Let Clinton Be King
I was plugging my book, Me and Ted Against the World, on Fox News in January of 2001, when I was asked, "What would you do if you were running CNN today?" "I'd fire Larry King and hire Bill Clinton," I answered. The San Francisco Chronicle picked up on it and wrote, "That's not a good idea, that's a great idea!"
Well, it's almost eight years later, and King's still on the air, and with Hillary's appointment as Secretary of State, Bill is still at liberty. It's time to start my campaign all over again. Back in '01, I called Bill's lawyer and asked if Bill would consider it. He asked what I thought the job would pay. I said King was reported to be making $8 million a year, and I thought Bill would be worth twice that. He laughed, and left me with the impression that Bill might be available, so, I called Walter Isaacson, who had just been appointed head of CNN, and left a message to that effect with his secretary. I also left my phone number, and the lawyer's number. Neither of us heard from Isaacson.
In 2001, Fox News was about to overtake CNN as the leading cable news service. King had been around almost fifteen years, and both he and his audience were getting old and perhaps stale. At that moment, Bill had everything, there wasn't a man in the world that Bill couldn't have gotten to be his guest for primetime CNN hour. When I started CNN, it was my idea that at 10pm we would every night have that day's most important news maker on our air to answer questions about what he had done; to advance that news story at least one news cycle -- to give you tomorrow's story tonight. At that moment, no one could have done that better than Bill Clinton.
When CNN didn't pick up on the idea, I thought they had to be the dumbest news organization since the Chicago Tribune made John Dewey President. I've had second, maybe paranoid, thoughts about this. Maybe Time Warner didn't try to sign Clinton because they were afraid of the Bush administration reaction. Time Warner was in the midst of acquiring, or being acquired by, AOL. It was a messy transaction, and the SEC ultimately charged AOL with inflating revenues and security fraud. Time Warner didn't need any more enemies. In any event, Bill Clinton never got a nibble.
Now it's a whole new world. Here's Bill with his wife working for Obama, and everybody in the news business just waiting for him to make one small slip up, take one speaking engagement from a guy who later turns out to be a crook, or consults with one company that later gets a contract from the State Department, what's he going to do for a living? Bill, come over to our side -- be a journalist -- let CNN give you a living wage! You'll double Larry King's ratings, you'll save CNN primetime, and maybe even do the world some good by getting important people to tell the truth about the way the world works.
So, Bill, what do you think, is being King of the Airwaves the next best job after being President of the United States?
Loading comments…
Want to reply to a comment? Hint: Click "Reply" at the bottom of the comment; after being approved your comment will appear directly underneath the comment you replied to
Being a talk show host is not as important as they might lead you to believe.
As former POTUS and spouse of the current Sec. of State, it seems he may have more important things to do than be another talking head on MSM. In reality he is doing much more for the world than simply talking.
.......Or we could reward raw talent and let people who have dedicated their lives to investigative journalism have a chance to shine.
Replacing Larry King with someone with a rather obvious conflict of interest in terms of holding politicians feet to the fire just because we know their name does not make a whole lot of sense.
I start by transforming the Cafferty File into a one hour daily show! His five minutes of air time is the only interesting part of the situation room.
Agree
NowTHAT is a great idea ramblingjohnny! I love Cafferty - NO BS. He was the first one to call Sarah Palin a "joke". How correct he was - and is!
Great idea, so it'll probably not happen.
so what seems to be the problem with that....Ki
Any network that could get Bill Clinton to host a show would be looking at terrific ratings!
I think you were right 8 years ago, but the primaries showed that relying on Bill's star power today means falling just short of number 1. Would Jon Stewart be interested in being crowned the new King of CNN? Can't imagine there's going to be nearly as much fodder going round at Comedy Central in the post-Bush world. And Stewart consistently defends himself against conservative criticism on the grounds that his is not an actual news show, maybe he'd like to prove himself in a new arena?
There is always plenty of fodder and an Obama presidency will provide plenty, just as every other administration has - The extent to which Stewart and others avail themselves of it will reveal their biases, or lack of it.
forget King's job, Bubba should be gunning for Oprah's. just imagine the ratings as the former leader of the free world feels the pain of every comer. pure gold.
Looks to me like the Clintons will grasp at anything to stay in the power spotlight. The two of them cannot accept they are of the "old" school and esentially a team of the past, but will cling desperately to anything that the photo ops they seek, will give them,,,,,ie they are still very powerful..
It's for comments like that that friends of mine from around the world tell me how people look down on the US. See us as arrogant and many other adjectives. The mention about the Clintons "doing something for humanity" -- what rock have you been under?? Attempt to look outside the borders and educate yourself as to the rest of the world. Might learn something. The one that requires attitude adjustment is not the Clintons..
ebbtide: Yeah it really looks like the Clintons are "old" school, especially with Obama filling about 99% of his administration with all Clinton people, most likely making Hillary Clinton his Secretary of State.
It really kills you, huh.
By the way, denial is a river in the desert.
Yeah the Clintons haven't done ANYTHING for humanity.
Okey dokey
Google is a wonderful tool if you need to inform yourself of what the Clintons have done for this country and for the world. Rather than feed your appetite for negative Clinton blurbs, how about actually looking at the Clinton Global Initiative site http://www
But if they take the time to read about the Clinton Global Initiative they won't have time to bash them on the HF Post.
ANd what fun would that be now?
You must be logged in to comment. Log in or connect with
