This is a new award that is offered to media interviewers who serve up the most soft-ball, lily-livered, fawning questions to their interviewees. Named after Larry King, who would have given Stalin a bouquet if he could have booked him on the show, the first nominee is my friend Chris Matthews (whose show I often appear on). Here’s his interaction with compulsive liar, traitor and plagiarist, Jayson Blair:
MATTHEWS: Well, let me ask you the two toughest questions. I told you I was going to ask them. I’m going to ask them right now.
Why-you are such a damn good writer, a creative force. You have fluency and life. Anybody who picks — I’m not saying buy this book. I’m saying, look at it in the book store, pick it up and read a couple of pages. It moves. It’s got air. It’s got oxygen, the thing you always look for in a writing. What’s it like to be that creative? You are obviously a guy who can knock out 120,000 words in a month.
BLAIR: I enjoy it.
MATTHEWS: Nobody else can do that.
BLAIR: No, I enjoy it. But like all writers and like all people, I’m insecure, and I was insecure while I was at the Times about how good I was. It really took, you know…
MATTHEWS: You’re up there with Johnny Apple. You’re one of these guys who can do it magically. Do you know that?
BLAIR: But I did not know it. I did not know it until afterwards.
Up there with Johnny Apple. Well, I guess it could be worse. Please send in any brown-nosing from media journalists. Special points for Katie Couric.
The Dish 