That was the best line in Larry King’s interview of Jon Stewart. I didn’t quite get the point of the interview, except as a study in contrasts: the dumbest and the smartest man in the news, and both are dealing in completely fake news.
Stewart did do an excellent job of putting King in his place, though.
Yeah, King is one of the lamest interviewers on TV. Some of his questions are just bafflingly stupid and it was so nice to see a guest who reacted in such an honest way.
I think the point of the interview was simply that Stewart was in LA to host the Oscars, so there he is on Larry King’s show.
I saw most of that interview, and it was great. I don’t think I’ve seen a bad interview with Stewart (remember the Crossfire incident?). He always comes off as very reasonable and level-headed, and doesn’t mind saying what he’s thinking
it’s not that Larry King asks stupid questions. It’s that he’s a horrible interviewer. He only lobs softballs and is incapable of forcing his subject to confront a challenging, difficult question. Tim Sebastian of the BBC is everything an interviewer should be, but you’ll never find his like in the emasculated US media.
My favorite King question: “So how does it feel to have your son murder your parents?”
Favorite Stewart notion: the Mess o’ potamia.
Precisely. Jon Stewart was just promoting his appearance as host of the Oscars, nothing more.
it’s not that Larry King asks stupid questions. It’s that he’s a horrible interviewer. He only lobs softballs and is incapable of forcing his subject to confront a challenging, difficult question. Tim Sebastian of the BBC is everything an interviewer should be, but you’ll never find his like in the emasculated US media.
I wish we could lend you Jeremy Paxman (notorious for asking one particularly evasive politician the same question 17 times in order to try to get a straight answer). It’s depressing in many ways that the best TV interviewing in Britain is done by the state-sponsored broadcaster…
Jon Stewart asked the wrong question. It should have gone this way:
KING: You don’t want Medicare to fail?
STEWART: Are you an idiot?
KING: Yes.
Stewart is smart, well-informed, and compulsively funny. Larry King likes Bill Frist. Insane, idiot, either will do. No offense!
Yes, but are you sure King is the very dumbestest man in the news? Cos, G.W. is a ‘man in the news’, you know..
it’s not that Larry King asks stupid questions.
He has every time I’ve seen his show (which is not many times, I admit). One memorable example: he was interviewing the late Diana Spencer’s brother, Charles Spencer, and asked him, “So, what’s it like to be born royal?”
I recently (briefly) met King during a trip to New York. He was even less impressive in person.
His career will for me ever remain among the great mysteries of our age; then again, it does shore up my faith in the concept of radical contingency.
Are you insane? :-p
King is simply part of the “intertainment/media circus/pundit” group that The Daily Show skewers so effectively, and that many people view as real newsmen….
I was in Europe a few years ago and, desperate for English language news, found CNN on the hotel TV. Then Larry King came on doing a full hour with of all people Niel Diamond. I watched anyway — it was like watching surgery on your dog. To my surprise Diamond was an interesting guy, never learned to read music, had no training of any kind, and yet became a success as a singer/songwriter. Yet, every single time something interesting came up Larry deftly asked a trivial question.
Flicking the channels recently I found that Bill Maher subs for Larry from time to time. Now there’s a guy who could do a hour long interview show on a nightly basis.
For a really silly view of stewart see Michael Kalin . I saw the column sliced and diced at by comments at Kevin Drum’s site.
Some other gems:
* LK: Who in this administration facinates you the most
JS: The American people for their utter patience
* We can’t even get the two political parties to agree on what the reality is.
Has anyone else noticed that if you see a quote from Larry King on a movie advertisement, you can guarantee it’s going to be a really bad movie?
I think it works like this:
>Take a big-budget bombastic movie – something like Armageddon
>Turan, Mitchell, Scott, Holden, Dargis, Kauffmann, et al pan the movie (or refuse to see it)
>See what Larry has to say
>Snag quote like “Extraordinary. One of the best movies I’ve seen in years”
If it really is a good movie, you won’t see a Larry quote – they’ll use Turan, Holden, etc, knowing that film snobs (like me) will notice. But Larry’s a good draw if you can’t get a real movie reviewer to give you a thumbs up ‘cos of the name recognition.
I saw Larry King on TV a few nights ago interviewing a female-to-male transsexual. When learning the person he was interviewing had a girlfriend who had a child…..
Yeah, you know what came next. King wanted to know if the transsexual were the biological father of the child.
Definitely makes the top ten list of the stupidest things I’ve ever heard a human being say.
How could I forget! The perfect dumb Larry King question for this venue:
“All right, hold on. Dr. Forrest, your concept of how can you out-and-out turn down creationism, since if evolution is true, why are there still monkeys?”
Yes, Larry King actually asked the how can there still be monkeys question on CNN.
Is it any wonder there’s a surfeit of ignorance in what should be one of the world’s best educated countries when the most prominent of our media so profoundly don’t get the more elementary principles of evolution and natural selection?
(Found that quote in an Esquire article I blogged about here.)
Thanks for the link PZ,
John Amato
As long as we are dumping on King see the Wikipedia article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_King
He was arrested on December 20, 1971 and charged with grand larceny, a charge later dropped because the statute of limitations had run out. King pled no contest to one of 14 charges of passing bad checks.
See his mugshot at http://www.rotten.com/library/bio/entertainers/radio/larry-king/
A sweet tale of bad boy becomes a wealthy, if dumb, success.
people, I’m not saying that Larry King doesn’t ask stupid questions, it’s that his fatal flaw lies in the fact he is a horrible interviewer. Sure the dumb questions play a part, but it is his inability to make penetrating, pointed queries. He does not challenge his guests when he should. That is all.
I’m not sure I’d describe Larry King as being in the news business. He hosts a chat show, and I don’t think he’s any dumber than (say), Jerry Springer.
-jcr