Larry King should retire

If you are in the TV news biz and reading this post right now, be ashamed.

I won't front. I watched Larry King's hour-long interview with a recently released convict tonight. And I watched it the way you watch the coroner's office workers gathering body parts scattered along the side of the road following a horrific accident. I wanted to see what would happen!

And while I did not expect the person being interviewed to offer anything of substance, I did expect Larry "King of the Broadcast Interview" King to at least ask the substantive questions.

Instead he spent an hour asking about how tough serving 23 days (in Los Angeles math; 20 - 21 in normal human math) was, asking several different ways if she had changed, asking generic questions about who the real convict is vs. what of her has been captured on amateur film, etc.

I'm still a relative pup, all things considered, but I remember the old days when Larry King was on the radio and would have also asked the following questions:

• If you're so claustrophobic - the ailment you cited this evening to justify why you deserved to serve the balance of your sentence on house arrest - how can you tolerate driving around in small cars? Doesn't being closed inside a vehicle make you want to jump out at traffic signals and run down the street screaming and ripping your hair out?
• Is it just me, or are you suggesting the greater wrong here was how much time you served, rather than your driving while (legally) intoxicated - the infraction that started this ball rolling in the first place?
• You say you empathize now with people less fortunate than you. You have been captured on tape a number of times ridiculing the poor and calling friends, enemies, and your sister poor or something like that, as if it was an insult. How is that behavior empathetic?
• You've vehemently denied that you are a racist, and yet you've been captured on tape a number of times referring scornfully to specific black people as niggers and even calling your friends that word while laughing hysterically. Based on those tapes, why should we believe you are not a racist?
• Other than pay taxes and occasionally handing out dough to a panhandler, name one socially redeeming act you have committed in the eight years since you became a legal adult.
• I asked you to offer something about you don't like, and you answered that your voice gets high and squeaky when you're nervous. That's it? There's nothing about your public behavior or your character that could stand a little improvement?
• You made a sex tape with a boyfriend a few years ago, which, after the two of you reportedly broke up, he sold on the Internet. Is it true that you split the profits with him? Regardless, was it tough after that to look into the faces of young girls at your book signings and public appearances and hand them autographed pictures of yourself? That's the act of a role model - a person exhibiting model behavior. Do you think you were responsible enough then to present yourself as a role model?

I miss the old Larry.