My Remarkable Journey (30 page)

One of the wildest, most pulsating nights on my CNN show involved Gore. NAFTA was coming up for a vote in the Senate. It was
going to be beaten. It had no chance. Gore called me early in the morning. I was lying in bed. He said, “How would you like
to host a debate?”

“Between who?”

“I’ll debate Ross Perot on NAFTA. Nobody in the White House is in favor of this except the president. Will you call Perot?”

I called Perot, and Ross said sure. We were on five days later. Gore showed up with every staffer in the White House. This
was huge for them. Perot came in with one guy.

Ross made a big mistake. Ross knew the subject, he’d debated it before, and he took it for granted. What he didn’t understand
was that Gore was a champion debater at Harvard. As prepared as Perot was, Gore was superprepared. Plus, Gore had a great
emotional need. It was Clinton’s bill. To Perot, it was a policy he disagreed with.

Before they went on, we made certain rules. Handlers couldn’t talk to the participants during breaks. There was no helping.
Right before we started, Gore went over to the camera and leaned against it. Afterward, I said, “What were you doing?”

He said, “I said a prayer.”

Gore started by pulling out pictures of Reed Smoot and Willis Hawley, congressmen who passed a protection bill in 1930 that
raised tariffs on more than 20,000 imported goods. Gore said that many economists believed that this tariff was the principal
cause of the Great Depression. It wasn’t hard to get what he was implying. Hey, Ross, see these two guys, they ruined America.
Want your picture next to them?

Perot got angry. But Gore was relentless. He was driven. You could see it. Ross never got off the defensive. There was one
funny moment when Perot called Gore a liar. I said, “We’ll be right back.”

So we had two and a half minutes of commercials. No handlers were allowed to come over during that time. It was just me and
the two of them. This was the first debate ever between a citizen and the vice president, and the citizen had just called
the vice president a liar. Gore was very good, though. He said something like, “I understand how emotions can get carried
away.”

Perot wasn’t going to apologize. But Gore said there was no need to apologize.

When we finished and everybody was walking out, one of Clinton’s staffers said to me, “I told the president that this was
a mistake. I was wrong.”

We had the biggest cable audience ever at that time, a record that held for fifteen years. NAFTA passed. Not bad for a guy
made of cardboard.

The quality of the guest has nothing to do with his profession. A plumber can be a great guest and a statesman can be a bad
one. You want someone who can explain what he or she does very well, has a passion for it, a sense of humor about it, and
a little chip on his shoulder. That’s why Sinatra was so great. If a person has those four things, viewers will stay tuned.

Nelson Mandela was easily the most extraordinary figure of the twentieth century. I went to South Africa to meet him. It still
amazes me how he invited his prison guards to his inauguration. Any other man in that situation, and there would have been
war. It’s incredible to be that forgiving. It’s a higher calling.

They can be fun. They do well because most of the population wants to believe in extraterrestrials.

There was one incredible night back in the ’80s. A guest was booked at the last minute. I didn’t even know he was coming on.
Tammy told me that we had the author of a book called
Communion
. That’s all she said.

I had no idea what the book was about. But I like it like that. This very nice man came out. He was dressed in a tie. Whitley
Strieber was his name.

Now, communion can mean a lot of things. So I said, “What’s the book about, Whitley?”

He said something like, “Well, I was sleeping one night and I heard a sound in my backyard. I looked out and there was this
obvious spaceship. Before I could get to the door, the door opened and hundreds of little people came into the room. I started
to panic. Then, these little people entered every open orifice of my body.”

How do you respond to that? I couldn’t help it. My hand slammed the table and I started to laugh.

The control room was in my ear, saying, “Get a grip.”

But I couldn’t help it.

“I understand you’re seeing the humor in all this,” Whitley said. “But, Mr. King, it wasn’t very funny.”

So I said, “Then what happened?”

“Then they took me out to the spaceship. The spaceship went up.”

I just couldn’t hold back the laughter.

“And then what happened, Whitley?”

“Again, they proceeded to enter every open orifice.”

I was just sitting there picturing these little people going up his ass. How could you not crack up?

“What do you think they were studying?”

He kept saying, “I take no offense, Mr. King. I understand how hard this is to believe.”

After the show, I said, “Tammy, did you set me up?”

I was shocked to learn that the book later became a best seller and was made into a movie.

Jimmy Carter says he has seen UFOs. The governor of Arizona didn’t believe in them. Then he saw one. I’ve had pilots tell
me they’ve seen things in the night. UFOs dumbfound people. I don’t think people feel threatened by them. We’d like to know
there’s life on other planets. The theory that the government doesn’t release information about UFOs because they think people
would panic—that doesn’t wash. People would be fascinated. They’d hope it was true.

I’d like to know why people go to see Nascar. Do they wake up and say, “Let’s go watch left turns?”

I always used to say God. And my first question would be, “Do you have a son? Because there’s a lot riding on the answer.”

Seriously, I’d like to sit down with the pope. All popes interest me. Why would you want to be the pope? How do you keep your
faith? I find religious leaders fascinating. They challenge me.

The most amazing thing to me is that there’s a possibility that the pope knows me. That he walks by a television, sees me
on it, and stops to watch.

We got a “maybe” once from Pope John Paul II. That wasn’t bad.

The staff would love to get Prince Charles.

Americans are fascinated with royalty. I’m not as fascinated as my viewers. Maybe it’s because all the shows about royalty
have been done with panels and experts. What did the Queen Mother think of this or that? But actually having Prince Charles
on would be interesting to me. What’s it like to wait to be king? What are the burdens of royalty? I would never want to be
him. But I’d like to know how he handles the burdens.

The guy I’d really like to meet is the writer J. D. Salinger. He’s ninety now. I was nothing like Holden Caulfield, the kid
in
Catcher in the Rye
, but I understood him. Even though I had no association, I felt for him. J. D. Salinger became a recluse when he was at the
top of his game. Why would you disappear from the known world? Did he stop writing? Or did he keep writing, but not publish
his work?

I know a guy who likes to do impossible things for friends. When he heard my impossible thing was to interview J. D. Salinger,
he found out where Salinger lived, drove four hundred miles, knocked on the door, and met Salinger’s wife. He asked what would
be the best way to get to J. D. She said J. D. didn’t do any interviews. But the best way to get in touch was to write a letter.
So I wrote him a letter a little while ago. I’d just like to talk to him.

A nuclear submarine. One thing about going on a submarine is there’s always great food. These guys are underwater for six
months at a time. If they didn’t have great food, there’d be a mutiny.

Whenever I do Israeli-Palestinian debates, I can’t help but think they’re both right. The violence is wrong. But the principle
of both sides is right: This is our home.

“This land was ordained to us by God.”

“But we lived there.”

The arguments go on and on and there’s no end to them.

We should remember that people didn’t think there would ever be peace in Northern Ireland—and that was accomplished. I spoke
with Senator George Mitchell, who helped pull that off. Even he thought that the Israeli-Palestinian situation was more difficult.
It’s deeply embedded in the soul.

I was with Yitzhak Rabin when he campaigned for prime minister of Israel in ’92. He said, “No one hates war more than the
warrior.” He got tired of death. He said there’s no place to go other than peace.

My eyes were opened when I went to see the Palestinian legislator Hanan Ashrawi on the West Bank. She’s been on my show many
times. The funny part of the visit was, it showed me how close the Palestinians and Jews really are. There’s no illiteracy.
We have illiteracy in the United States. But Israeli Jews are well educated. And Palestinians are well educated. Some of the
most prominent poets in the world are Palestinian. The culture is similar. The food is similar. They’re cousins. That they
have violent thoughts toward each other is incredible.

I was with my brother, Marty, and my agent, Bob Woolf, when I went to Hanan’s house. We planned to spend an hour.

Hanan said, “You’re not staying for dinner? We cooked all day!” It could have been my Aunt Dora. “There’s no question you’re
staying.”

She took me around the house just like my Aunt Dora would have. “Come here, we just wallpapered, let me show you. Let me show
you the kitchen.”

We had a great meal. When we got in the car to go back, Marty, Bob, and I looked at each other. The first thing I said was,
“How can these people be enemies?”

It may be an unsolvable problem. But amid all the recent strife, perhaps there’s reason for optimism. George Mitchell was
recently appointed special envoy to the Middle East. He’s definitely got the right attitude. “You can have 900 bad days,”
he once told me. “But all you need is one good one.”

I changed my name in 1959, two years after I started in radio. I did it because of AFTRA—the American Federation of Television
and Radio Artists. No two artists in that union can have the same name. Let’s say someone else was born with the name Larry
King. He’d have to register as Larry King Esq., or something else like that. It’s easy. You go to court and you tell the judge
that the reason you changed your name is that you’re on the air. If you know someone who wants to change his name and is a
little nervous about it, here’s a good story to tell him. Tell him about the judge in New York named Judge Schmuck. If you
want to change your name and you go before him, you’d better have a good reason.

There have been so many, but I really liked what Swami Satchidananda told me on the Mutual show. He made a lot of sense. There
was a wonderful peace about him. I think he was silent for a long time at one point in his life. He was fascinating to listen
to.

He said, “Why worry? Why get excited about anything? You wake up in the morning and it may be cloudy or it may be raining.
Did you deserve it? Did it come from you? No. So it was a gift. Just thank yourself for the gift and have a wonderful day.

“Let’s say you go to a restaurant and the toast you’ve ordered comes to you burnt. What’s the best way to get good toast?
Would you scream at the waitress, ‘Lady! This toast is burnt! Get this out of here and bring me some new toast!’ Or, would
it be better to say, ‘Miss, I hate to bother you. The toast is a little burnt for my taste. When you get a chance, if you
could please have the toast done a little lighter, I’d really appreciate it.’”

So I gave him a couple of challenges. I said, “OK, Swami. Let’s say I tell you that I’m going to take you to the airport tomorrow.
You tell me the time of your flight and we agree on a time to meet. ‘Don’t worry,’ I say. ‘I’ll be there.’ But I don’t show
up. You miss your flight. Then, I call you up to apologize. You’re fuming—”

“No,” the Swami said. “I’m not fuming.”

“Why aren’t you fuming?”

“Because I’m worried about my friend Larry. How is my friend Larry? He didn’t come at the appointed time. So as soon as the
phone rings and I can hear your voice, before you can even say I’m sorry, I’m going to say, ‘How are you, my friend? Is everything
OK?’ There will always be another airplane. But I am happy that my friend Larry is OK. Who owns that moment, then?”

So I said, “OK, Swami. I’m going to give you the ultimate swami question. You come home from work a little early. You go upstairs
and find your wife in bed with another man. What do you do?”

He said, “What would you do?”

I said, “I would go nuts.”

He said, “That’s fine. But what is the one thing you want when you enter that room and see that scene?”

“I don’t know. What do I want?”

He said, “Information. You want to know who the man in your bed is. You want to know how it happened. What’s the best way
to get that information? You say, ‘I’m going to go downstairs and make some tea. Why don’t the two of you come down and the
three of us will have tea together and talk about this.’ Now, who owns that moment? You own the moment. You’re not acting
crazy. So the guy who is with your wife can’t say you’re a nut. You own the moment because it’s the best way you have of learning
something. That’s not saying the moment is not sad to you. That’s not saying the moment is not painful to you. But the thing
you want in that moment is information.”

Then he said, “Think about it, Larry. How do you get information? You ask good questions. You care about the person you’re
asking questions of. You listen respectfully to their answers. What if you screamed at them? Would you get the same answers?”