the next great love is right around the corner. I said to her the other day, you know you still think there's a guy on a boat like off the coast of France waiting to whisk you away, don’t you? And she said a boat? A yacht [laughter], and I think that she does have this eternal optimism that around the next corner something amazing is waiting and her whole life will change or the phone can ring and something great can happen.

AMT: Well, she had quite the love life. She says in the book that at times instead of counting sheep, she'd count her lovers.

ANDERSON COOPER: I know. It's not exactly what you want to hear from your mom [laughs].

AMT: [laughs] I was just going to ask you about that.

ANDERSON COOPER: Well, the fact it was over e-mail made it a little easier so it’s less embarrassing, but you know my mom has had an extraordinary life and when she was 17, she went out to Hollywood and started dating movie stars, Errol Flynn and Bruce Cabot, Howard Hughes and later on, Marlon Brando and Frank Sinatra and she's had sort of an epic life of love and loss and it's interesting to hear her perspective on it now at 92. She's able to kind of see it in the distance and laugh about it in a way that certainly she couldn't have when she was younger.

AMT: I got the impression that along with your dad, the other love of her life was Howard Hughes.

ANDERSON COOPER: It's stunning to me in the book and it's something, it's hard to understand. I mean, she had this very close relationship with him but she ended up in a totally impromptu, sort of abrupt decision, marrying somebody else who vaguely kind of worked for Howard Hughes. He was sort of a gangster. There were rumours he had killed his former wife and yet my mom, at 17, chose to marry this guy who was really kind of a thug, who was sort of a gofer for Howard Hughes and she you know, basically abandoned Howard Hughes and agreed to get married to this guy who ended up beating her and the marriage only lasted I think, three or so years. It was just one of many kinds of impromptu choices that my mom made and very kind of spur of the moment choices and it was interesting to me to kind of hear her perspective on it now and realizing that she's never really planned anything. She's always made kind of very hasty choices about things and I've realized why I'm sort of now the complete opposite because I grew up seeing that in her and realizing that about her and sort of reacting to it by being the opposite. That's another thing I've realized in the writing this book is how similar to my mom, I do have the impulsiveness that she has, I've just sort of consciously tried to tamp it down.

AMT: I want to ask a little bit more about your mom. You write in your book that your grandmother was in a lesbian relationship that became known in the thirties because of the custody battle, and it was a scandal at the time. How did your mother process that information as she got older?

ANDERSON COOPER: Well, she wasn't just in one lesbian relationship, she was a lesbian, she also had relationships with men obviously through her life, but at the height of this custody battle where my mother was-- my mother's mother and her aunt were fighting over custody of my mother. Her aunt felt that my grandmother was not an appropriate person and capable of taking care of a child, and she really wasn't. She wasn't very parental and my mother's nurse and my mother's grandmother conspired with the aunt to have my mother taken away from her mother and in the height of the trial suddenly the court was closed and this terrible scandal emerged and my grandmother--her housekeeper testified against her that she'd seen her in bed with a woman, a woman named Nada Milford Haven who was a British aristocrat and it was just one of several lesbian relationships my grandmother had throughout the course of her life. It was a huge scandal, it really turned much of the country against my mom's mom and it really turned the tide of the trial, to the point where my mom was removed from her mother's care and sent to live with this aunt who she didn't even know. It had a huge impact on my mom, I mean this was of course 1934 where being gay in America, you could be jailed and sent to a mental institution, you would be shunned. It really terrified my mom even though she didn't really know what it meant. She knew it was considered this terrible crime and it affected her for much of her life, really until her late 30s. She started having a lot of gay friends, she was involved in theatre and the arts and learned and realized that love is love and that there is no difference between the love between a woman and woman or man and man or man and woman. She was able to evolve beyond that and when I came out to her, she embraced it and not just accepted it but, embraces it and she says in the book she rejoices in the fact I'm gay and wouldn't want me any other way.

AMT: You were worried about her reaction because of that history, weren’t you?

ANDERSON COOPER: I was. I mean, I was sort of vaguely aware that my grandmother had been accused of being a lesbian. I didn't know if she really was a lesbian until my mom wrote about it in the book and I knew it had impacted my mom so deeply that there was some sort of feeling of-- I remember seeing her once as a kid you know, well I think before I had come out to my mom, saying, well I think being gay is partly genetic and she instantly said well, I don't think that's true at all because, as a kid she was so afraid that she had inherited whatever it was that the lesbianism of her mother and so there was part of me that was concerned this is going to bring up a lot of issues for her, but I knew ultimately she would be okay with it because I remember a statement she made when I was 11. A friend of hers, Jose Cantaro, who is a famous theatre director in New York who directs a lot of Eugene O'Neill plays on Broadway, and he and his partner Nick were coming over for dinner and I remember, I was 11 and I asked my mom about them and she said well, they're a married couple. And of course, in 1979 in the United States, most people probably would not have viewed a gay couple as a married couple, but it always stuck in my mind that my mom did view them as a married couple and so I knew at her core, she would be okay with it ultimately. And she is.

AMT: Your brother Carter died by suicide when he was 23 and we learn in the book that your mom was there when he jumped from the balcony of her apartment. You speak quite openly about it with her. How important was it to be able to talk about this tragedy?

ANDERSON COOPER: You know, for my mom it's been incredibly important. My brother Carter killed himself in front of my mother. She was begging him not to and the thing about suicide is that you're often left asking the question why and sometimes there isn't any why. Sometimes you can't find out why and for me, a lot of becoming a reporter was about learning to live in a world where there isn't any why. And for my mom, it's been very important to talk about what happened and replay it over and over again and certainly in the weeks after his death, people would come to the house and she would relive and talk about it second by second, what had happened. I found it really hard to listen to after a while. I actually react very differently, I become a lot more, in grief and tragedy, I become much more quiet and much more introspective and sort of, I talk about it in my head to myself but I have still have a hard time talking out loud about it. And so, we're different in how we kind of respond to grief, but I know from my mom certainly, it's been incredibly important to talk about and to continue to talk about it. There are days suddenly she'll, out of the blue, just bring up something that he said in the moments before he died or something that she wishes she had done and she still looks sort of replays it over and over again.

AMT: Well, you have had a lot of personal pain in your life. Do you think that has helped you as a journalist to have more empathy or to empathize with the people who you go and cover?

ANDERSON COOPER: Absolutely. I mean, I think it's made me a much better reporter and storyteller and it's the reason I do what I do. It's definitely you know, the losses of my dad and my brother propelled me into the world in a way that I maybe wouldn't have gone otherwise, and propelled me to places where the language of loss was spoken and where certainly the pain I was feeling inside was matched by the pain other people were experiencing and the pain that was all around. I understand everybody's loss is different of course, and I'm not comparing one to the other, but I do understand the language of loss and the experience of it and I'm comfortable talking with people who are experiencing, or have experienced grief or are in the midst of it and it's something that a lot of people find very uncomfortable to talk about, but it's something that is always present in my life and I certainly feel it's a privilege to be able to go places, after Haiti after the earthquake for instance, or even Katrina, or even, I think about what happened in Ottawa. Being there in the wake of that tragedy, or just being there and bearing witness to what a city is going through or what people are going through and seeing their resilience and their strength and showcasing that. I don't know, it's something just, I feel privileged to be able to do.

AMT: And because you know the language of loss, it’s okay that you ask.

ANDERSON COOPER: I know what it's like. When my brother killed himself it was a big event in New York. It made the front page of a lot of the tabloid newspapers for days. There were reporters camped outside our house and when I went to the wake to view his body with my mom for the first time, there were cameras, reporters waiting outside to take pictures of us and video us going into the funeral home. So I know what it's like to have a camera pointed at you at the lowest point of your life and I know it's not a pleasant feeling. And I remember in that moment hating the cameramen who were pointing their cameras at us and thinking they were vultures and so, I understand what it's like to be on the other side of the camera and it's really informed the way I carry myself in the field, it's the way I-- it informs the way I ask questions and even if I ask questions. I think it's important. I'm not interested in shoving a camera in somebody's face. If somebody, in the midst of their grief, I was thinking, there was a famous school shooting in the United States in Newtown, Connecticut at Sandy Hook and a number parents reached out to us and wanted to talk about their child in the height of their grief, days after their child was killed and that's not something I would ever try to force somebody to do but I felt privileged to be invited into a grieving parent’s home and to talk to them about their child and you know, often times people react to grief in different ways but many times people want you to know who's been lost and they want you know the life this person lived, not just how their life ended.

AMT: It's a really good thing to remember. Before I let you go, I have to ask what's going on in US politics right now. I watched you with the Trump family, did you ever think you'd see this kind of race?

ANDERSON COOPER: No. I mean I don't think anybody could have predicted this kind of race in the United States. It's whatever adjective, I don’t know, all the adjectives can be used to describe it. It's an extraordinary race on both the Republican side and the Democratic Bernie Sanders entered the race, I think at three per cent or something and very few people thought he would have the traction he's done. He's raising huge amounts of money, he's winning states, he's going to go to the convention and we'll see what happens there. You know, obviously Hillary Clinton has a delegate lead and if you include super delegates as well, but Sanders is not going anywhere and is fighting hard. On the Republican side, there has not been a candidate like Donald Trump, you know certainly in my lifetime, and it's upended the race and anybody who tells you they know what's going to happen is just making it up because it's impossible to predict.

AMT: Do you talk politics with your mom?

ANDERSON COOPER: I don't. I don't talk politics with my friends. I'm not somebody who--it's not my job to express my opinion on, at least I believe, it's not my job to be a liberal reporter or a conservative reporter, Republican or Democrat. It's my job to ask questions and I revel in that role. I really like in my public life, but also in my private life. You know, plenty of people have strong opinions and argue over opinions with their friends. I'm not one of those people. I ask questions and I like that, and I like not necessarily taking sides and just-- I try to take the side of what's accurate and what's factually correct. I view myself as an observer and less as a participant.

AMT: Well, I'm glad you ask questions of your mother. It's a fascinating read and a lot to learn in your book with her. Thank you.

ANDERSON COOPER: Thank you very much.

MF: Anderson Cooper, speaking to Anna Maria about the book he co-wrote with his mother, Gloria Vanderbilt, The Rainbow Comes and Goes, it’s called. And visit our web page. You can see photos of the two of them. The address is: cbc.ca/thecurrent. That’s our program for today. After listening to Anna Maria’s interview with CNN anchor Anderson Cooper, let’s leave you with one of his lighter on air moments. This is from his so-called RidicuList segment on CNN and a time when the story was just so ridiculous Anderson couldn’t stop laughing. I’m Mike Finnerty. Thanks for listening to the summer edition of The Current.

SOUNDCLIP

Time now for The RidicuList and tonight we’re adding Gérard Depardieu - noted French actor, Academy Award nominee, public urinater. That’s right. I said urinater. Last night on a flight from Paris to Dublin, Depardieu reportedly peed on the floor. Apparently, the plane was on the tarmac and the flight attendant told him he’d have to wait to use the bathroom until take-off. So, Depardieu created his own little jet stream. Or, as the French would say, wee wee. When I first heard the story this morning I thought there was no way it was real. But the airline City Jet confirmed it beyond any shadow of scepticism. And by that I mean, they vaguely tweeted about it. Quote, “As you may have seen on the news, we are busy mopping the floor of one of our planes this morning. We’d also like to remind all passengers that our planes are fully equipped with toilet facilities.” Hmm. City Jet. I would have guessed he flies Incontinental. [pause] Incontinental. Anyway. So, after Gérard took his little solo flight to uri-nation, the plane had to turn around and go back to the gate and some unlucky cleaning crew had to deal with the Golden Globe-winning tinkle. Now, all I can say is they should thank their lucky stars it wasn’t Depar-two. [holds in laugh] Sorry. [chuckles] That made me giggle every time I read it.

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July 6, 2016 full episode transcript

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