In the latest issue of Vanity Fair there is an excerpt from Anderson Cooper’s new book Dispatches from the Edge. With a title like that (plus the fact that he’s 40 and writing a “memoir”), I would probably dismiss this book out of hand. But the excerpt was pretty interesting as it flips between living in clusterfuck that was New Orleans post-Katrina, and telling the story of his brother who committed suicide.
But what makes this excerpt truly notable is the following anecdote. Here’s the setup: Cooper is in a bar in New Orleans a couple weeks after Katrina hits. Most of the people there are media types, law enforcement, and other government people…
The Scientologists are here, too. Kirstie Alley arrived with a bunch of them, and John Travolta is around as well. No one beats Steven Seagal, though. He’s not here with any group. I saw him late one night dressed in a cop uniform, out on patrol with some deputies from the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office. He’s been going out with their SWAT team. We talk a bit, and when he leaves he puts his palms together in front of his face and bows briefly. Then he hops in a cop car and speeds off.
“Seagal’s tight with the sheriff in Jefferson,” a New Orleans cop tells me later. “There’s a bar where a lot of cops hang out, and I remember a couple years ago Seagal comes in with those guys and takes out a framed 8-by-10 photo of himself and fucking hangs it on the wall.”
“Get out of here,” I say. “No way.”
“I shit you not,” he says. “As soon as he left, a couple of us took out our pistols and shot it. Blew the fucking thing off the wall. One bullet actually went right through and hit a car-rental place next door.”