January 23, 2021
"A son of European immigrants who grew up in Brooklyn and never went to college, Mr. King began as a local radio interviewer and sportscaster in Florida in the 1950s and ’60s, rose to prominence..."
"... with an all-night coast-to-coast radio call-in show starting in 1978, and from 1985 to 2010 anchored CNN’s highest-rated, longest-running program, reaching millions across America and around the world. With the folksy personality of a Bensonhurst schmoozer, Mr. King interviewed an estimated 50,000 people of every imaginable persuasion and claim to fame — every president since Richard M. Nixon, world leaders, royalty, religious and business figures, crime and disaster victims, pundits, swindlers, 'experts' on U.F.O.s and paranormal phenomena, and untold hosts of idiosyncratic and insomniac telephone callers.... His personal life was the stuff of supermarket tabloids — married eight times to seven women; a chronic gambler who declared bankruptcy twice; arrested on a fraud charge that derailed his career for years; and a bundle of contradictions who never quite got over his own success but gushed, star-struck, over other celebrities, exclaiming, 'Great!' 'Terrific!' 'Gee whiz!' He made no claim to being a journalist... he rarely asked anyone, let alone a politician or policy maker, a tough or technical question, preferring gentle prods to get guests to say interesting things about themselves. To former President Nixon: 'When you drive by the Watergate, do you feel weird?'
To former President Ronald Reagan: 'Is it, for you, frustrating to not remember something?'
To Donald J. Trump, when he was still best known as a real estate mogul: 'Does it have to be buildings?'
He bragged that he almost never prepared for an interview. If his guest was an author promoting a book, he did not read it but asked simply, 'What’s it about?' or 'Why did you write this?'"
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"With" Covid?
I would have guessed 97.
For some reason, Seinfeld decided to call out King for his obtuse schtick.
Who grew up in Brooklyn and never went to college? The son of the European immigrant parents?
He bragged that he almost never prepared for an interview. If his guest was an author promoting a book, he did not read it but asked simply, 'What’s it about?' or 'Why did you write this?'"
Best way to interview people, let them do the talking. Prepping is so the interviewer can spar over minutia with the interviewee and make his/herself look good.
CNN is using Larry's death to humanize and sentimentalize themselves.
Given how much he looked like Ruth Bader Ginsburg, will he also lie in state at the Capitol?
Didn't he die a Long time ago? (i'm basing this on his "file photo" our tv news used)
I'm sure Biden will pay tribute to him with a long, rambling eulogy that contains a reminiscence of that time he kicked Larry's ass and stole his girlfriend back in 1969.
Seinfeld encountered the stupidity of both Larry King and Howard Stern (who boasts about his preparation). King to Seinfeld: whose idea was it to end your show, yours or the network's? Seinfeld goes on a rant: no network has ever cancelled a number one show, etc. can someone bring Larry some notes, do you even know who I am?
Stern: You had low ratings at first. Yes. Was there talk of cancelling? No. You could have low numbers as long as you had the right demographic, and we did. What about today--would you say today a network would be more likely to cancel? No, it's the same today. You can have low numbers as long as you have the right demographic.
Does the media have to be comfortingly stupid?
Schmoozer is the mot juste. I wasn't much of a fan but I watched him some back in the day, and was surprised to find him on RT (RussiaTV) in the channel lineups in the NE and in Europe--along with Chris Hedges.
To take it up a notch, intellectually, Brian Lamb of CSpan (who deserves a lot of credit I think as a manager) is almost unwatchable for me. I can understand that King didn't prepare, but Lamb shouldn't have that excuse--he is an educated man and interviews (generally) serious people.
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Eight wives? Younger and hotter each time?
I tend to like to watch interviews. But I could never get particularly interested in Larry King's popular interviews. That says something about him or something about me. I'm going with him and I think it has to do with "breezy." Watching his interviews was like reading People magazine.
I thought he was a lot older.
Stern: You had low ratings at first. Yes. Was there talk of cancelling? No. You could have low numbers as long as you had the right demographic, and we did. What about today--would you say today a network would be more likely to cancel? No, it's the same today. You can have low numbers as long as you have the right demographic.
That is actually a good question and a good answer.
Years ago saw him at Morton's in DC. He was having dinner with Wonder Woman Lynda Carter. He was already a shrunken head. She was smoking hot.
He kind of dirtied up his legacy with all of those infomercials, and the like. But I guess he liked to stay busy, and who can blame him. He obviously cared more about that.
I guess his prostate isn't driving him nuts anymore.
He seemed like a good guy and was never too political, which is a requirement these days.
But it also seemed that he would pitch every product imaginable...
He was a great interviewer. He had the one key skill most interviewers lack: shutting up and letting the other person do the talking.
I thought 87 years of age was in his rear view mirror. He was a fossil.
I never liked anything he did. He was always 15 minutes late with the predictable soft-ball question to some cream-puff celebrity.
To take it up a notch, intellectually, Brian Lamb of CSpan (who deserves a lot of credit I think as a manager) is almost unwatchable for me. I can understand that King didn't prepare, but Lamb shouldn't have that excuse--he is an educated man and interviews (generally) serious people.
Was Lamb typically unprepared? I don't remember him that way. In his interviews with authors, he'd have pages bookmarked for reference, reading out passages for reaction.
Did he also take the vaccine two weeks ago?
I thought the timing on Hank Aaron's death was unfortunate. Just making sure there's not a pattern.
Wow do you remember when CNN had a whole show that wasn’t about politics! And then King would interview people who weren’t in DC and weren’t on just to talk about DC 30 hours a day! Seems like 87 years ago.
Norway is now suggesting that the vaccine not be given to the frail elderly as they have had several deaths that autopsies showed could be attributed to the vaccine in that cohort.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-01-16/norway-vaccine-fatalities-among-people-75-and-older-rise-to-29
Siri is trying very hard to keep me from googling beyond their assertion that the vaccine is perfectly safe for people over 80. I am early sixties and it made me kind of sick for a day. I imagine that the effect would be worse were I twenty years older.
He sat in front of us at Dodger Stadium after the last remodel, and liked to shuffle in late and leave early. Just like a native Los Angelino does. He was amazingly tiny IRL. Like most celebrities.
I loved listening to Larry at night back when. Didn't watch his CNN show much. But in the days of his late night radio show, he was a great listen.
"The reports suggest that common adverse reactions to mRNA vaccines, such as fever and nausea, may have contributed to worsening of their underlying diseases and a fatal outcome in some frail patients," the Norwegian Medicines Agency told CBS News' Steve Berriman. "The patients died from their underlying disease."
I guess it’s like if I need oxygen to live, and the machine breaks down, the machine breakdown didn’t kill me, my condition did... Seems like kind of a judgement call with the thumb on the scale to me. I bet a jury would think differently.
"European"?? I don't think so. Integration is not a done deal. The EU has a central government, external borders, a common currency (boo!!!), citizenship and a constitution. It needs a more massive military force. But so what. The EU is not a real country. The people have a common history, shared institutions and a shared political discourse. The people (outside of Scandinavia) are basically a single racial group. But there are serious cultural and religious fault lines. If anything, the EU is more like the Holy Roman Empire than a real country.
Also, Larry King was a "European Jew"? Is this term okay? I'm sure his people lived in the same country for thousands of years. At a certain point they became Poles or Russians or whatever. Is the obituary implying that Ashkenazi Jews are somehow outside of Europe, not of it? Isn't this anti-Semitic?
I would tune in for specific guests. He wasn't afraid to ask the obvious questions. He wasn't Everyman, but he asked every man type questions.....Larry King was mildly likable and almost smart. He never overshadowed his guest. I can see why so many A-list celebrities and politicians wanted to appear on his show. They were better looking, wiser, funnier in the context of a King interview.
"s the obituary implying that Ashkenazi Jews are somehow outside of Europe, “
My theory is that they are the descendants of tens of thousands of Jewish slaves who were brought back to Rome after the sacking of Jerusalem, the ones who built the Coliseum for example, which is why their history centers on Italy. They probably married local women, if that doesn’t make them European by now...
Hank Aaron's passing is a LOT more important than the passing of the scuzzy Larry King (former host of the Larry King Barely Alive Show, now host of the Larry King No Longer Alive Show).
He went to work for Putin's official propaganda arm, RT, Russia Today. Completely out in the open about it, and the leftist MSM were fine with that because he's one of them.
This would be like the Washington Post and Wall Street Journal accepting advertising income in the millions for inserts disguised as news stories from the Chinese Communist Party while giving them a pass on genocide.
Oh, wait, they did that.
I thought he was fun to listen to, but it's not OK to work for anti-American demoralization campaigns run by dictators. He was Larry King: he could go anywhere. Instead, he decided to capstone his career by becoming a traitor to his country.
He was great to listen to late at night. I'm not saying I didn't enjoy him: I'm just appalled that he did it.
Tim in Vermont, I always wondered why Judaism didn't spread in Europe. It had a massive head start on Christianity and something like 10% (maybe even 20%) of Italy and Greece's population was Jewish in the first century. Conversion to Judaism was so popular in Greece (even up to the tenth century), that it was outlawed.
But Tina which outlet is NOT in the propaganda business, CNN or RT?
True, Mike. However, RT is an official Russian channel.
I guess Ted Turner has offloaded both CNN and Jane Fonda.
And then there's PBS, which funnels millions to the seven-figure "Marxist" broadcasters at Democracy Now!
So we have innumerable unofficial chicom channels and an official Russia channel. I’m much more concerned with the former because the latter is declared openly. Biden will make life much easier on both principal actors behind our media just as Obama did before Trump (BT). That marker (BT and AT) already stands for much different things, depending on where you sit.
White supremacy here? A post for Larry King, but none for a black man at least as famous: Hank Aaron?
You may be right about that. RT is interesting: it markets demoralization stories to both the libertarian-right and the leftist-Democrats.
I remember watching King on RT and thinking how incredibly old he looked. People who keep working until they're virtually human husks are interesting. It does also sound strange that he didn't get a degree, given his background, but high school back then was like college now, and the dreaded journalism schools hadn't crawled from the bowels of hell yet when he was a yout.
Rush Limbaugh, for example, started out as a disc jockey, and the man is the best literary critic alive in America today.
"A post for Larry King, but none for a black man at least as famous: Hank Aaron?"
And a Milwaukee Brewer no less.
Larry had the best seats at Dodgers Stadium. Smack dab behind home plates.
Let us all hunch our shoulders like vultures for a minute in tribute.
Hank had a cup of coffee with the Brewers. It’s like saying Willie Mays was a Met.
Robin Yount is the greatest Brewer, followed by Paul Molitor.
The Hammer was a Brave.
Larry King was never good at riddles.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZMkBiYaXQ4
"People who keep working until they're virtually human husks are interesting."
I think he had to keep working to pay a LOT of alimony : )
"Larry had the best seats at Dodgers Stadium. Smack dab behind home plates."
Well, only one plate but a typo I'm sure. I don't like seats behind home plate because of the net.
Much prefer 1st or 3rd base box seats.
Once I had seats on the actual field level...part of two rows of seats built on the foul ball warning track right next to the home dugout. My son loved them as all the players went into and out of the dugout only ten feet away from him, and we could look into the dugout.
Also, my wife was living in Atlanta when Aaron broke Ruth's record...she was at the game.
Here in Georgia, it's around the clock coverage of Hank Aaron. He spent his post-baseball life doing good deeds in the west-side and making good money and being a lovely, classy man. I just barely remember when he broke Babe Ruth's record, but it's one of the only times I ever saw my dad cry.
Al Downing has some very nice things to say about him in the NYTimes.
My Italian grandfather, a plumber, went to his grave hating three things: the Mafia (which shook him down every week), the Dodgers (for moving from Brooklyn) and Martin Scorsese (for glamorizing the Mafia). He wouldn't let his daughters listen to Johnny Mathis because, you know, although he never used abusive language, and he went through a hell of a lot of sheer violence as the last Italian person working in parts of Bed Sty near the end.
But he also cried when Hank Aaron surpassed Babe Ruth. A hard life, but a life well-lived. Both of them.
The politicization of sports is evil.
Good point, Joe Smith. Larry King indeed may have had enough wives from the Fifties, Sixties, and Seventies to need to work for a foreign dictator in order to pay alimonies.
Ben Stein is another guy like that. He's married and re-married the same woman more than once, and he worships her, but he still practically places singles ads in his American Spectator columns begging women to take him out to dinner and blackmail him later. At the risk of sounding prejudiced myself, based on personal experience, it's the syndrome.
"He wouldn't let his daughters listen to Johnny Mathis because, you know, although he never used abusive language, and he went through a hell of a lot of sheer violence as the last Italian person working in parts of Bed Sty near the end."
Did I miss something? This bit about Mathis makes no sense. Maybe it's just me.
Are you saying Mathis was banned because he is black? Because he certainly isn't Italian (well, maybe Sicilian) : )
"Ben Stein is another guy like that. He's married and re-married the same woman more than once, and he worships her, but he still practically places singles ads in his American Spectator columns begging women to take him out to dinner and blackmail him later. At the risk of sounding prejudiced myself, based on personal experience, it's the syndrome."
Maybe those gals are just trying to 'Win Ben Stein's Money.'
I agree with the commenters who liked King on the radio. I grew up in the 80's, and enjoyed his interviews. I had no idea what he looked like.
Concerning Hank Aaron, here's a video of Vin Scully calling Aaron's historic home run. This is beautiful to watch, and hear:
https://youtu.be/QjqYThEVoSQ
Yes, Joe Smith, my mom told me that she and her three sisters hid their Johnny Mathis albums in a hole in the wall in their closet because he was a moulinyan, as it were. Ironically, I now have these same albums in the back of my closet, because what am I going to do, get a record player?
Of course, meanwhile, my grandfather was utterly brutalized in the ghettos where he worked, and so were they. My mother was the last white child in an all-black school and had to be escorted from class to class for her safety until they could escape to Yonkers, which is now largely another shit-hole for government dependents despite all the damn hard work they put into their lives there. So. Some people do have some Archie Bunker right to harbor tit for tat, though I never heard a single member of my extended family say a bad word about another race, and I would have been severely punished for doing so.
Tat isn't for tit on the other hand, is now richly rewarded. We're living through the new anti-white leftist klan years, and far worse is coming.
It wasn't because Mathis was gay. Or, as my grandmother, rolling her eyes to heaven whenever Liberace came on Johnny Carson, used to say, without saying an actual word about gayness: "That Liberace, he is so good to his mother." Same saying for certain priests. That was an entirely closed code and a mystery to me for a long time. Now I entirely understand Saturday Night Fever too.
" always wondered why Judaism didn't spread in Europe”
Too many laws. I think there are over 600 of them. The Apostle Paul made a politically shrewd decision in reducing the number of laws to 10 for Christians, including the part about not having to have your peter go under the knife of the moyle.
"Yes, Joe Smith, my mom told me that she and her three sisters hid their Johnny Mathis albums in a hole in the wall in their closet because he was a moulinyan, as it were."
I remember my Italian grandfather well...not overtly prejudiced, but if you weren't Italian you were suspect.
Watching 'Mrs. Maisel' I always assumed the Shy Baldwin character is supposed to be a more macho Mathis.
RIP Homerun King! (Not that I ever cared about homeruns and all that, but he was apparently a fine person.)
RT does some impressively slick propaganda in furtherance of Putin's (boo! hiss!) and Russia's (hiss! boo!) goals, to be sure. Real professionals. I was particularly struck by their use of Total Tool and Fraud Chomsky (presented as One Of The World's Greatest Intellects)--the dimwit who declared that Trump obviously stole the win in 2016 with the help of Putin "using undetectable means"-- though not to the RT cameras.
CSpan Lamb often had things marked up to ask about, OK; but too many of his questions were IMO off-the-wall and didn't show much grasp of the topic.
I hung out briefly with Ben Stein once at an ALA conference; he seemed like a really friendly guy.
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I still have his autograph and best wishes in some pile around here
They probably married local women, if that doesn’t make them European by now.
Last time I looked, the genetics pegged them as European in the female line (mtDNA) and Semitic in the male line (Y-DNA).
"Also, my wife was living in Atlanta when Aaron broke Ruth's record...she was at the game."
This would be a great story if you saw her on TV, and knew you had to have that girl.
I bet Althouse would love Mrs. Maisel now that she Netflixes. I'm sort of an America's Top Models/Queer Eye low-rent viewer when I'm not re-reading Daniel Deronda and the related historicist texts to get the most out of renewing Britbox, so I'd even recommend Glow, but then again, I have absolutely no standards.
Mrs. Maisel is great period-piece drama, if far too self-congratulatory, white ethnic, Daughters of Bilitis silly school butch feminist. It gets that manic "let's put on a show" thing of Vaudeville and how its relevance sustained Jewish performers through the Sixties.
I love Ben Stein but I'm not a six-foot blonde Shiksa with expensive collagen payments and a Goodbye Columbus fetish, so I doubt he'd notice me. He's still a fine example of a reformed and dedicated human being, no pun intended.
More importantly, Hank Aaron dead at 86.
Couldn't stand talk radio so never listened to him.
I though he was pretty good in the Shrek movies though. Not a big part, but memorable.
(BTW, if Seinfeld hated him, why was he in Bee Movie?)
"Last time I looked, the genetics pegged them as European in the female line (mtDNA) and Semitic in the male line (Y-DNA).”
That plus the historical record of the sack of Jerusalem by the Romans and their transportation of huge numbers of slaves back to Rome, including the ancient plaque that stands to this day in the Coliseum noting that it was built by Jewish slaves and with the wealth taken from Solomon’s temple in Jerusalem sort of makes my case, I think.
"This would be a great story if you saw her on TV, and knew you had to have that girl."
Well, she was 12 at the time and I was 13 and living in a different part of the U.S.
I have always suspected that Downing threw him a fat pitch over the middle.
Why not? His name will be forever linked to greatness.
I now have these same albums in the back of my closet, because what am I going to do, get a record player?
Yes Yes and hell Yes, never been a better time for vinyl. Good turntables are available for $150 that will send the signal to a TV sound bar/surround system, which for my well trained ear, puts out far better sound than “stereo systems” that cost me $1000s back in the day. My Polk Audio bar with subwoofer was on sale for $129 and it is the next best thing to hearing an act live. Just cause there’s nothing good on TV doesn’t mean all this great equipment is useless!
Glenn Beck did a fabulous parody 25-30 years ago of Larry's show. There was lots of lead-in and inside joke and mild insults of a few conservatives and then Larry interviewed - Angie Dickinson.
I recall in the early 90s King taking a caller who started to complain about media bias, to which Larry responded "There is no conspiracy caller" and then hung up. I didn't know hat a motte-and-bailey argument was, then, but that one's a classic. And as you just mentioned Journolist, it seems there was something of a conspiracy after all.
Larry King has shamed the honored title of Village Idiots by getting too big for himself and going on to be a County Idiot, a Radio Idiot, and finally a National Idiot.
Fitting that HA did it against the Dodgers so that Vin Scully would be there for the play by play. MLB lucky lucky to have the both of them (as might be phrased in Brooklyn).
"Why didn't Judaism spread more in Europe?"
'Too many laws.'
I find the one about pork to be the most unreasonable, myself.
Tom Holland's "In the Shadow of the Sword" is fascinating on the cultural and religious stew that was the Middle East in the centuries between Jesus and Mohammad, and how mixed the identities were--Jews, Christians, Jewish Christians and Christian Jews is how he puts it, IIRC, working out their differences [haha] in the scholarly centers of Asia Minor, mostly, and spreading east across to India and beyond . . . The opening vignette of his book is an account of the death of the last Jewish king in Arabia.
I've been trying to find a reliable sitrep about BOTG in Syria, but most of what ****le shows me is old whinges on the theme OMB. If what I fear is true, the Permawar Uniparty will continue the innovative Lil Bush policy of Crusades for the benefit of Islam.
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About as Jewish as I am Neanderthal
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Sorry for the extry spaces and doublename. It just struck me that I've met or known of people like Dr. Rosenthal, or Professor Gruenthal, but never a Herr or Fraulein Neanderthal.
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Narr von Neanderthal has a nice ring
I found the hypothesis that you have to be literate to be a Jew to be more convincing as to why it didn't spread further.
Built in IQ tests preventing lesser Euros like the Irish from ever being good Jews.
It was comforting to be alone in a foreign county in a hotel room and find Larry King on with some celeb. I liked that people from far away lands would call in to his show. Made the world a little smaller in an era when that was a good thing...
Bagged a bunch of hot wives too...
yes I found that a very interesting book, narr, holland put all three religions under scrutiny, guess which one drew the most blowback,
I thought King not too swift but as an interviewer, he let his guests speak and for that he is HEAD AND SHOULDERS above the horrible Terry Gross of NPR -- who asks leading questions that put the answer right into the guest's mouths.
THEOLDMAN
I really don't know who I like as an interviewer -- certainly not any of the 60 Minutes stooges, not Baba Walters,...who is left? I don't listen to Joe Rogan and the latest ones so I plead ignorance on their talent. P.S. Larry King once had a caller who asked him why he (King) painted his bald spot. It's a hilarious segment.
Another King compliment to be bestowed on someone: "He never stole a freight train." The late Neil Rogers of WQAM, who worked at the same station as King during the latter's radio days, mocked King relentlessly with soundbites.
THEOLDMAN
Kevin pollak, who is terrific in ms maisle, used to do a 2 hour interview show on YouTube.
One of the rules was that at the end of the show each guest had to do their best "bad" Larry King impression the go to a caller from a town with a funny name.
Jason Alexander does a really good one here about fungigel for yeast infections and it's surprisingly nutty taste.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-w8WD9zDing it's the last 5 minutes.
Larry David, having agreed in advance, played the asshole and refused.
Lots of other great impressions, though.
I liked Larry a lot on radio. He was OK on TV with a good guest but I always thought he was more of a late night radio guy.
I have no problem with him not prepping. It's one style of several. He made it work well for him I thought.
Oh, Gross. Terry, I mean. THE OLDMAN reminded me of how cringeworthy her ramblings are . . .
how the hell is she a success?
We're now back to normalcy in one way at least--they don't have interviews or pressers as with Trump, they are granted audiences as with Obama.
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Because D cock doesn't suck itself
Forgot. I caught the BBC segment on King, which included snippets with young Trump and tutted about his RT work.
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Slow news day
"I found the hypothesis that you have to be literate to be a Jew to be more convincing as to why it didn't spread further.
Built in IQ tests preventing lesser Euros like the Irish from ever being good Jews."
The racist bigot strikes again.
Everybody knows the Irish are terrible writers /sarc.
"Hello Sheboygan, Wisconsin ... you're on the air."
"I found the hypothesis that you have to be literate to be a Jew to be more convincing as to why it didn't spread further.
Built in IQ tests preventing lesser Euros like the Irish from ever being good Jews."
The racist bigot strikes again.
Everybody knows the Irish are terrible writers /sarc.
>>
What do you call a dumb Jew?
A: A Christian.
My uncle was a friend of Larry King back in high school in Bensonhurst - one of the Brooklyn Warriors. Shortly after CNN kicked him off King was in Florida opening a Brooklyn Bagel store and visited with my uncle and another childhood friend retired in Florida. He asked them what they did with their time. They told him they went to doctors. Shortly after that he found another gig with RT.
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