Larry King could have given his new book, “Anything Goes!” any number of subtitles: “A Man and His Clicker,” “My Strange Love Affair With President Clinton … and Marlon Brando,” “Everything I Know I Learned at Lunch,” “Folksy Talk From the Guy Who Took Off the Filter.”
But here’s what he did subtitle it: “What I’ve Learned From Pundits, Politicians, and Presidents.” As it turns out, the host of CNN’s “Larry King Live” hasn’t learned a whole lot. And, bless his heart, he’s not afraid to admit it. “Always having an answer isn’t a good thing,” King writes. “Sometimes, you just gotta say ‘I don’t know.’”
There’s a lot King confesses he doesn’t know. (“I should look into owning the words ‘I don’t know,’” he muses, “since I use them all the time.”) In fact, he seems to revel in his own innocence. His political predictions, he admits, are nearly always wrong. And his news instincts are faulty at best: He never thought Clinton had a chance at the presidency, figured the O.J. Simpson case for a “two-, maybe three-day story” and “saw the Elián story as a 10-minute Judge Judy.” King depends on the fellows he frequently lunches with — some of whom are buddies from his Brooklyn, N.Y., childhood — to tell him when a news story is “a miniseries” or a flash in the pan.
Even as the talk show host is making news on his own show, he often hasn’t a clue that he’s doing so. Remember when, back in 1992, Dan Quayle told him he’d “support [his] daughter” if she ever decided to have an abortion and incited a major media pile-on? King still doesn’t think that was news. Or when Marlon Brando appeared on his show to take “the Jews [who] run Hollywood” to task about stereotyping minorities: “We’ve seen the nigger, we’ve seen the greaseball, we’ve seen the Chink, we’ve seen the slit-eyed dangerous Jap, we’ve seen the wily Filipino. We’ve seen everything, but we’ve never seen the kike”? King says he “never thought the exchange was going to create a problem for anyone.”
King seems to take a certain pride in having experienced so much and met so many people — interviewing world leaders, despots, comedians, movie stars — and having learned so little. He just asks the questions; he doesn’t have to understand the answers. “When you don’t have answers,” he writes, “there’s not much to say, unless, of course, you’re on a TV program.” Or, he might have added, writing a book.
King’s big revelation is this: “The most important invention of the twentieth century wasn’t the cure for polio or the Wright brothers’ flight or unleaded gasoline or talk shows. It was the remote control.” He learned this lesson from “60 Minutes” executive producer Don Hewitt. “Control is moving away from the outside and toward each of us,” King continues. “The clicker was the first step in that direction.” And while King admits that he couldn’t grasp this deep concept when Hewitt first conveyed it to him in the late ’80s (“I thought … he was crazy”), he has since seized upon it with impressive vigor, bringing it in as a leitmotif throughout this story and carrying it just that much farther.
“When I got back to my hotel that evening,” he writes, “I followed what has become a routine whenever walking into a room: Turn on lights and pick up the clicker and turn on the TV (I’m able to do this in any city and with any television: Sony, Philips, Magnavox, Panasonic — doesn’t matter).” He can use the clicker in any city, with any kind of TV? Amazing!
If all this clicker talk has images of Chauncey Gardner dancing in your head, you’re not the only one. King’s “Being There”-esque “Forrest Gump”-iness is his stock in trade. Those world leaders, despots, comedians and movie stars talk to him because he’s just a regular guy, a self-described Jew with a “simplistic view of the world via Brooklyn,” who can’t quite believe his good fortune in being able to sit across from them and — well, golly! — talk to them about stuff.
Consequently, these friendly folks open up to him like Forrest’s box of chocolates. He never knows what he’s going to get. One minute President Clinton is talking to him about loneliness, dating and his own interest in having a baby late in life, the next Bob Dole is confessing that he’s “in trouble” midcampaign. One minute he’s cruising the streets of Beverly Hills in Brando’s white Chevy, singing show tunes and swapping acting tips with the big man, the next he’s running into O.J. outside the courtroom in which he’s being tried for murder (“Juice, good to see you!”) and the next Slobodan Milosevic is congratulating him on the birth of his son, Chance. As King notes at the end of almost every chapter — and sometimes in the beginning and the middle, too — in these wacky times “anything goes.”
King has never claimed to be the brightest tube in the TV set (“Folks, it’s a talk show. It ain’t rocket science”), but he does claim to have changed history — with a little help from Clinton. “You know why I can stiff you on press conferences?” the president asked a roomful of radio and TV correspondents back in 1993. “Because Larry King liberated me by giving me back to the American people directly.” Things were different after the 1992 election, King says, because he removed the journalistic filter between the candidate and the public.
If King’s self-effacing formula works on TV, it’s less successful on paper. Viewers tune in to King’s show to hear what his guests have to say, but presumably they’re reading his book to find out what he has to say — and “I don’t know,” while honest, is not a particularly satisfying answer. The on-air interludes King relates in great number may be entertaining (Al Franken’s comments on the Monica Lewinsky scandal are classic), but on the whole, they’re not particularly fresh. The off-camera dish is a little bland and skimpily portioned. And the proposed solution to media overload he offers as dessert is less than wafer thin.
The boundary of when “too much” begins has disappeared. I grew up when there were three networks. Today we have hundreds of satellite-delivered networks, cable, the three original networks, and PBS. And we’re trying to learn how to make it all work. The first step, of course, is to put ESPN on the same cable or satellite channel in every city. Once we do that, the rest of this is a piece of cake.
I could be wrong, but I think he might be serious.
Who would’ve thought that Larry King’s post-CNN career would involve much more than a golf course and some guest lectures? The notoriously dry septuagenarian already raised eyebrows when he announced that he would embark on a comedy tour in April. Now, a new rumor circulating the Internet is even more bizarre: Larry King is in talks to join up with Jon Stewart on The Daily Show.
We’ll reiterate that this is a rumor. No one has come forward to confirm yet, but the New York Post has several anonymous sources vouching for the news. According to one such tipster:
A single conversation has happened. It’s still extremely preliminary. He’ll be on every now and again, like Lewis Black. He’s not joining as a correspondent but a contributor.
According to the unnamed informants, King would be joining in a limited, “contributor” role, rather than as a correspondent like John Oliver or Olivia Munn. Still, we’re going to wait for official confirmation before we start adjusting our DVRs to capture King in all his awkward, late-night glory.
Say what you will about Larry King — and there’s plenty to talk about — there’s nobody else like him. That’s why, when the star of CNN’s nightly live talk show since the dawn of the cathode ray announced Tuesday that he was stepping down, the ensuing torrent of speculation over who would replace him seemed a bit absurd. Joy Behar? Ryan Seacrest? (Whenever there’s an empty chair anywhere in the world, Ryan Seacrest’s ass gets a shot at warming it.) As if.
Soon, it’s true, someone else will have that coveted cable time slot. But no one will ever make a celebrity — and the viewing audience — head-scratch and squirm in quite the same way King does. With his unique blend of gruffness, softballing and baffling non sequiturs, he’s consistently managed to perplex his guests right into revealing their own hubris, insanity and creepiness. And whether you think that’s cause for goodbye or good riddance, you’ve got to admit, he’s given us some awesome water-cooler moments. Try that, Seacrest.
Carrie Prejean
The embattled beauty queen was likely looking for a little damage control when she went on his show in November 2009. But when the host brought up her lawsuit against the Miss California pageant, she informed him though a gritted smile that he was “being inappropriate” and threatened to stalk off. “Inappropriate King Live continues,” he shrugged.
Celine Dion
Truly the extended remix of WTF television moments, Dion’s nearly eight-minute 2005 post-Katrina crying jag/rant/musical number while King struggled to console her/connect the Frenchness of New Orleans and Montreal remains the gold standard of can’t look/can’t look away television interviews.
Jerry Seinfeld
When, in 2007, the occasionally less than super-prepared host asked Seinfeld, of his iconic sitcom, “You gave it up, right? They didn’t cancel you?” the comic half-jokingly gaped, “You’re not aware of this? You think I got canceled?… Do you know who I am?” Don’t bet on it, Jerry.
Tammy Faye Messner
Her face still heavily painted but her body ravaged with cancer and her voice unbearably frail, the notorious evangelist told King, “I don’t have any date written on me anywhere that says I’m going to die at any certain time. I just give it to the Lord.” She died the next morning.
Angelina Jolie
For all the times Larry misses the point, there’s always a guest who doesn’t quite get it either. So when King asked if it was true the actress carried around “a vial” of then-husband Billy Bob Thornton’s blood, she pshawed the notion — and then produced a “pressed flowers” pendant of her spouse’s red stuff. “Yeah, but it is blood,” King replied, speaking for every squicked-out viewer in America.
Snoop Dogg
Appearing on King’s show in March, the Snoop explained, “I’ve got a little space I call the Doggy Dizey in the front of the Kezetin, you know what I’m saying?” To which King unhesitatingly replied, “No, I don’t, Snoop.”
Marlon Brando
What can you say about the 1994 interview between the legendarily eccentric actor and the out of left field host except that King opened with, “You put your own makeup on today?” There were songs, kisses and Brando’s admission that he was only there because of a contractual obligation, although, “Aside from that, I’ve had pleasure talking to you. I wouldn’t lump you with others. You are exceptional.” We have to agree.
Larry King, as you might have already seen, just announced that he’ll give up his nightly CNN show this fall, putting an end to months — years, really — of speculation over when (and how) the broadcasting legend would make his exit.
The move, of course, feels long overdue. King has been eclipsed in the ratings by shows on cable channels that didn’t even exist when he began at CNN, and his style seems positively archaic. But while you’d never know it if you were introduced to his show this century — when a typical political discussion would involve Ben Stein, James Carville and a formulaic talk radio host or two — there was actually a time not too long ago when Larry King drove the national political conversation.
His show began on CNN in 1985, five years after Ted Turner christened “the news channel,” and long before the births of Fox News and MSNBC. King was an instant hit, but — at least in terms of politics — his transformative moment didn’t come until Thursday, Feb. 20, 1992. Politics was in the air: Two nights earlier, Paul Tsongas had held off Bill Clinton in the New Hampshire primary, leaving the Democratic presidential race unsettled. On the Republican side, a suddenly vulnerable George H.W. Bush had been humbled by Pat Buchanan’s strong showing (nearly 40 percent of the vote). The country was restive, thanks to a stubborn recession, and none of the candidates seemed to be catching on.
Against that backdrop, King looked at his guest, a diminutive 61-year-old Texas billionaire, and asked him if he might consider seeking the presidency that year. “I’m not asking to be drafted,” H. Ross Perot replied, but “if you (the people) want to register me in all 50 states, I’ll promise you this: Between now and the conventions, we’ll get both parties’ heads straight.”
Perot’s dare struck a chord. Within weeks, an army of volunteers had mobilized in every state, distributing petitions and collecting signatures to put Perot’s name on the ballot as an independent. Most of them had never heard of him before he sat down for his King interview. The movement grew. By late spring, Perot was running ahead of both Bush and Clinton in general election trial heats — uncharted territory for a modern independent candidate. Every story on television and in print that sought to explain the Perot phenomenon started in the same place: Larry King’s show.
For the rest of the ’92 campaign, King played host to some of the race’s most pivotal moments. When Bush and Clinton appeared, the whole media world seemed to stop. What would they say? Would there be another Perot moment? The Perot story fundamentally changed the way his show was regarded. King wasn’t a quirky nighttime host anymore; he was a brand-new national media powerhouse.
In the middle of the summer, Perot cracked up and backed out of the race. But by late September, he wanted back in. He called his volunteers to Dallas and invited big names from both the Clinton and Bush campaigns. If the volunteers were impressed with either party’s presentation, Perot said, he’d stay out of the race. But if they weren’t, he’d get back in. Oddly, the Bushies and Clintonites played along. Just about every reporter in the world was in Dallas for the meeting, but when it was over, Perot said nothing to them. The only interview went to Larry King.
In the final days of the race, Bush sat down for the full hour. He was trailing, but his numbers were — for the first time — showing some signs of life. But his old nemesis, Iran-Contra special counsel Lawrence Walsh, had just that day reindicted Caspar Weinberger. All of the old questions about whether Bush, as Reagan’s V.P., had been “in the loop” were back. King asked him about it a little, but Bush deflected his queries. But then he went to a caller, who began grilling the president relentlessly — names, dates, obscure details, penetrating questions. It was George Stephanopoulos, Clinton’s press aide. Bush called it a setup. King shrugged and said Stephanopoulos just happened to get through on the 800-number. Either way, the president’s last hopes for a comeback win were snuffed out.
King’s been a key part of CNN’s coverage of every election since 1992. Though his role — on the network and in the national conversation — seemed to diminish every time. But he had his moment, that’s for sure.
Steve Kornacki writes about politics for Salon. Reach him by email at SKornacki@salon.com and follow him on Twitter @SteveKornacki
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FILE - In this April 18, 2007 file photo, Larry King and his wife Shawn arrive to a party held by CNN celebrating King's fifty years of broadcasting, New York. ( AP Photo/Stuart Ramson, file)(Credit: AP)
Larry King’s wife is recovering from a prescription drug overdose last month, and news is circulating that it was suicide.
AP reports that after receiving a 911 call from Shawn King’s father, emergency medical workers found empty anti-anxiety medication bottles that she had reportedly gotten filled only 10 days earlier. Police also found a note saying she had taken the pills on purpose and one saying she wanted to be buried in Utah, her home.
Shawn is Larry King’s seventh wife and soon to be ex. The couple filed for divorce in April, after 13 years of marriage.
Baseball coach Hector Penate bragged he had sex with Shawn on Entertainment Tonight and CBS, saying that he slept on Larry’s bed all the time “I felt like it was my house,” he said. Frat boy coach aside, rumours have also surfaced that Larry King was fooling around with his wife’s sister, according to NYDaily News.
I don’t know how I wound up with a curiosity about Laura Bush, a figure I would otherwise not have spent much time considering. Maybe it was when I saw Tony Kushner’s 2003 play “Only We Who Guard the Mystery Shall Be Unhappy,” in which the “Angels in America” playwright depicted the Dostoevski-loving former first lady reading to a group of dead Iraqi children, an angel telling them, “Mrs. Bush is explaining why you are dead, and in addition to being married to the President of the United States she is also a smart lady, she was a librarian!”
Maybe I became intrigued after reading “American Wife,” Curtis Sittenfeld’s thinly veiled novel that imagines the life of a smart young woman from West Texas whose early path, marred by a tragic and deadly car accident, leads eventually to her marriage to an improbable president.
Maybe what has so beguiled me about Bush are the very things that also drew Kushner and Sittenfeld to her as a character. Laura Bush inherited an East Wing that had been recently torn up and renovated by Hillary Clinton to better reflect a post-second-wave America in which women were not simply helpmates and hostesses but also had their own identities, priorities and projects.
In ways that we rarely consider, Laura Bush filled out her role in a post-Hillary, pre-Michelle Obama timeline. She was the second first lady in history (though the second of three in a row) to hold a post-graduate degree, hers in library science. Single until the age of 30, Laura Welch went to college and graduate school and worked as a schoolteacher before she met and married George W. Bush, the black-sheep scion of the Texas Bush clan.
And while her marital decision is all most people need to know about Laura Bush, there were always vague suspicions — fueled by rumors that she smoked cigarettes on the sly, disagreed with her husband on policy and that she hated their eight-year stint in the White House, as well as by the obvious disparity between her husband’s reputation as a nincompoop and her reputation as a literature-loving intellectual (at least by contemporary White House standards) — that Laura Bush led the complicated life of someone who knew better than the person who was her more powerful partner.
But her supportive silence while her husband and his cronies drove the country into war and into debt, robbed its citizens of their civil liberties and compromised our reputation around the world left those who felt some sympathy for her in a quandary: A big brain and good taste in books don’t get you far in the moral universe if you stand by while people die and nations flag.
All this meant that I couldn’t look away from Laura’s appearance on “Larry King Live” on Tuesday, in which she talked about her new memoir, “Spoken From the Heart,” a book I have not yet read — despite my curiosity about her — mostly because I had it figured for a pasteurized fairy tale. Her candid conversation with King reignited my belief that there is something compelling, maddening and ultimately incomprehensible about Laura Bush.
She spoke to King about the car accident that took place two days after her 17th birthday, telling the host that Mike Douglas, the man in the car she killed on the way to a drive-in movie, was not her boyfriend but her “very good friend” whom she’d known since childhood and with whom she talked on the phone every night. I have read things people say about Laura Welch’s role in this accident — claims that she does not deserve sympathy because her carelessness took a life, that her rumored rebellious high school habits were to blame. But listening to her speak about the events as an adult, and not taking away from the damage she caused, it is very difficult to forget that this was a 17-year-old whose life was changed by a tragedy she caused.
Assured by King that she should feel no guilt about her friend’s death, Bush responded, “Well, I mean it was an accident … [but] it was my fault. I ran the stop sign … I was a very inexperienced driver and on a dark road and all those things, but still it doesn’t matter.” Combining the dumb passivity of a child with the emotional comprehension of a grown woman, Bush recalled that she never spoke to her friend’s grieving parents. “I never went over to his house,” she said. “My parents went over the next day. And no one ever really suggested I go see them. And I know it ruined their life.” Apparently, no one ever suggested that she seek any counseling after the accident either. “It was just how it was in 1963 in West Texas, where you just sort of swallowed your troubles and went on,” said Bush.
In another, less personal segment, King asked Laura Bush how she felt about some of the social issues on which her husband took damaging stands. And Bush weighed in as some imagined that she might on gay marriage and abortion. In a clip that has been posted on Gawker, she tells King of gay marriage, “I think there are a lot of people who have trouble coming to terms with that because they see marriage as traditionally between a man and a woman, but I also know that when couples are committed to each other and love each other they ought to have, I think, the same sort of rights that everyone has.” Yes, Bush assured King, this is an area where she disagrees with her husband, but she’s confident that her way of thinking will prevail. “It’s a real reversal … to accept gay marriage,” she said. “But I think we could, yeah. I think it’s also a generational thing … that will come, I think.”
As for abortion, Bush told King, “I think that it’s important that it remain legal. I think it’s important for medical reasons and for other reasons.” And here was another point of disagreement between the Bushes, and another instance in which their marital dynamic is utterly mystifying. “I really understand his viewpoint and he understands mine,” said Laura.
For those of us who cannot imagine differing with our life partners on issues so morally and emotionally crucial, Laura Bush’s willingness to remain tethered to her husband is a puzzle. But watching her speak to King, I could not help remembering words that Curtis Sittenfeld put in the mouth of Laura’s fictional doppelgänger, just after the heroine has revealed that she did not vote for her husband for president: “All I did is marry him. You are the ones who gave him power.”
Rebecca Traister writes for Salon. She is the author of "Big Girls Don't Cry: The Election that Changed Everything for American Women" (Free Press). Follow @rtraister on Twitter.
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Larry King interviews Celine Dion 
Larry King 
FILE - In this April 18, 2007 file photo, Larry King and his wife Shawn arrive to a party held by CNN celebrating King's fifty years of broadcasting, New York. ( AP Photo/Stuart Ramson, file)(Credit: AP) 
