I was at a party last night and a few folks asked me — in response to the previous post I suppose — why it is that no one ever makes fun of Larry King.
Now, I grant you, people sometimes goof on Larry’s softball interviewing techniques. But for someone who so often embarrasses guests by asking knuckleheaded questions which show he hasn’t the slightest idea what he and the guest are even talking about, you’ve gotta admit that Larry skates by pretty free. (If you need an example, see yesterday’s post.)
Well, here’s the scoop. There actually is a reason, just one that’s normally kept pretty close to the vest by insiders. But in honor of Larry’s much-hyped 45 years in show business, I think I have to let the cat outta the bag. So here goes.
The no-goofing-on-Larry rule, generally just abbreviated to no-goL among insiders, is actually a corollary of the Warhol Doctrine. You know, Warhol’s famous comment that “In the future, everybody will be world famous for fifteen minutes.”
Clearly, we now are in the future. And everyone is famous for at least fifteen minutes. And it follows from this that everyone will eventually make an appearance on Larry King. Everyone. Look, you may be a barkeep in some dive in Mobile. But you know as well as I do that eventually you’re going to make an appearance on Larry’s show. Don’t deny it!
So since everyone’s eventually going to have to face Larry, and since Larry seems such a hail-fellow-well-met, the price of pointing out that about half of Larry’s questions sound like they were conceived by a circus clown or a zoo monkey is actually pretty steep. And thus, absent truly brave souls like TPM, it just never happens.
