Anderson Cooper is not happy with Star Jones

It’s on!

It used to be Star Jones versus Rosie O’Donnell or versus Barbara Walters but now it’s Star “I’m a lawyer” Jones versus the Silver Fox himself, Anderson Cooper.

Star has angered Anderson with her allegation that he came out publicly as a gay man as a way to get ratings for his syndicated talk show Anderson Live.

Anderson shares with his daytime audience in a segment airing today that Jones is far off the mark.

‘I will say and I actually haven’t mentioned this, the only thing that did kind of annoy me and actually it annoyed my mom who brought it up to me, Star Jones of all people,’ he says to guest Andy Cohen who is also openly gay.

Cooper’s mom, of course, is Gloria Vanderbilt.

‘I haven’t thought about Star Jones in I don’t know how long,’ he added. ‘I was unaware she was even on TV still. But she apparently shows up on a morning show. Out of the blue Star Jones said this was a ratings ploy by me to boost ratings.’

If he had wanted to exploit his personal revelation for ratings, Cooper said he would have been much more savvy about it.

‘If I was wanting to boost ratings, I would have waited to announce it on ‘A Very Special Episode’ that would have been [promoted] for weeks and weeks and there would have been commercials: ‘Anderson’s Huge Announcement.’ and you would have a cut away of the audience but instead I was in Africa on assignment for 60 Minutes, I sent an email to a friend of mine who put it on a website. I gave no interviews about it, I never talked about it. I wasn’t even on the air for days afterward and so suddenly Star Jones, who as memory serves, in terms of boosting ratings, I seem to recall her hocking her wedding every single day to get free products when she was on The View and I seem to recall her lying about her gastric bypass surgery and making everybody else lie about it as well. So for her to suddenly emerge out of the shadows and suddenly attack me for this, I couldn’t believe it.”

‘And my mom was like, ‘Who is Star Jones?’ Anyway, so I can’t even believe I am bringing this up because I don’t even want to give Star Jones the attention.’

But he must’ve wanted to give her a little attention – and maybe get some ratings out of the fight because Anderson invited Jones, a former co-host of ABC’s The View, to appear on his show to discuss her comments but she declined.

‘I would think she would want as much publicity as possible given her penchant for wanting publicity,’ he tells Cohen.