On New Year’s Eve, we lost a television icon as Betty White passed from this world, less than three weeks before she would have celebrated her 100^th birthday. People magazine had published a cover photo of White beforehand and proudly proclaimed that the celebration was going to be amazing. Upon hearing of her passing, tons of people expressed their mourning at the loss of a legend and vowed to honor her life and her legacy.

Also on New Year’s Eve, during the celebration broadcast on CNN, Andy Cohen went on an alcohol-infused tirade about outgoing New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and about the celebration over on ABC led by Ryan Seacrest and that they were a bunch of “losers.” People did not publish a photo of Cohen beforehand but probably will have coverage of the mouthy queen in its next edition. Unlike with White, many of us wish we could lose Cohen or that he would drop dead.

New Year’s Eve is usually a time of jubilation as we watch one year come to a close and a new year—and with it new opportunities—waiting in the wings for its time to shine. After the last couple of years that we’ve had with the pandemic and an attempted insurrection, many of us were eager to see 2021 get a big boot out the door and bring in 2022 like a new friend. However, White’s death dampened the cheer, while Cohen’s drunken on-air stupidity annihilated it with hellfire and brimstone.

Seriously, what was the man thinking about going after de Blasio? It might surprise Cohen and others who live in the Big Apple, but those of us who don’t live in New York honestly don’t give a hoot about whether a mayor from there is liked or not. However, he let the tequila-infused state of mind dictate what came out of his mouth, and it probably lost CNN some viewers.

As if letting Cohen off his leash wasn’t enough, CNN apparently wasn’t watching its crawl at the bottom of the screen very carefully, as tweets from “Ben Dover” and “Dixie Normus” made it on air, which I’m sure will have its own reprisals. However, given the choice between the two, I think it’s Cohen that’s going to hurt CNN’s reputation more.

When we take a look at the careers of White and Cohen side-by-side, different patterns emerge. White was a master of timing, especially comedic timing, which is how she was able to be in starring roles in both “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” in the 1970s and “Hot in Cleveland” in the 2010s, with the ever-amazing “The Golden Girls” sandwiched in between the two.

Betty White also was a lover of animals, something always near and dear to my heart being a country boy, while also showing support for the LGBT community. Her controversies centered around having a black dancer on her variety show in the 1950s, not mouthing off about whether a mayor was worthy to have been in office. While White certainly had her raunchy and NSFW moments, they were carefully timed and not usually hastened by spirits.

Now, let’s look at Andy Cohen and his claim of fame—neverending iterations of reality series that have “real housewives,” most of them captivating my fiancé, Todd. These series show the women living it up and rarely show the wives cleaning the house, tending the children or balancing a checkbook. Their attempts at humor come through spontaneity, much like Cohen’s criticism on New Year’s Eve, which can be a more hazardous powder keg than when someone like White times zingers and digs.

On another note, Cohen, a gay man, really didn’t do much to bolster the reputation of the LGBT community—at least the G segment—with his antics. The next morning, he tweeted that he had been “overserved” last night instead of admitting he’d acted like a fool and apologizing for his stupidity. LGBT people have been working for decades to be seen as something other than heathens and sinners, and when someone like Cohen goes off the deep end, it really doesn’t move our people forward.

Not having cable, it was easy for me to avoid CNN’s New Year’s Eve train wreck, with me opting to watch the CBS New Year’s Eve Nashville festivities, watching country stars past and present perform some of my favorite songs and a few that I hadn’t heard before. It gave me a chance to fondly remember Betty White without the politics and hatefulness that came from other “personalities.”

There’s a moral to this story, and it should be painfully obvious to those who have made it to the end of this blog post—Andy Cohen really shouldn’t try to upstage Betty White. It’s clear he doesn’t have the talent for it.