Larry King, broadcasting giant for half-century, dies at 87
Los Angeles: Larry King, the suspenders-sporting everyman whose broadcast interviews with world leaders, movie stars and ordinary Joes helped define American conversation for a half-century, died Saturday. He was 87.
King died at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, Ora Media, the studio and network he co-founded, tweeted. No cause of death was given, but CNN reported January 2 that King had been hospitalised for more than a week with COVID-19.
A longtime nationally syndicated radio host, from 1985 through 2010 he was a nightly fixture on CNN, where he won many honors, including two Peabody awards.
With his celebrity interviews, political debates and topical discussions, King wasn't just an enduring on-air personality. He also set himself apart with the curiosity be brought to every interview, whether questioning the assault victim known as the Central Park jogger or billionaire industrialist Ross Perot, who in 1992 rocked the presidential contest by announcing his candidacy on King's show.
In its early years, Larry King Live was based in Washington, which gave the show an air of gravitas. Likewise King. He was the plainspoken go-between through whom Beltway bigwigs could reach their public, and they did, earning the show prestige as a place where things happened, where news was made.
King conducted an estimated 50,000 on-air interviews. In 1995 he presided over a Middle East peace summit with PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat, King Hussein of Jordan and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. He welcomed everyone from the Dalai Lama to Elizabeth Taylor, from Mikhail Gorbachev to Barack Obama, Bill Gates to Lady Gaga.
Especially after he relocated to Los Angeles, his shows were frequently in the thick of breaking celebrity news, including Paris Hilton talking about her stint in jail in 2007 and Michael Jackson's friends and family members talking about his death in 2009.
King boasted of never overpreparing for an interview. His nonconfrontational style relaxed his guests and made him readily relatable to his audience.
I don't pretend to know it all, he said in a 1995 Associated Press interview. Not, `What about Geneva or Cuba?' I ask, `Mr. President, what don't you like about this job?' Or `What's the biggest mistake you made?' That's fascinating.
At a time when CNN as the lone player in cable news was deemed politically neutral, and King was the essence of its middle-of-the-road stance, political figures and people at the center of controversies would seek out his show.
And he was known for getting guests who were notoriously elusive. Frank Sinatra, who rarely gave interviews and often lashed out at reporters, spoke to King in 1988 in what would be the singer's last major TV appearance.
Sinatra was an old friend of King's and acted accordingly.
Why are you here? King asks. Sinatra responds, Because you asked me to come and I hadn't seen you in a long time to begin with, I thought we ought to get together and chat, just talk about a lot of things.
King had never met Marlon Brando, who was even tougher to get and tougher to interview, when the acting giant asked to appear on King's show in 1994. The two hit it off so famously they ended their 90-minute talk with a song and an on-the-mouth kiss, an image that was all over media in subsequent weeks.
After a gala week marking his 25th anniversary in June 2010, King abruptly announced he was retiring from his show, telling viewers, It's time to hang up my nightly suspenders. Named as his successor in the time slot: British journalist and TV personality Piers Morgan.
By King's departure that December, suspicion had grown that he had waited a little too long to hang up those suspenders. Once the leader in cable TV news, he ranked third in his time slot with less than half the nightly audience his peak year, 1998, when Larry King Live drew 1.64 million viewers.
His wide-eyed, regular-guy approach to interviewing by then felt dated in an era of edgy, pushy or loaded questioning by other hosts.
Meanwhile, occasional flubs had made him seem out of touch, or worse. A prime example from 2007 found King asking Jerry Seinfeld if he had voluntarily left his sitcom or been canceled by his network, NBC.
I was the No. 1 show in television, Larry, replied Seinfeld with a flabbergasted look. Do you know who I am?
Always a workaholic, King would be back doing specials for CNN within a few months of performing his nightly duties.
He found a new sort of celebrity as a plainspoken natural on Twitter when the platform emerged, winning over more than 2 million followers who simultaneously mocked and loved him for his esoteric style.
I've never been in a canoe. #Itsmy2cents, he said in a typical tweet in 2015.
His Twitter account was essentially a revival of a USA Today column he wrote for two decades full of one-off, disjointed thoughts. Norm Macdonald delivered a parody version of the column when he played King on Saturday Night Live, with deadpan lines like, The more I think about it, the more I appreciate the equator.
King was constantly parodied, often through old-age jokes on late-night talk shows from hosts including David Letterman and Conan O'Brien, often appearing with the latter to get in on the roasting himself.
He was born Lawrence Harvey Zeiger in 1933, a son of Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe who ran a bar and grill in Brooklyn. But after his father's death when Larry was a boy, he faced a troubled, sometimes destitute youth.
Let the Truth be known. If you read VB and like VB, please be a VB Supporter and Help us deliver the Truth to one and all.
South African police arrest suspect in mass shooting that killed 12, including 3 children
Johannesburg (AP): A 32-year-old suspect has been arrested in connection with a mass shooting which claimed the lives of 12 people including three children at an unlicensed pub earlier this month, South African police said on Monday.
The man is suspected of being one of the three people who opened fire on patrons in a pub at Saulsville township, west of South Africa's capital Pretoria, killing 12 people including three children aged 3, 12 and 16.
At least 13 people were also injured during the attack, whose motive remains unknown.
According to the police, the suspect was arrested on Sunday while traveling to Botlokwa in Limpopo province, more than 340 km from where the mass shooting took place on Dec 6.
An unlicensed firearm believed to have been used during the attack was recovered from the suspect's vehicle.
“The 32-year-old suspect was intercepted by Limpopo Tracking Team on the R101 Road in Westenburg precinct. During the arrest, the team recovered an unlicensed firearm, a hand gun, believed to have been used in the commission of the multiple murders. The firearm will be taken to the Forensic Science Laboratory for ballistic analysis,” police said in statement.
The suspect was arrested on the same day that another mass shooting at a pub took place in the Bekkersdal township, west of Johannesburg, in which nine people were killed and 10 wounded when unknown gunmen opened fire on patrons.
Police have since launched a search for the suspects.
South Africa has one of the highest homicide rates in the world and recorded more than 26,000 homicides in 2024 — an average of more than 70 a day. Firearms are by far the leading cause of death in homicides.
The country of 62 million people has relatively strict gun ownership laws, but many killings are committed with illegal guns, according to authorities.
According to police, mass shootings at unlicensed bars are becoming a serious problem. Police shut down more than 11,000 illegal taverns between April and September this year and arrested more than 18,000 people for involvement in illegal liquor sales.
