Last Monday Anderson Cooper was on an airplane and saw a flyer who was barefoot. He tweeted about it..
The guy is clueless.
Here’s the tweet:
@andersoncooper: Taking red eye back to ny. The guy across from me is barefoot. I find that obnoxious. Is that odd? #putsomesockson
Just what kind of problem does he have? And why would he think that putting some socks on is some sort of solution?
Yes, flying barefoot is pretty rare, but flying in flip-flops sure isn’t. And you can be darn sure that if they guy had been wearing flip-flops Cooper wouldn’t have had a second thought.
It’s all a mental thing (and in this case, Cooper is acting “mental”). When wearing flip-flops, just as much of the foot is exposed as when one is barefoot. If feet somehow emitted some sort of magic death ray, they’d do so in flip-flops as much as when completely barefoot.
And then the retweets were (mostly) equally clueless. A few:
@reevsaj: Nasty
@Jamiemichelle16: Gross!
@oomaehmaeh: Ish.
@CeliaTweets2: No, it isn’t odd ~ I would find that to be obnoxious, too.
Again, as much as the foot is exposed as with flip-flops, yet they never seem to find that obnoxious.
Yes, flip-flops do protect the sole, but they do not hide the exposure of the sole. When sitting, they’ll flop down exposing the sole; when walking, they’ll also flop and the sole can be seen.
What seems to somehow bother these pelmatophobes is the thought of the skin of the sole touching the ground.
You know, there’s a reason for skin. It is what protects us. It keeps the outside out and our insides in. That’s what it does. And it’s not as if the rest of their skin is being kept pristine. If they are wearing short sleeve shirts they are sharing the germs of the other people sharing the same arm rest. Heck, if they are wearing shorts, they’re sharing the germs from the seat they are sitting on. And if they went to the bathroom, they are touching with their hands doorknobs and faucets and all sorts of other things with a plethora of germs on them, including E. Coli.
And then they use those very same hands to hold food, to wipe their eyes, and to pick their noses. I don’t know about you, but I never use my toes to pick my nose. π
Somehow, all these people have had it ingrained in them that there is something extraordinary (i.e., obnoxious) about feet doing what feet do. It seems to be something that logic cannot penetrate.
Ahcuah 
Anderson Cooper has changed over the years. I used to think of him as a credible journalist. Now I think he’s just another junk news idiot.
Who the hell is Anderson Cooper and why should we care a groat what he thinks about feet.
BTW, I don’t know about the USA, but in the Soviet Union about 20 year ago sockless and sandalled men were frowned upon, it was considered very informal if proper at all.
Anderson Cooper is one of the evening anchors on CNN here in the U.S. He is also the son of Gloria Vanderbilt.
He was born in 1967, so he may not remember the peak of when people were going barefoot everywhere. But he must remember the mid to late 1970s, and there were still plenty of people going barefoot then, even if it was a fraction of what was going on during the early part of the decade. Or he was not paying attention. I wonder what he would have thought of this, from 1968:
http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=uHQeAAAAIBAJ&sjid=jckEAAAAIBAJ&pg=1260,4321953&dq=barefooted&hl=en
And is is he bothered by beaches? Since he is a journalist, he should have better than average critical thinking skills. Or maybe not.
Oh, I remember visiting the Vanderbilt estate in North Carolina, and even buying some local wine there. The castle was IMHO quite tasteless and the wine sour. Maybe the guy is a moron?
I replyed with ” Would it made any differance if he were wearing flip flops”?
The problem is not Anderson, it is most of our society today sees barefoot as disgusting, as soon as you put on flip-flops – magic, no one will even look at you twice. Don’t you guys know, these days humane beings are born with shoes already on their feet? I walk barefoot all day long, and do not give a hoot about what Anderson, or the queen of England say about it.
Long live the barefoot community…