Anything Goes

by Larry King

  KING: How do you react to the charges you set race relations back? Dominick Dunne was very vocal last night in saying that you, Johnnie Cochran, set racial relations back in this country.

  COCHRAN:$#8230;We have to discuss the differences, the things that divide us, the disparity in these polls, and why people see things differently. And then we need to do something about it. You know, Dr. King said that in America you promise such and such. Let’s hold up a mirror to society. Here’s what you promised, here is what you delivered. And there is a disparity.

  Cochran, as I fully expected, didn’t budge on his argument with Shapiro. I was looking forward to the next evening.

  With about ten minutes left in the show we were in a commercial break when I heard the producer’s voice tell me through my earpiece that O.J. was on the phone. I mentioned it to Johnnie, who gave me a smug smile. I wondered, as I had at the beginning of the show, if he had known all along and this was one of those things he just wasn’t going to tell me. We decided to keep O.J. as long as possible and if the show went into the next hour, well, the show went into the next hour. I mean, what am I gonna say, “Well, O.J., we’re out of time but I hope you’ll come back one of these days and answer the question about how the blood got into your Bronco? Thank you and good night.” The scary thing about it was I had worked with people in the business, not at CNN, who would have done just that.

  When I heard O.J.’s voice my thoughts no longer were on what Johnnie Cochran couldn’t tell me. In fact, at that moment, I didn’t care what Johnnie Cochran couldn’t tell me. I had another focus now. O.J. wanted to respond to a caller who had asked about Allan Park, the limo driver hired to pick up O.J. who testified he had seen a figure in the shadows outside the front door of O.J.’s house. Simpson said Park had seen him place his bags outside and then he went back inside. He said the prosecution had distorted the facts.

  SIMPSON: There was no shadowy figure coming down the driveway. That’s what Marcia Clark told you, that’s not what Allan Park told you.

  KING: O.J., how would you describe yourself? Relieved? Angry? What?

  SIMPSON: A little bit of everything. I think my basic anger, and this is the last thing I’m going to say before I leave, my basic anger is these misconceptions. My basic anger is that people I’ve heard that have followed the case have heard experts say that this was the testimony today and that wasn’t the testimony today. Marcia Clark told you that. Allan Park did not tell you that.

  KING: All right, a couple of quick things, and I will let you go.

  SIMPSON: No, I’ve got to go.

  I was certain O.J. was dying to talk and I kept thinking if I stay with it he’ll start doing what he has made a living doing. Didn’t work.

  The next morning I was greeted with the news O.J. and I were going to do a pay-per-view special produced by Turner Broadcasting in which he would answer all the questions. It amazed me how something so wacko could get so much mileage. And I kept getting called by newspapers and television and radio asking when it would happen. The answer was, it wouldn’t happen, never was going to happen, and I don’t know how it happened. And then I would get the follow-up question, “Well, Larry, how did this get started?” This was nuts. We were going down a road I didn’t know existed and I’m being asked how I got on the road in the first place when I’m not even driving. I guess there are people with not enough to do. And so when Robert Shapiro walked into the studio that evening, I said hello, shook his hand, and said, “It ain’t true,” to head off any question about doing a pay-per-view with O.J. Somehow, after nine months of trial work and sixteen-plus months of O.J., I think Shapiro already knew the answer.

  When I asked him about the Johnnie Cochran issue Shapiro wouldn’t comment about the matter other than to say Cochran was wrong to equate the racism of detective Mark Fuhrman with the Holocaust. But he did offer a general view.

  KING: What—give it to us, your thoughts on race, this trial, and Johnnie Cochran.

  SHAPIRO: Okay. Race, I’ve always said, Larry, that race would not and should not be an element of this case. I stand by that. Why do I stand by that? O.J. Simpson was not acquitted of this case because he was black. I don’t in my heart of hearts believe that for one moment.

  KING: Even though many Americans do believe it?

  SHAPIRO: Many Americans do believe that and that’s why when I said we played the race card, that’s what has happened, we have divided the blacks and the whites in an unnecessary way. The evidence in this case that was presented to twelve people not by pundits, not by spin, not by tabloids, in the court of law on every crucial element in this case, there is reasonable doubt, and in many cases, real doubt.

  One thing was clear after that week: O.J. wasn’t going away. Legally, he was facing a civil trial even though chances were good we wouldn’t see it on TV. Socially and culturally, he was still in demand because Marcia Clark signed a $4 million book deal, Chris Darden signed a book deal, Kato Kaelin got a radio talk show, and Mark Fuhrman got a book deal. Greta Van Susteren and Roger Cossack were going to get their own television show. Johnnie Cochran was having discussions with Court TV. If you believe O.J., the killer or killers of his wife and Ron Goldman are still out there. If you don’t believe O.J., he isn’t serving any time. And if you do or don’t believe him, O.J.’s name conjures up events having nothing to do with football and that ain’t going away and that might be a conviction of a different kind. For months after The Verdict, we would do an O.J. story when there was a new issue to discuss. Coverage was one such issue, even though I think everyone in the business had been wondering if we had done too much since we first heard about the murders. Some years later I asked the sage extraordinaire Andy Rooney about it:

  KING: What did you think of the story?

  ROONEY: Well I was fascinated by it. I kept hearing people say how overcovered it was. I was interested by it. And you know one group of columnists, newspaper columnists, and radio commentators would report the story and do it night after night. And then there was a second group who would say it was being overcovered. And then someone would come along and complain about the guy who says it’s being overcovered. And it was just one thing after another and I thought the American public learned an awful lot about our system of justice from O.J.

  O.J. called my producer, Wendy, about a year ago asking to appear on Larry King Live. When he was asked if there was anything new he wanted to add to the story, O.J. said no, there wasn’t. We didn’t put him on. During that trial we learned a lot about a lot of things and just a little of it was about O.J. I remember saying to a New York cab driver who had picked me up one afternoon that we had a “great hour last night” talking about O.J. He turned to me at the light at Sixth Avenue and 48th and said, “Yeah, well what about the other twenty-three hours?” The guy had a point. I work in a world of “going live to” whomever in wherever and “it’s happening now” and “at this moment” all the time, having guests draw conclusions about what this minute means. It’s healthy, it makes us pay attention, and it suggests we can learn something from that particular span of seconds or hours about what has already happened and apply it to what might happen in the days or weeks or years to come.

  But here’s the thing as Ross Perot likes to say: Maybe we ought to be aware that all this instant analysis is only that and nothing more? Maybe, in our never-ending need to understand what and where and who we are, there has to be an element of time involved too? In Bensonhurst we used to argue about ball scores and Roosevelt and whether the sixth-inning catch by Sandy Amoros of a Yogi Berra line drive smash hit was the fourth biggest play in Dodger history (it was the first) while standing on the street in front of Sid’s Pants store. But someone always came back after an hour or a day or a year saying “you know, I’ve been thinking$#8230;” which, of course, started the argument all over again. The O.J. trial did teach us but the lesson won’t be complete until after we’ve all had time to reflect on the words just heard. Television gives us the chance
to look at and hear and draw conclusions of “the now,” but that doesn’t mean all the “tomorrows” and “laters” will always go along with it.

  Maybe it’s always been that way. But maybe, because the five-hundred-channel universe is going faster and faster while a minute is still just sixty seconds, what we see today really is what we’ll see tomorrow. In a time when anything goes, folks, it’s possible.

  CHAPTER SIX

  The Mess-Age

  September 1995. It was Ross Perot who first introduced me to the idea of “an electronic town hall” where people could hear arguments on every side of an issue and cast a ballot via their television or computer or telephone as to how they wanted a congressman or a senator to vote. Certainly, it could become a way to elect a president. Whenever we televise a debate or when it can be heard on the radio or if it’s the city council meeting on local access cable, it’s an electronic town hall. There is no one way to do it and that’s good. But this is a business where technology is far ahead of how it can be used, so I think Ross’s idea will explode when we figure out the “what” of it. As for the “when,” well, I’m not making any predictions.

  The NAFTA debate was a town hall. Opposite sides were brought in, arguments for and against were made, and people who were affected by the issue, those in Mexico and Canada as well as here, had the opportunity to call in and ask their own questions. My interview with Pete Rose, who wants to get into the Baseball Hall of Fame, was a town hall because he made his case and took questions from the audience all before the issue was decided by the Baseball Writers Association of America (who said no). Certainly, the Feinstein-Huffington debate was another one. On the eve of a key Senate vote on the balanced budget amendment I gathered the proponent-opponent-haven’t-decided voices in the studio for an hour to have at it over the idea. This isn’t new. In 1858, Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas faced voters in seven debates throughout Illinois as they vied for the Senate. The electronic part is what continues to confound both viewer and participant. Producers would have been yelling at Lincoln to stand up straight, to avoid talking for an entire hour nonstop, to work on his voice, wear a different color, change the background—all of which had nothing to do with whether he would have been a good senator. He had to know his stuff. But I’ll bet there was a guy watching the debate in Galesburg who said to his wife, “I’m going for Douglas, Lincoln just doesn’t carry himself well.” Knowing your stuff ain’t enough. Never has been.

  A version of the town hall took place in Orlando more than a year before the 1996 presidential election where Republican candidates for the GOP nomination got together in person and by satellite to debate issues and, maybe more important, introduce themselves to a public that doesn’t really pay a lot of attention to them until a month or so before their particular state’s primary. In the case of Florida, a straw poll was going to be held the following day and all GOP eyes were, for this moment, focused here. I had Alan Keyes, Pat Buchanan, and Lamar Alexander on stage at the Orange County Convention Center, and in the Washington studio or in our Capitol Hill studio I had Phil Gramm, Bob Dole, Richard Lugar, Arlen Specter, and Robert Dornan, all members of Congress embroiled in the budget battle with the White House and, in many cases, with each other. Steve Forbes was in Washington as well. Bob Dole was tending to the business of the Senate and arrived late.

  We went for two hours and, if I had the chance to do it over again, I’d ask to have all the candidates in one place. The Orlando guests were jumping in on comments made by those in Washington and it became (I’m gonna be diplomatic here) lively. It confounded the participants and, in this case, also the moderator. We are still learning, which is why there is always a debate about debates before there is a debate (location, format, questions from audience or not, and so on). The electronic town hall is, and always will be, a work in progress.

  As we went on the air, Colin Powell had just announced he wasn’t going to be a candidate for president in 1996. Everyone but Pat expressed interest in Powell as a running mate. “I want him in the church,” Pat said, “but we’re not going to make him the pope the first time he walks into the church.” It was a good line and after the debate I worried if an ability to fire back a good line or, for that matter, an ability to just be good on television are reasons a person could be president. The answer is yes. That makes one ask: If a person is bad on television, can they be president? The answer is probably no. By the way, Bob Dole won the straw poll the next day.

  Another variation on Ross’s idea had taken place a few weeks earlier following the assassination of Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin. I was interviewing then Likud party leader Benjamin Netanyahu, who had attended the funeral that same day, about the resulting political conflicts in the country. The Labor and Likud parties went at each other constantly (sound familiar?) and I asked Netanyahu if he was willing to appear on the show with Labor leader Shimon Peres. He agreed to the idea and offered a variation on Ecclesiastes: “There is a turn for every season.” I was convinced this could have a healing effect on the Israeli people or, if nothing else, allow each side to hear the other’s voice. After all, you can’t listen if you’re talking.

  During that same evening I had also done an interview with Nixon secretary of state Henry Kissinger, who was a major player in earlier peace talks between Egypt and Israel brokered by the United States. Henry, however, was in Shanghai, where live satellite feeds had never before been tried because television facilities didn’t exist. We literally had to build them, rushing a studio to completion as the show went on the air. Kissinger made history again in this first live international broadcast. That fact alone made me think maybe this television business can have some kind of role in getting people who normally don’t talk to start doing just that. This too was a beginning. The technology connecting Washington, D.C., with China was allowing the people in both places to have a conversation that, otherwise, wouldn’t have occurred. It was more proof, as if I need more proof, of how cold wires, or whatever it is that happens with satellites, can warm the connections between countries if human beings will only allow it. So with Kissinger it was being used for warmth between Shanghai and the United States and with Netanyahu and Peres it was being used to bring a different kind of warmth to an already heated situation.

  That same week I interviewed PLO chairman Yasser Arafat, who couldn’t attend Rabin’s funeral out of concerns for his safety. We had done a number of face-to-face tapings including one just after the Middle East peace accord had been signed on the White House lawn between Rabin and Arafat. Never before had I seen so much security around one person as I did with the Palestinian leader. But when I got through the searches and waiting and paperwork and questions, Arafat had a great sense of himself. He told me whatever happens is the result of destiny and nothing else. If he is meant to be killed, he will be killed. I came away from both interviews with Arafat wondering if technology could advance diplomacy. And I concluded it couldn’t if the opposing sides only showed up on screen instead of talking from the heart.

  But there’s a catch to all of this. And Bosnia is where it became the most pronounced. In a true electronic town hall, and in this case we’re talking countries rather than cities, the audience has to have a chance to learn why the issues are important to them. In Bosnia, we kept referring to the fact that it had the potential of being another Vietnam, which it did, and that these sides had been fighting each other for centuries, which they had. Sort of makes one wonder what’s to gain by getting involved. We did a lot of shows about this and through it all my biggest problem was trying to pronounce the names of guests. Bosnia’s prime minister, Haris Silajdzic, was with me in the Washington studio one night urging that the arms embargo be lifted. It was an international town hall because not only was Silajdzic talking to Americans but he was talking to the French, the British, and the Germans to urge their support as well. Before going on the air I said his name over and over to make sure I got it right. And when the moment came I intenti
onally slowed down and got through it. I could see he was smiling. So my first question was, “Did I get it right?”

  “This time, it’s right. Good, Larry,” he said in perfect English.

  I’ll tell you this: For the rest of the half hour, he was identified as “the prime minister.” I used a lot of titles in the Bosnia shows.

  ———

  While I was trying to pronounce proper nouns without vowels, budget talks in plain English between the White House and Congress broke down, which resulted in the furlough of more than 800,000 government employees. Republicans were going all out to have Clinton agree on a seven-year spending plan, while the White House said the elements in the plan were too draconian. In other words, it was the same argument as always; just different words. Democrats faced off with Ronald Reagan on the budget all the time but it never reached this point. During the threats, which are an essential part of how America legislates, I never thought a shut-down of government operations would actually happen, and so when it did I figured we were looking at a one-day event to make the point, and then we’d get on with it.