The Washington Post TV critic was the butt of a lot of conspiracy mongering a while back when he said he didn’t like Christiane Amanpour because, well, he just didn’t like her.
But that’s missing the point of Tom Shales. He is simply a stalwart of an unfortunately fading journalistic tradition, the grouch, the misanthrope, the guy who waxes meanspirited simply because he’s so good at it.
And this morning, reviewing the tatty flash of the White House Correspondents Dinner, he takes aim at Amanpour’s fellow relic of the Jurassic News Network, Larry King:
When, meanwhile, did this once prestigious event turn into Washington’s version of the Golden Globes, replete with "red carpet" arrivals — among them the very bi-coastal Larry King, who at this point in life bears a striking resemblance to the hood ornament on an old Pontiac: His face arrives half a second before the rest of him.
Now, King is Jewish, as we know. And buried somewhere in there there’s a nose joke! Maybe the hypersensitive and humorless souls who were convinced Shales had it in for Amanpour’s Iranian heritage will now cry anti-Semitism.
But, probably not.
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