Food: The Key to Understanding Kidnapping Rapists

To understand how CNN, the once revered, now bungling, semi-news network, found itself in the position that it is currently in (that being one of a cable news network whose participants seem to merely phone it in every day) one needs look no further than The Larry King Show. I'm all for any iconic newsman continuing to "report" the "news", but when an interviewer's questions begin to sound more like some of the blather that you'd hear coming out of Grandpa Simpson, you kind of have to wonder if someone is going to point this out to them or if they're going to just wait until the person ends up following Dan Rather out the door.

Larry King interviewed a woman named Katie Callaway Hall. Ms. Hall was the first victim of perverted rapist and child kidnapper Phillip Garrido. Basically, back in 1976, Ms. Hall gave A-Hole Garrido a ride and he, in turn, forced her to drive across statelines from California to Nevada and to a storage shed that he had set up as a sexual perversion emporium and proceeded to rape her for the next eight hours until she was rescued. A-Hole Garrido was convicted, sentenced to 50 years in one case and 5 to life in another and manged to get out of prison within 11 years. Then he proceeded to kidnap 11-year old Jaycee Dugard and hold her for 18 years and father two children with her beginning when she was 14. Oh, yeah, he's a piece of work.

So Larry King has Ms. Hall on his show. First of all, she came forward after learning that the pig who raped her and imprisoned her was the same guy who had abducted Jaycee Dugard. She wanted people to know what kind of an effing monster this guy is. And I think that's awesome that she did come forward to tell her story, especially since it's not exactly the stuff that bedtime stories are made out of. So with a story like this, you'd expect questions that went somewhere along the lines of the crime, her feelings then, her feelings now, the trial, etc. Basically, all things that are RELEVANT to the story. But Larry must have had different thoughts on that matter.

She describes how, when she decided to give Garrido a ride, she had a bunch of food in her car because she had stopped at the store and bought some things that her boyfriend had asked her to pick up. And for some inexplicable reason, Larry focuses on the food aspect! I don't know why! No one cares! And is it relevant what happened to her groceries after all of the kidnapping but before all of the raping? I don't think it is.

KING: Why did you let him in the car?

HALL: I don't know. It was the worst decision I've ever made, I think. It truly was.

KING: What happened when he got in?

HALL: When he got in, I filled his hands with a lot of food that I had in the front seat anyway -- I tried to engage him.

KING: He was holding your food?

HALL: He was. I tried to engage him in small conversation on the trip. Tried to stay on the main street....on another main street that I turned. So I took him a little further up...I just turned around the corner and pulled over, and he slammed my head into the steering wheel, and pulled out handcuffs. He took my keys out, threw them on the floor, and pulled out handcuffs, and handcuffed me, and said, 'I just want a piece of ass. If you be good, you won't get hurt.'

KING: What did he do with the food?

WTF? Are you kidding me? What did he do with the food? Who in the hell cares what he did with the food?! We have head slamming, handcuffing, key throwing and kidnapping and YOU want to know what he did with the FOOD?! WHY?!? What is wrong with you? That's not only idiotic, it's insulting. This woman is strong enough to sit there on your show and tell millions of people that she was raped and you're asking her what her rapist did with her food. What is wrong with you?

By the way, in case you were now wondering "What did he do with the food?", Ms. Hall answered (with a perplexed look on her face, as if to say "What in the hell is wrong with you?"), "He put it on the floor. I guess. I don't know." There! Put it on the floor! Thank God we know that!

That kind of journalism is just a waste of space and airtime. There's no reason for it. It's crap. If you can't think of something better to ask about than the completely irrelevant food situation, then I believe that's a pretty good indicator that your time has come to get the Hell-o Kitty outta there.

Now, I had shortened the exchange between the two for brevity here, but you can watch the interaction in the video below and see for yourself just how close we should be to planning Larry King's retirement party.

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