Larry King

It is with a certain amount of remorse, dear reader, that we, the crack young staff of “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly,” rip into today’s object of contumely. For although, as you shall see anon, there are many reasons to contemn the talk show host Larry King, we must admit that we have a little bit of respect for him.

After all, this gangly, dilapidated 104-year-old has somehow managed to marry a 30-something lass. To be sure, we have never laid eyes on Mr. King’s newest woman; she may look just like Medusa. Or, even worse, Madeline Albright. Even so, we can’t help but feel a bit of pride that this old timer has managed to grab himself such a comparatively youngish lady.

But let’s not kid ourselves too much: Larry King is certainly an irritant. He may be the least irksome presence on CNN, but, with a cast of characters as fiendish as Wolf Blitzer, Paula Zahn, and Lou Dobbs, that isn’t much of a compliment. If you ask us, CNN would get a big ratings boost if they replaced all their anchors with ferrets. Sure, laugh at us, but a ferret is far more interesting and intelligent than Dan Brown.

So what, you may be asking yourself, makes Larry King so upsetting? Frankly, dear reader, we don’t really watch his show much, so we’re not really experts. But that has never stopped us from blathering on in the past, and it sure as heck ain’t going to stop us now.

First, we suppose we should mention the fact that Mr. King is the king of the softball interview. He’d go easy on Hitler, for crying out loud. You can bet that, if someone is on “Larry King Live,” he’s either killed a man or recently been caught with a prostitute. Or is one of the Golden Girls. And we don’t know which one’s worse.

In fact, if Larry King were nearly as easygoing in his love life as he is on his TV show, he might not have been married 68 times.

But when Mr. King isn’t offering camera time to the likes of O.J. Simpson and James Frey, he’s busy interviewing a room full of such has-beens that Buddy Hackett doesn’t know who the heck they are. His show is sufficinetly hip and challenging to earn him his dedicated nonagenarian audience.

And is there any real excuse for such pabulum as a “Growing Pains” reunion show? We mean, come on: How bad is your program when the folks at VH-1 wouldn’t stoop so low?

But hey: At least Larry King isn’t nearly as odious as Charlie Rose. If you ask us, that chucklehead’s success is the greatest sign we’ve ever seen of an impending apocalypse.