by Larry King
On the second night of the six-day closing, I had House Budget Committee Chairman John Kasich and Senator Kent Conrad in the studio. If there ever was a moment for an electronic town hall, it was now. I have known both Kasich and Conrad for a long time and I was looking forward to seeing them and hearing the arguments but I wasn’t ready for the insanity that took over the hour.
Let me put it this way: If you’re going to shut a government down, then there ought to be more to it than what I heard. Kasich quoted the Washington Post as supporting his position, while Conrad said the Wall Street Journal favored his position. I’m listening to this thinking “so what?” Kasich said the Office of Management and Budget uses numbers favorable to the White House because OMB director Alice Rivlin is appointed by the president. Conrad said the Congressional Budget Office numbers are wrong also because its director is appointed by the House, so he wanted a panel of experts on economic forecasts to sit down and put out the real numbers. Both Kasich and Conrad believed what they were saying but I still couldn’t fathom this as a cause to shut down a government. If Thomas Jefferson could have been brought into the studio that night and given a seat off camera to watch this I’m positive he’d have first said, “Larry, I think I screwed up big-time. You got a quill I can borrow and a copy of the Constitution?” His next remark would have come after looking around the studio: “What’s all this stuff?” It was Senator Ernest Hollings who once told me during a commercial break when another debate was raging that what Congress does is like making sausage; it ain’t a pleasant thing to watch. He was right.
KING: Why don’t the two of you agree?
KASICH: Well, it’s going to get down to people wanting to settle it. Because if we can settle it, we’re going to have to give and take once we’ve defined the parameters in which we are going to debate.
KING: Do you agree with that?
CONRAD: Yes, and I will just say to John, why can’t we agree? Let’s not use CBO, let’s not use OMB, let’s get a panel of experts—
KING: He’s not going to agree.
KASICH: We’re going to do it for the kids and we’re going to hang tough.
I was never so glad for a show to come to an end as I was that evening. This was a time when the electronic town hall would have put Congress and the White House on the spot to explain what was happening. For instance, had the television viewer been asked, “Would you like to shut down the government for six days so someone can make a point?” the answer would have been a resounding “Are you crazy?” or a variation thereof. In fact, had the viewer been asked, “How about just shutting it down for a day?” the answer would have been the same, with a few four-letter words as well.
Of course, there could have been the most electronic of all town halls available so that each side could make its case to the public, but the issue wasn’t going to be decided unless the White House and Congress actually talked to each other. So what was going on had nothing to do with technology. Amazingly, wacko time wasn’t over when the furloughed workers went back to their jobs because one week before Christmas the government shut down again, this time for twenty days. I watched C-SPAN and listened to the one-minute speeches going on in the House, which is what they do before any business is conducted, and realized my head was going to explode. I picked up the clicker and found a three-week-old soccer game in Spanish. I don’t understand soccer and I don’t speak Spanish but that hour made more sense to me than anything going on in English that day. It was to be, unfortunately, a premonition of things to come.
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Bob Dole had trouble throughout the 1996 campaign getting his “message” across to voters. It was most obvious after Bill Clinton’s 1996 State of the Union Address in which the president declared “the era of big government is over” and was able to do so in less time than his PBS-like marathon address of a year earlier. But when Dole gave the Republican response, there was no “there” there. Dole wasn’t connecting. I didn’t see or hear anything resembling a message. And yet, this was the same guy who was the most frequent guest on my television show, and in every appearance he came across with purpose and direction and did both with the sharpest wit on Capitol Hill. But he lost the New Hampshire primary to Pat Buchanan by one percentage point. Dole came back in the March primaries and by April it was a done deal that he and Clinton would face each other in November. At issue was the country’s direction and road map for the next four years and I just wasn’t spending a lot of time saying “gee I oughta watch this Dole speech or Clinton speech or hear Perot talk to his people.” Unlike 1992, there was no uncertainty about the major players prior to the election. And when that happens, it’s difficult for the voter, and even more difficult for the nonvoter, to care.
But there was an evening when I had on former George Bush campaign official and now CNN Crossfire cohost Mary Matalin along with Tabitha Soren of MTV, who was covering the campaign. The most exciting thing going on was that Tabitha had just interviewed Bob Dole, which not only was a good move for her but was an even better move for Dole. He was taking his cues from four years earlier when Clinton visited Arsenio Hall to reach potential voters who otherwise wouldn’t make the effort to tune in a Dole interview on CNN.
MATALIN: His underneath numbers are very squishy.
KING: He just went up.
MATALIN: That’s the top numbers. But everything under there is soft.
SOREN: Well, don’t you think even discussing this at this point is a little premature?
MATALIN: Thank you.
SOREN: And pointless.
KING: The whole thing pre— Well, yeah.
SOREN: Clinton, where was he in February four years ago? He was in Gennifer Flowers Land, you know?
MATALIN: Good answer. You’re good.
KING: Well, you go beyond, Tabitha—it’s the work. Tabitha was once an intern at CNN. When you go beyond thirty years old, you learn that—
SOREN: Do you have to talk about only polls and predictions?
KING: What’s there to talk about?
SOREN: Well, what about the issues? I mean you just can’t, you can write off the populace for not voting, when you are not doing your job explaining what we’ve been talking about.
She changed the conversation for the rest of the hour, although I will admit by the time the show ended we were still predicting primary outcomes. I have always appreciated the high road but you always have to take a lower-elevation route to get there.
The events of 1996 made me think of an interview I’d had one night in the radio studio with Barry Goldwater. Although at the time he was recovering from hip surgery and walked with two canes and was frail physically, Goldwater’s spirit was sharp. He told me of his plans for a presidential run in 1964 and of a discussion he’d had with the man who would be his opponent: John F. Kennedy:
I went to Jack’s office and he wasn’t there so I just sat down in his chair and lit a cigar. Jack comes in from the private bathroom, sees me and says, “You want that to be your chair in ’64?” and I said that’s my plan and he sits down in the chair in front of the desk. I told him I was going to run in 1964 and I have a few ideas about how we oughta do it. Kennedy looks at me and says, “We?” I said why don’t we both use the same airplane and fly together to cities and debate each other? What sense does it make for both of us to fly to the same city to do the same thing? Kennedy looked at me and said it was a good idea.
For just a moment I wondered (that word again) what it would be like for Bill Clinton and Bob Dole to meet a few times every month in a different city and debate each other. For that matter I was wondering why Clinton and Dole or Clinton and Gingrich didn’t just set aside an hour a week to break bread together. It was historian Doris Kearns Goodwin who once told me how Franklin Roosevelt would argue all day with Republicans and then play poker with the same guys in the evening. I didn’t know the answers to the disconnect I was feeling but I was wishing Clinton and Gingrich would sit down for a game of five-card draw every no
w and then. During the government shutdown, Clinton had called Dole and suggested they fly together to Florida and talk about a solution. So it made me think how Clinton and Dole would be handling their campaigns today had JFK lived for another run at the job.
There had been stories about Kennedy and women. Gold-water was on just after the Gary Hart episode with Donna Rice; an affair which forced the Colorado senator out of a run for the 1988 Democratic presidential nomination. I asked him about it. He gave me one answer on the air: Hart had made a mistake; and then he gave me another answer off the air during a commercial break. As soon as I had said Hart’s name, Goldwater began shaking his head:
Hart? He didn’t have it. All these guys want to act like Jack Kennedy and they aren’t in Jack’s league. We all knew about the women but nobody ever talked like they do now. I remember going to the White House for a meeting with him just after a trip I made to West Berlin. Jack says, “You had an affair with an assistant to the ambassador, didn’t you?” It was true. He told me he wanted to have an affair with her but couldn’t because he was too visible as president. So I asked how he found out and Jack looks at me without any smile at all and says, “Barry, I’m the president of the United States.”
I had interviewed Judith Exner about her claims of an affair with Kennedy, which she says began during the 1960 campaign and continued after he won the White House. She said people looked the other way then. We’d have reported Kennedy’s affairs and we’d have reported Goldwater’s affair were they running today. We’d have known later on that Goldwater voted for Hubert Humphrey rather than Richard Nixon and we’d have brought on the pundits to discuss whether that fact alone could derail his bid for the GOP nomination. It would have been one hell of a campaign and the race would have had a record turnout. That would have been an electronic town hall to see and hear. But it was only the stuff of words now.
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I was in Los Angeles one afternoon watching ESPN when the phone rang. I answered it to hear the words, “Larry, it’s Marlon.” The voice was familiar so, of course, I said my lines. “Marlon who?” We agreed it was time for another interview, this time in the studio. He wanted to talk about racism and the recent beatings in Riverside, California, of immigrants by police. Somehow I didn’t think he called to talk about On the Waterfront.
I was really looking forward to being with Mr. B. again, in part because this guy is so much fun and also in part because it was a break from politics and O.J. stories. But when we went on the air, it was a serious Brando in the studio. We talked about violence and he said it was a part of being human. He said racism is the result of fearing differences in people and it isn’t going to stop until we try to understand the differences. That is the tough part. Some people never even get to that point. The conversation moved quickly and soon we were talking about the ethnic grouping of people. And that’s when Brando offered the example of Hollywood casting minorities in stereotypical roles. It’s an issue to which Jews need to pay attention:
They should have a greater sensitivity about the issue of people who are suffering because they’ve exploited—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.
“Hollywood,” he went on to say, “is run by Jews. It’s owned by the Jews. I will be the first one to praise the Jews honestly and say thank God for the Jews.” As we came out of the first commercial break I decided to do one quick follow-up question for clarification and then return to the Riverside beatings.
KING: We’re back with Marlon Brando. He does want to clear up his criticism of Jewish people who are in positions of power in Hollywood—
BRANDO: I don’t want to clear it up. I think—
KING: You don’t want people to think that you’re—
BRANDO: I think that, no, the Jews have the— They know perfectly well what their responsibilities are.
I was concerned his words could be blown up out of proportion had someone tuned in late, so I figured a quick recap would put the issue to rest. It was a quicker recap than I expected and we were off to more discussion about civil rights. I never thought the exchange was going to create a problem for anyone. Another prediction from me and you can guess where it went.
As I had come to expect, the hour seemed to contain only seven minutes. When we were done, I shook his hand— no Brando close this time—and told him I was going to dinner with some friends and would he like to join us? Brando agreed and an hour later we were sitting at the Eclipse in Beverly Hills singing “Some Day When I’m Old and Gray” among other tunes. Two guys from my old neighborhood, Sid Young and Asher Dan, were there, along with Larry King Live executive producer, Mary Gregory, and Jo-Ellan Dimitrius. Everyone at the table was laughing and trying to keep up with the songs and the stories and the verbal barbs from Marlon. It was one of those times when everything clicks. There was no talk about the remarks he had made during the show. Around midnight I left to go home and walked out the door to find the paparazzi gathered to get a photo of Marlon. There were no questions about the interview.
At 1:00 A.M. the telephone rang. I had been asleep for almost thirty minutes.
“Larry, it’s Marlon.”
I had the lines ready to go and we went through the routine.
“Let’s go to Mexico,” he said. Marlon had lined up a plane and the entire table I’d left earlier was at his house. Everyone was going. He told me Sean Penn was coming along too.
“I don’t know— I, it’s late—”
He told me where to be and at what time and after I hung up the phone I asked myself, Why Mexico? Why not the Santa Monica Pier? Why not just stay right where we are? How did I get talked into this? Did I get talked into this? What the hell are we gonna do in Mexico? That’s when the phone rang.
“Larry, it’s Marlon.”
No, I didn’t do it this time. The trip was off. Penn couldn’t find his passport. I thanked him for the call and lay back on my pillow. I was grateful for what I had but more grateful for what Sean Penn didn’t have.
The interview with Mr. B. had aired on a Friday. When I turned on the television Monday morning all hell was breaking loose. And I was dumbfounded. A black swastika had been painted on Brando’s star on the Walk of Fame (as if Brando would care about a star in the first place). The Jewish Defense League was furious and said Brando had now stereotyped the Jews as owning everything. Producers and directors were on camera saying Brando’s films should be boycotted and I stood there wondering how this could have happened. CNN switchboards in Atlanta, Washington, New York, and Los Angeles were getting bombarded with telephone calls. I thought the Brando interview had been good, and even though I had been concerned someone catching a one-minute segment of the exchange could come away with the wrong impression, if they saw the full segment on Jews in Hollywood it would have allayed any doubt. But, obviously, I was wrong once again.
Dan Quayle had been on the show years earlier and talked about abortion and I thought that was a nonissue as well. As I learned and, certainly as Quayle learned, and now as Brando learned, what happens in the studio is different from what happens in the living room. What one sees depends, I guess, on where one sits.
Brando called me a few days later and we compared notes. He said he didn’t know how this happened and he had met with Rabbi Marvin Heir of the Wiesenthal Center to explain his position. After I hung up I realized the electronic town hall that had been occupying my mind of late isn’t going to work if people watch it and come away with an entirely different take of what is said. Of course, this has been happening since Cro-Magnon did drawings of an animal on a cave wall and another Cro-Magnon asked what’s with the cloud paintings?
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During this time, Bob Woodward, who had written about Hillary Clinton’s fascination with the former first lady, Eleanor Roosevelt, reported that Hillary and Eleanor talked to each other
using spiritual guide Jean Houston as a medium. Mrs. Clinton wouldn’t agree to an interview but Houston came into the studio to talk, in general, about how she communicates with the dead. I have never been a fan of this stuff but I’m always willing to learn. I’d had the psychic Char on my radio and television shows, who would talk to callers and tell them their deceased relative was okay, but she had also worked with police using her abilities to find lost children, so it sure seemed like something was going on. Still, I was dubious. Jean Houston offered to help me get past the doubt and said “select someone to talk to.” I picked Arthur Godfrey, who died in 1983 and was the man responsible for getting me into the radio business in the first place. The idea was Godfrey would speak to me though the connection Houston was able to set up.