Whoops! Larry King Forgets to Ask Landis 'Did You Cheat?'

CNN-Larry King Live/NewsBusters ^ | Mark Finkelstein

[governsleastgovernsbest]

by Mark Finkelstein

July 28, 2006 - 21:34

Imagine you're Larry King. You've landed the first interview with Floyd Landis, the winner of the Tour de France with a great feel-good story - until he flunked a drug test.

What would be the first question you'd ask? OK, this is Larry King. Not known as the 'king' of the hardball, so to speak. So grant Larry a few warm-up questions to put Floyd at ease. But eventually, at some point, as painful as it might be, DON'T YOU HAVE TO ASK LANDIS IF HE CHEATED?? I mean, what the heck else is the purpose of the interview?

But along with millions of others [OK, Larry's ratings haven't been that great in recent years. Let's say 'thousands of others'] I waited in vain for a question that never came. Larry King never asked Floyd Landis if he took performance-enhancing drugs that accounted for the high testosterone ratio levels the post-race test detected.

Eventually, almost a half-hour into the show, Larry let someone else do his dirty work for him, flashing a viewer question asking Landis whether he had ever taken a banned substance. In contrast with Landis' halting, equivocal denial in response to a similar question that had recently been posed to him, this time Floyd promptly and flatly denied he had ever broken the rules.

I was rooting for Landis during the Tour and I'm rooting for him to be exonerated now. I was thrilled at the prospect of a person with his family background becoming a different kind of American sports hero in the age of Barry Bonds, Mark 'Let's Not Talk About the Past' McGuire, and others. But for Larry King not to have posed the obvious, necessary question right out of the box was nothing short of journalistic malpractice.

[governsleastgovernsbest]

Larry King Live/NewsBusters performance-enhanced ping to Today show list.

[coconutt2000]

I'm surprised his name didn't leak out when it was first announced. I was under the impression that the French would've jumped at the chance to cast doubt on the performance of any American athlete.

As for testosterone being a performance enhancing substance, under what conditions does it enhance performance, and how?

[Gay State Conservative]

Didn't he also forget a few years back to ask the Former Twelfth Lady if she ordered the looting of Vince Foster's office in the hours after his violent,untimely death?

[MichiganConservative]

But did Larry ask about his brand new book, er movie, er whatever's new?

[Waco]

Will there be a movie? Will you star?"

[jdm]

Ths show isn't even over yet. He's saving this question for 9:58PM. /sarc

[Darkwolf377]

Imagine you're Larry King.

OK, let me find a trophy wife decades younger than me, and I'll have to bludgeon myself with a hammer to get me in the right mindset, and then I'll have to hang out in a hospital to get that "old people" smell...

[capt. norm]

The immigration question splits between those who really care for this country and those who would sell their sister to get re-elected.

It's all about staying in power.

[capt. norm]

If you check the demographics of Larry's ratings, most of his audience is in his age group.

To them, he looks like Brad Pitt and speaks with the eloquence of Orson Welles.

[ZOOKER]

What makes you think King would have gotten a straight answer?

You ask a guy to implicate himself in an international fraud in front of 25 Million people, he's gonna tell you the truth, right?

[governsleastgovernsbest]

Doesn't matter. You have to ask the question.

[PrairieDawg]

Testosterone is used for building muscle mass - not exactly what you'd want to ride a bike quickly up a steep long hill like the Col Du Gabilier (sp). Velonews www.velonews.com has an article about using testosterone. If Landis cheated, it wasn't with testosterone. Just my $.02 worth.

FRegards,
PrairieDawg

[KellyAdmirer]

I was under the impression that the French would've jumped at the chance to cast doubt on the performance of any American athlete.

As with every else Gallic, there is a complication with that. Some French hate Lance Armstrong so strongly (the Tour Director is one of them) that they couldn't restrain themselves from saying how epic, how wonderful, how unique this quy's victory was. They would have praised this year's winner to the heavens regardless of who he was, whether he was American or Satan or (gasp) Israeli. Then this comes along, and now Lance isn't looking so bad after all. Some very important French people may have to eat their pompous words.

[PrairieDawg]

Umm, that would be velonews.com. Sorry. HTML isn't my usual language. :-(

[coconutt2000]

Testosterone is used for building muscle mass - not exactly what you'd want to ride a bike quickly up a steep long hill like the Col Du Gabilier (sp).

That was my impression as well.

[John Jorsett]

You don't go on Larry King to get asked hardball questions, you go on to get risk-free exposure and to have your shoes given a tongue-bath by the host.

[Grizzled Bear]

Hey! Before anyone accuses Landis of cheating you have to look at the facts. He was found, in France, of having double the "normal amount of Testosterone."

We first must define what is a "normal amount of Testosterone" and what nations standard we use.

[Wally_Kalbacken]

It aids in building muscle tissue rapidly and results in phenomenal increases in strength. I have had the experience f using it as a topical application (tradename Androgel) and it makes a pronounced difference in strength. I seems to work quickly after application and the results fade unless a daily application is used. It can be injected into the thigh muscle as well.

[Zakeet]

The King of softball.

I programmed Chicken Noodle News out of the TV lineup years ago. Larry the Limp was one of the reasons why.