Forbes To Speak, Settle Imaginary Beef With Anderson Cooper

SPEC is bringing Steve Forbes to campus to speak at Irvine Auditorium on November 3rd. Lots of info here. Sounds like fun!

Now, we know what we have to gain from this - an engaging speech about politics and the economy from a guy who has a magazine named after him. It's basically just him and Oprah when it comes to people with their own magazines, right? Well, them and Robert Entertainment Weekly. But why did Forbes agree to speak to Penn students? What's he getting out of this? Not money - he's got lots of that. And we bet it's not because he just wanted to talk about his crush on the flat tax or how the economic crisis is going to affect all our lives as we graduate and look for jobs. He did it to stick it to Anderson Cooper. Warning: we're just guessing with all this, but we're really good at guessing things so follow along.

Everybody flipped out when Anderson Cooper came to speak last year. Forbes probably heard the chants and shrieks of "SILVER FOX, SILVER FOX" directed at Cooper and realized that somehow he was not at the top of the gray-haired-hunk charts. He thought and he thought and he came to the (correct) conclusion that the way into the hearts of the young ladies of America would be to beat Cooper at his own game by also doing a speaking engagement at a venue with an 11,000 pipe Curtis Organ. So he's been practicing, guys. He is going to bring his A-game. He has to. And maybe this will lead to The Walkmen bringing THEIR A-game three days later once the bar has been raised to the level of Cooper-crushing excellence Forbes is going to try his best to achieve. Everybody wins! (Except Anderson Cooper, but whatever.)