Long...Live...The...King!

By Joel Stein

Not long ago, it was hard to write a column. Guys like Mike Royko used to have to get up from their desks, get into a car and ask people questions in neighborhoods that were sometimes dicey. Neighborhoods, I'm told, that had no decent restaurants for expense lunches. Back then, when the concept of news was limited to what happens to other people, editors wouldn't even consider something as monumental as a columnist's own mother's wedding to be newsworthy.

Then along came Larry King. King, in USA Today, reinvented the concept of the column, making it the easiest job in the world. Using the classic three-dot format and replacing information with random opinions, he filled columns with sentences like these: "Does anybody know how to bake strawberry longcake?...I hate digital clocks...If George Shearing is playing piano, I'm listening to the piano...Whoever invented the paper clip is a genius...Someday they'll send pizza pies to your house like faxes, and boy will that make money." By looking inside instead of outside, King effectively cut the workload of the modern columnist by 98%. Once voice recognition replaces typing, the other 2% will be taken care of.

But King, at least in the printed version, will soon be no more. USA Today, claiming it wants to end King's 19-year reign while he is still at the top of his game, has canceled his column, which will make its last appearance on Sept. 24. Perhaps if he hadn't done his TV show and had just stuck with his stress-free column job, King would have been appreciated more for his print work. He'd also probably still be on wife No. 1 and heart No. 1. Instead, I am left here to mourn King not only as a reader--how am I going to find out if Steve Martini's next novel is a helluva read?--but as a disciple.

Without King, I wouldn't be able to write this column, or at least not in a way that takes only 20 minutes a week. I took King's concept of typing up every minuscule thought that crosses my head and expanded it. Instead of just wasting the thought in one sentence, as he does, I stretch each passing fancy into an entire article: I hate dogs...I never get Daylight Savings Time right...The Post Office is one well-run organization...Happy birthday, Robert Goulet...Boy, do I love porn stars.

Now that King is gone, I will honor him by using my platform here, in the back of a magazine full of journalists stuck in that 20th century "reporting" mind-set, to fulfill King's legacy. I too have a dream.

In the future, all columnists will write about me, or, if need be, themselves. Opinions on news aren't worth as much as they once were, being yelled as they are from every corner of the TV screen. Instead, in these Real World times, columnists can serve an important new role: providing a voyeuristic glimpse into the life of anyone, whether a cranky Jew in braces or an oversexed Jew who recently got his braces taken off. Either way, it can offer an uncomfortably revealing glimpse into the feelings of another person. And that, I believe, is a part of what the news should be delivering. Sorry about all this defensiveness. But if they move me five pages further back, I'm out of the magazine.