My Remarkable Journey (29 page)

New Orleans is like no other city. I can remember riding on a float and throwing doubloons to the crowd during Mardi Gras.
The thing about New Orleans is that no matter where you’re from, you feel at home there. Which is why it was so painful to
see so many people pushed out of their homes.

The guy who really called it was Anderson Cooper. I would have him on every night by satellite, and he’d point out how buses
had not been used to evacuate people and that the federal government was just not responding to the magnitude of the disaster.
We talked to people who’d lost their homes, people stuck in the Superdome. The government was late to help in every area.
It was a total failure.

We began to look at the war in Iraq differently.

No weapons of mass destruction were ever found. The American body count passed a thousand, then fifteen hundred. It seemed
like roadside bombings were becoming a daily tragedy, our soldiers didn’t have the right protective armor, and the administration
wouldn’t allow journalists to photograph the caskets coming home. Meanwhile the cost of being there put us into a major deficit.
I sometimes wondered, What if George Bush asked for some television time and said, “You know, I tried my best. I was working
with the information I was given. I thought I was right. But I was working off wrong information. I don’t want to lose another
soldier over in Iraq. It’s time for them to come home.” What would that have done?

He could never do it. He’d have lost the whole right wing. Then again, it’s so rare to hear
any
politician—good or bad—say, “I was wrong.” Ask Jimmy Carter. Did he ever do anything wrong? Lyndon Johnson? He never came
out and said he was wrong on Vietnam. But Johnson was paralyzed by it, almost suicidal. He went back to smoking and died of
a heart attack. George W. Bush will never end up like Johnson at the end of his life, because he has tunnel vision and doesn’t
waver from his decisions. I just would have loved to see him be a little more open-minded and humble.

It seemed like Tuesday the war in Iraq was OK, then Wednesday it wasn’t. Our standing in the world fell, and then so did the
economy. Back in the beginning of 2007, my brother observed that Americans investing in the stock market had a more favorable
view of the relatively small pharmaceutical company he worked for than they did of General Motors. How, he wondered, could
that happen? Lehman Brothers collapsed as the 2008 presidential election approached.

It was a finance company with a history dating back to 1850. Night after night I had pundits on my show trying to explain
the mess. I came away believing there was no real expert, no genius, in this situation. Warren Buffett was losing money. Kirk
Kerkorian lost billions of dollars in a single day. I got taken for $2.8 million in the Ponzi scheme run by Bernard Madoff.
We were all in the forest trying to get past the trees and find a clearing.

George Bush started to express some self-doubt at the end of his term. A 28 percent approval rating will probably do that
to you. I always try to look at my guests sympathetically. But he wouldn’t want my sympathy. It may be more interesting to
talk to him about all this in two years. If anyone came to know how uncertain the world could be, it was George Bush. Few
presidencies were hit on so many fronts. None of us can know how difficult his job was. There are things he knows that the
rest of us don’t. Yet for seven years after 9/11, we were not attacked on American soil.

It would be wise to wait a while before we make judgments on Bush 43. Here’s why. Harry Truman was one of the most unpopular
presidents when he left office in 1953. He fired an American hero, General Douglas MacArthur. MacArthur came home to a ticker-tape
parade. Truman was seen as soft on Communism while he was president. When Truman set up the Marshall Plan to help Europe after
World War II, I can remember people complaining. Why are we spending all this money on Greece and Turkey? What about our own
people? But it was the Marshall Plan that prevented the spread of Communism in Europe. And more than fifty years later, we
can see that Truman was totally right to fire MacArthur. We look back and see that it was Truman who integrated the armed
forces. Now Truman is revered.
Give ’em hell, Harry!
So history has a way of turning things around. In fifty years, it’s quite possible that people will see George Bush 43 in
a different light.

One of the best days I’ve ever spent was with Bush in the White House talking baseball. He asked me if I wanted a lift on
Air Force One to talk some more. I couldn’t go with him then. But I hope we can pick up the conversation.

I
’
M IN THE Q&A BUSINESS
. So I like questions. Not only do I like asking questions. I like answering them. I especially get a kick out of having the
tables turned on me during speaking engagements.

People want to know who my most difficult interview has been, what it’s like to sit down with Vladimir Putin, and how the
suspenders got started.

One response you’ll never hear from me is, “I’m glad you asked me that question.” I’ve come to learn that whenever a politician
says those words, it really means, “I’m
not
glad you asked me that question. I’m just using a few extra seconds to think how I want to answer that question.”

I’ll be as honest as I can be. And when I’m not, I’ll be as funny as I can be.

Without a doubt, Robert Mitchum. I admired Mitchum as an actor and I was really looking forward to talking with him. He was
amazing in the original
Cape Fear
. That movie is beyond scary.

As we sat down to start, I said, “Can I call you Bob?”

He looked at me and said, “Can I call you Lar?”

There were fifty-nine minutes and fifty seconds to go. He one-worded me every step of the way. I remember asking him about
the great director John Huston. “What was it like to work with John Huston?”

“You go in, do your job, go home.”

“Are you saying there’s no difference between directors?”

“Seen one, seen ’em all.”

“What do you think of Al Pacino?”

“Don’t know him.”

If you don’t want to talk, why come on the show? I was using every technique I’d learned over the years to get through the
hour. One of the things I always try to do is ask questions that begin with the word
why.
A why question can’t be answered in one word. Unless you’re Robert Mitchum. Once, he replied, “Because.”

It was a great example of mixed emotions, the feeling you get when someone you admire disappoints you.

I wasn’t getting anything out of him. So I did something I never do. I started to fill time by elaborating. I said, “I was
asking the actor David Dukes about other actors. He said the most underrated actor is Robert Mitchum. He said that in
Winds of War
, there could be six actors in the scene with lines. The scene might not necessarily have been written for Mitchum. But somehow
Mitchum made it
his
scene.” I summed up Dukes’s compliment by saying, “It became your scene, just by your presence.”

Mitchum’s response was, “No kidding.”

It got even stranger after the interview. As he got up to leave, he asked, “How’d I do?”

Years later, I interviewed his son Jim. I told Jim what had happened. He said, “Not surprising. My dad was putting you on.
He was just having fun.”

You can imagine how I felt when the producers told me they wanted to have Mitchum on again.

I couldn’t believe it.

They said, “He got good ratings.”

At one point in the ’80s, I lost some weight. My ex-wife, Sharon, said, “Ever try suspenders?”

I said, “No, I’ve never worn them.”

“Why don’t you try them?” she asked.

I bought a pair, put the buttons on the pants, and wore them. That night, three or four people called in after the show and
said, “Those suspenders look good!”

That was all I had to hear.

I can’t hear that question without being reminded of a very particular moment in my life.

I was working in Miami when the phone rang. I picked it up.

“King. This is Boom Boom Giorno.”

I didn’t know any Boom Boom Giorno.

“You got a pencil? Write this down. November 14. War Memorial Auditorium. Boys Town of Italy. Sergio Franchi is the singer.
You are the emcee. Black tie.”

The guy hung up.

Something told me it would be in my very best interest to attend.

I got there, and everybody was telling me how glad they were to see me. I went over to Sergio Franchi. I said, “How’d they
get you?”

He said, “A guy named Boom Boom Giorno called.”

There was a twenty-piece orchestra. A Catholic high school marching band. A cardinal from Italy. I did jokes. Sergio sang.
They raised four hundred thousand dollars. It was a great night. Everybody was happy.

Afterward, Boom Boom walked me to my car.

He said, “We are very pleased.”

I said, “My pleasure, Boom Boom.”

Then came one of those moments when you remember what the moon looked like overhead.

Boom Boom said, “We owe you a favor.”

“Thanks, Boom Boom,” I said. “I was happy to do it. But I don’t need any favors.”

Boom Boom said, “We don’t like to owe favors.”

“Well, what do you have in mind?”

He said six words. As he said them, I could feel the sweat coming down my forehead.

“You got anybody you don’t like?”

I thought I would faint. But when I didn’t, the first person I thought of was the general manager of the television station.
But I said, “I couldn’t do that.”

Boom Boom was disappointed. He said, “Do you like horse racing?”

“Yeah.”

He said, “We’ll be in touch.”

About a week later, I got a call. Appletree in the third at Hialeah today.

I went out to Hialeah. I bet everything I could on Apple-tree. Appletree won. When I tell the story for large groups I always
add a little joke, that I knew I had the winner when five jockeys jumped off their horses.

But think of the power in those six words.

“You got anybody you don’t like?”

It’s not
who
I don’t like. It’s
what
I don’t like. Bigotry is what I don’t like. Hypocrisy is what I don’t like.

I don’t dislike Eliot Spitzer. I’m mad that Spitzer prosecuted hookers while he was seeing hookers. It’s the hypocrisy that
offends me.

I’m mad at the Republican congressman who wants to ban gay materials when he’s gay himself. How can you get up and make flailing
speeches against a group of people and be one of them yourself?

I don’t know Clarence Thomas well enough to dislike him. But I’d feel better about him if I saw some compassion in his decisions.
How can you be opposed to affirmative action after you’ve benefited from its premise?

I interviewed a German guy who won the Nobel Prize in chemistry. His prize was for something he discovered about reproduction.

I said to him, “What’s the mystery of life?”

“I’ll tell you the mystery.” He put it as succinctly as possible. He said, “I could take every person in the world and do
a hundred-page book on each of them. In this book, I could write about chromosomes, genes, hair, and blood type.” He had a
small jar with him and he held it up. Then he said, “And yet all the sperm that made the whole world wouldn’t fill this jar.”

So there’s what we know. And there’s what we don’t know.

Marlon and I were having dinner and he pointed out a couple nearby. “They’re not happy,” he said.

“How do you know?” I asked.

“Look at the way the guy crosses his leg, and how he looks over her shoulder, not at her face.”

His genius came from observing people.

Al Gore. He’s not a cardboard guy. Gore can be very funny. At a radio and TV correspondents’ dinner, Gore got up with Bill
and Hillary Clinton seated nearby. He said, “The question I’m most asked is, What’s it like to be a heartbeat away from the
president of the United States? And I always give the same answer: What’s it like, Hillary?”

I had a good time with Al Gore when he came on my Mutual radio show. He lived nearby, and some nights he’d drive over by himself.
Gore, Herbie, Art Buchwald, and I were having lunch at the Palm around the time Gore’s book
Earth in the Balance
came out. Al asked if he could come talk about his book on the TV show. I said, “We’ll have to ask the producer,” and I gave
him Tammy’s number.

When I spoke with her about it, she said, “The environment is boring. He’s boring. People are going to tune out.”

Al called her personally.

She said, “I’ll look into it.”

A while later, Al called me back and said, “You know, your producer blew me off.”

Not long after, Bill Clinton announced his vice presidential pick—and it was Al Gore!

Suddenly, Tammy was saying, “We’ve got to get him on!”

I called him. He was kind enough to put the past behind us. He came on the show before the convention wearing suspenders.

Gore won the popular vote against Bush in the 2000 election by something like six hundred thousand votes. It wasn’t even close.
What would the world be like had Gore become president? We can only guess. One thing is sure: we wouldn’t have gone to war
in Iraq.

Gore isn’t a wild liberal. He’s a moderate Democrat who served in Vietnam. And he’s a great father. How about that time his
son got hit by a car while leaving a baseball game? Gore stayed in the hospital for something like thirty-three days straight.
He didn’t go home, and the kid pulled through. Gore never talked about it much. But that said a lot.