The promotional tour of Kevorkian – with his new and improved “packaging” – continues on CNN. According to the CNN site, he’ll be appearing on Larry King Live on Friday, June 18th. This should be real nausea-inducing.
Why would I think that?
Well, for starters, Larry is the “King” of softball interviews and it’s why people love to come on his show. They won”t get asked any hard questions and King will treat them with an attitude ranging from warm geniality to open adoration. That’s the normal mode for the Kingster.
However, as noted in this blog, Kevorkian has already gotten softball treatment from both Anderson Cooper and Sanjay Gupta. It’s gonna be real hard for even the master of fluffy interviews to go softer than his two colleagues.
I figure the only place he can go is to use the ten questions always used by James Lipton on Inside the Actors Studio:
- What is your favorite word?
- What is your least favorite word?
- What turns you on?
- What turns you off?
- What sound or noise do you love?
- What sound or noise do you hate?
- What is your favorite curse word?
- What profession other than your own would you like to attempt?
- What profession would you not like to do?
- If Heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the Pearly Gates?
Those questions could fill a lot of time and manage to out-softball Anderson and Gupta – barely.
FWIW, you can submit questions for the show at this link.
As an exercise in futility, I submitted one. I asked why Kevorkian was lying about his motivation in helping people commit suicide. Right now, he’s saying it’s all about relieving suffering. But in his 1991 book “Prescription: Medicide” he told a potential “client” that his primary goal was the “prospect of making possible the performance of invaluable experiments or other beneficial medical acts.”
My guess is that King will ask Kevorkian what kind of animal he’d like to be reborn as rather than ask something of substance like the question above. But submit questions anyway. Then King and his staff won’t have ignorance as an excuse for sticking with mush in terms of content. –Stephen Drake