We asked a fellow barfly what they made of Mr. Cooper's announcement. He looked around--Mr. Maisani was not in for the evening. "It was everything," he said, using slang for something beyond fabulous. "It was like--he wasn't even bothered. He was, like, why do you even care? So Wednesday Addams."

The celebrity community is far from unbothered; Mr. Cooper's friend Kathy Griffin wrote a long entry for The Daily Beast describing why she never "outed" her pal, despite much media interest. Andy Cohen, on whose Bravo talk show Mr. Cooper often appears, wrote a brief Tweet acknowledging Mr. Cooper's coming-out: "Well put, Anderson! #Mazel." Jesse Tyler Ferguson, an openly gay actor on Modern Family, sought to strongly associate himself with Mr. Cooper, writing "One of the reasons I look up to my friend@andersoncooper is his amazing eloquence." (Mr. Cooper's own last Tweet was in June, and about an interview with a cult member on the talk show Anderson).

In general, silence from conservatives on Mr. Cooper has been deafening: Brett Bozell of the Media Research Center got headlines in using an anti-gay slur about Cooper on Twitter, but shouldn't that position have been occupied by a Rush Limbaugh-level star? (Indeed, Mr. Limbaugh took the opportunity to mock CNN--not the gay community.)

Perhaps it really isn't that big a deal. As one of a group of men speaking outside Eastern Bloc last night noted, "There should be, like, a celebration here tonight. He should be here."

"He just came out," replied a friend. "He probably wants to keep a low profile."