If you ask me the real loser in last night’s Larry King Paris Hilton interview was Anderson Cooper who demonstrated a breath-taking degree of hypocrisy, smarminess, condescension and vacuousness while trying to condemn Paris Hilton for exactly those qualities himself.

Cooper’s show followed the inane P.H. interview on Larry King and he tried to have it both ways: he tried to communicate he was so above it all by adopting a barely concealed contempt for the whole thing. And yet he did an entire hour analyzing the interview, attempting to plumb the depths of the profound question: “Who is the real Paris Hilton?”–complete with “expert” panel!.

Who did he think he was fooling? If you thought it was so beneath you, then refuse to do it, show some spine, tell your CNN bosses you won’t stoop so low to pump up your ratings.

But nooo…Instead he resorted to taking cheap shots at Paris Hilton as if this would prove what a deep heavy-hitting intellectual he was.

For instance, in addressing P.H.’s claim that she was going to become a more serious person, Anderson Cooper demanded of his panel: “Why hasn’t she been substantial up to now!”

SO hard-hitting!

Then he actually had the nerve to ask, “should she have been doing an hour interview?”

How about this question for you, Anderson: why are you doing an hour show about the interview? Who’s the media whore here?

Then he has the nerve to diss Paris Hilton’s letter to her fans from jail by saying, “It’s not like [Martin Luther King Jr.’s] ‘Letter from a Birmingham Jail’”.

Duh! Pathetic exploitation of Martin Luther King to add to your own self imagined gravitas, Anderson. Your hour long “analysis” of the interview that’s so beneath you isn’t like Edward R. Murrow either, is it?

How insecure, self righteous and self aggrandizing. if CNN is to be condemned for doing the interview in the first place, then Anderson Cooper should be doubly condemned by trying to leech off it while pretending he’s somehow better than it all.

But in fact his agenda is so obvious someone should take him aside and tell him what a fool he makes of himself as he lectures Paris Hilton about how–after being born into wealth and privilege–she’s lived such an insubstantial life.

Because you Anderson Cooper were also born into wealth and privilege and look what you’ve made of your life: you’re doing an hour long show about someone else’s hour long show about Paris Hilton. Who’s wasting his talent? Who’s “the real Paris Hilton”?