Larry King, Hardball Reporter
Larry King has gotten the reputation of being a softball journalist, and his "Larry King Live" show is reputed to be a softball show.
So it's surprising to find someone who would refuse to do something that Larry King would do.
Enter Bob Costas:
"Larry King Live" substitute host Bob Costas declined to host an episode last week that dealt with the BTK killer's sentencing, saying he didn't think the subject matter was appropriate for him.
And that's not the only topic that Costas has turned down:
While some cable TV hosts are making their living off the Natalee Holloway case this summer, Bob Costas is having none of it.
Costas, hired by CNN as an occasional fill-in on “Larry King Live,” refused to anchor Thursday’s show because it was primarily about the Alabama teenager who went missing in Aruba.
Actually, these items talk about the same show, so I'm not sure whether Costas objected to the BTK killer story, or the Natalee Holloway story. Pretensions to serious journalism? Let's see what Tony Pierce had to say about Costas in 2002:
Bob Costas has taken the lively art of calling a ball game and dragged it into the drab dens of middle america mediocrity. He's as exciting as an acorn, as spontaneous as a tug boat, as lively as a hang nail. if he were a fish he'd be a white fish. a dead, odorless, forgetable one....
costas is no howard coselle. no one tuned in to listen to him talk. he never played the game, and he never will.
he is someone's little brother who tagged along and somehow ended up in front of the camera....
costas makes it okay to be bland and sterile and polished and smooth. but its not okay....
the era of costas needs to pass. i harp on him and nbc isn't even doing the playoffs, but his staleness seeps into the sounds of the game and it appears to me, not that im any expert, that there are far more costas-influenced broadcasters than caray ones.
i know the Lord broke the mold when He made Harry, but still, i'll take fifteen Ueckers over one costas.
www.dawnolsen.com is on the air. first she was on blogspot. then she moved over temporarilly to somewhere else. now she has her own domain.
welcome to the big leagues, slugger.
what's her first order of business? to begin with a few lines about dildoes....
big difference between dawn and bob costas? costas would never have the guts to write about his dildo.
Costas is perfect for warm fuzzy little events of nothingness like the olympics where most moments of sap couldnt possibly be overshadowed with even more sap, or when blocks of time need to be filled with fluff. i would be very satisfied if i only was forced to see costas, ahmad, and peekaboo street bundled in their parkas from the base of a long jumping competition at the winter olympics every four years. but please then never again. better yet, put him on the Today show to ensure that i wouldnt have to be bothered with him....
Pierce preferred to contrast Bob Costas with Harry Caray. I prefer to contrast Costas with Howard Cosell. Dave Kindred said:
My millennium's-ending list of Five Ornery Charmers has Cosell at the top, No. 1, because never have I met anyone so thoroughly charming and so thoroughly ornery. If you were Cosell's enemy, he gave you unshirted hell; his friend, he'd do anything for you.
I became his friend in the late 1970s when some fool fan began one of the frequent get-Cosell-off-the-air campaigns. This fool gained publicity by throwing bricks through television sets as Cosell's image came on the screen. Writing for The Washington Post, I defended Cosell as the very model of what a journalist ought to be: a finder of facts, a thinker, incisive, enthusiastic, entertaining, principled....
The morning after my Post column ran, Cosell called to say thank you. He also said, "Now, tell me about the Redskins," because, at bottom, Cosell was first a reporter eager to learn what he didn't know....
One of my favorite moments came in the ring after Clay's stunning 1964 victory over Sonny Liston for the heavyweight championship. Cosell has bounded from his ringside seat to interview the new champ, who is screaming, "I SHOCKED THE WORLD," and five or six minutes into the alleged interview, we hear Cosell say indignantly, "Cassius, give me the mike."...
Oh, how some people disliked him. Bob Costas once said that if you cut Cosell open, you'd find a nest of snakes. Jimmy Cannon wrote, "If Howard Cosell were a sport, he'd be Roller Derby." And Cannon also said, "Cosell is only man who ever changed his name and put on a toupee to tell it like it is."
I once asked Cosell about that last Cannon line and he said, "My father's name, when he came to America, was Kassell. At Ellis Island, the registrars changed it to Cohen. I honored my father's name by changing it back to its original pronunciation."...
More on Cosell:
"In the modern era, he was just so unique," said Dick Ebersol, the current president of NBC Sports who also began as an Olympic researcher for ABC and Cosell in the 1960s. "He got beyond what I'd call the cosmetic world of television, which said you had to look and sound a certain way.
"From the '60s to the '70s until he left in the mid-'80s, it was always substance over style with Howard. He was defined by what he said, not how he looked. . . . The great sadness is that he was a major figure -- he created sports journalism -- but his bitterness cut him off from people at a time when the whole world would have been predisposed to honor him.
"He deserved his success. He worked hard for it, but he didn't get to enjoy his success the way other people did. I've been sad he hasn't been out there receiving his due. For whatever reason, he cut himself off from the world."
Ebersol, for example, said he hadn't seen Cosell since his own 40th birthday party in July 1987, when Cosell showed up as a surprise guest and did a mock interview with him. "He said I was a fraud who hadn't gone to Yale and was really an employee of the Yale Lock Company," Ebersol recalled. "It was a memorable night."...
David Klatell, head of the broadcast journalism department at Columbia University and author of "Sports For Sale: Television, Money and The Fans," never was able to get that up-close and personal with Cosell. Nevertheless, he has no question about Cosell's contribution to the medium...."I don't think a broadcaster like him will ever come along again because I don't think they'd let it happen again. That's a condemnation of the industry. There are not any risk-takers any more. . . . People also have fewer illusions about sports, so the need for an illusion-shatterer is greatly diminished."
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