You may recall that Smashing Pumpkins frontman Billy Corgan appeared earlier this year on the cover of PAWS Chicago, a magazine published by Chicago's largest no-kill animal shelter. For cat lovers who grew up on a steady diet of alt rock in the '90s, it was purrfect.
Cradling his adopted cats Sammi and Mr. Thom, Corgan suddenly appeared in a new, softer light — perhaps the same one that Glenn Danzig fell under when he was photographed buying a box of cat litter. They may be rock icons, but they're also proud residents of Kitty City.
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Yet, Corgan, who raised $60,000 for PAWS last year, got no love from Anderson Cooper, who recently mocked the singer's appearance on Anderson Cooper 360.
“So perhaps Billy Corgan is, I don’t know, off his alternative rocker, but I think maybe there’s more to this. Maybe he’s being ironic, or maybe when the cool rock stars start doing less rock starry things, it kind of makes us face our own morality," Cooper said.
Painfully exposing his own neuroses about aging and the inevitability of death, Cooper continued: "See, I want R.E.M. to stay just the way I know and love them, I don’t want 'Everybody Hurts' to suddenly be used in an Excedrin commercial. I don’t ever want to see a product called Eddie Vedder’s Prune Jam. I want to see neither Stephen Malkmus nor Thom Yorke on the cover of AARP Magazine.”
Perhaps Cooper forgot that Corgan loves getting angry on the Internet as much as he loves cats, and he wasn't going to stand by while some mutt-loving jag disparaged his good work with felines:
@andersoncooper Sorry to disappoint, but when I'm not raising cain for a great organization like @PAWSchicago, I'm still making REAL music
— Billy Corgan (@Billy) October 31, 2014@andersoncooper I realize you're too busy being a globalist shill to know the difference, but there are those of us who do as we like
— Billy Corgan (@Billy) October 31, 2014Kitty has claws, Coop. (Pitchfork)