“Thank you, Mr. President. Always good to see you”, was how Larry King ended his hollow hour-long interview with Ahmadinejad last night.
You seemed so timid, Larry, so meek, that I’m not sure you had such a good time with Mr. “Allow Me”, after all. But oh my, Mr. King, did you indeed “allow” him....and then some. Is it out of fear? I mean, I promise he would have not thrown a nuclear bomb at you had you dared to challenge him (he might actually come closer to doing that if he’s NOT challenged, but that’s another story…)
And speaking of challenging an interviewee, can you please refresh my memory and tell me how many decades of experience you have...? Isn't it 50 years? Something like that? Now, I do understand that you are most comfortable interviewing about the real issues, like reality TV and beauty pageant controversies. But cut us some slack, Larry, you had an opportunity last night, to sit face to face with someone who is one of the world’s major threats, who wants to make our future a very very dark place. And instead of telling this overwhelmingly dangerous man “all of your answers are absolute lies and allow ME now to confront you with some truth”, you sit there and every 120 seconds, on the dot, you say “we gotta go to break”.
Yesssss, commercial breaks is really what you needed last night, to fill 75% of a crucial interview. Not to mention you needed a break to squirm in your seat without the world watching (the president of Iran saw it though, I wonder if he offered you some xanax). But commercials mean money, and apparently money is what you needed to provide last night, more than anything else, to your excellent reputable Network.
Has anyone prepared you for this interview? Do you understand how important this interview was? How come you were more prepared for your John Gosslin interview?!
Why would you let this man go on and on about the wonderful democracy that is Iran, where it’s so sad that people just don’t seem to know how to honorably lose an election? Would it have been so hard to articulate some facts for Mr. Allow Me?!
And one more thing, Larry: When somebody tells you how it’s so unfair that people maliciously ostracize him simply because he goes against “common opinion” about the Holocaust, you ask him if he ever heard of the Final Solution, and then you talk to him about facts, and if it’s necessary, you explain to him, very slowly, the difference between Opinions and Facts. Okay?
You can also ask him if he’d like to see for himself any of those pretend showers that instead of water, poured Zyklon B gas on millions of people, in order to systematically mass slaughter and annihilate a whole nation.
I only wish, Larry, that you mentioned the gas chambers, the crematoriums, and the extermination camps. And more than that, I wish you offered to take him on a tour.
If Larry King represents the current attitude of a world seeking a peaceful future (or a future at all, for that matter), all I have to say now is:
We Need to Wake Up!
And on that note, I will also say “Gmar Chatima Tova”, to those of us who observe Yom Kippur. As a Jew, this is one of the most important days of my year.
...And while at it, Shana Tova: Happy New Jewish Year!
