To: Larry King

From: Mitch Berg

Re: Apologies

Mr. King,

For over two decades, I’ve mocked your USA Today newspaper column as a self-indulgent, stream-of-consciousness glob of senseless drivel. At one point or another, I may have thought to myself “it’ cant’ get any dumber than this”.

To my chagrin, I owe you an apology, Mr. King. To be fair to me, in my most toxic nightmares I had no idea that anyone had a column this really really stupid in them:

…you shouldn’t fret, dear hearts, if what you do doesn’t draw a big crowd or get written up in the papers. Be proud. If you’ve dedicated yourself to the tango, or playing drop-thumb banjo, or digging up ancient cities, or writing sonnets, you are beautiful, and please do not yearn for the bright lights. Those wombats reading the news off teleprompters are talking to the bedridden, the delusional and the criminal. The happy StairMaster president is on his way to a mansionette in Dallas, to be the decider of where to put the sofa. His successor, Mister Mambo, has cast his lot with Harvard and Yale and old Clinton hands, and soon enough, Lord knows, they will get the first of many comeuppances, and their shining faces will be chopfallen.

Mister Mambo?

As for me, I sat and wrote sonnets, including one about self-esteem.

Life is absurd. A man can count on that.

Here I am on the front page, standing alone,

Refusing to hide my face behind my hat,

Which, in my case, I do not even own.

MAN, 66, NABBED FOR PUBLIC EXPOSURE.

All I did was go take a leak in the bushes.

I didn’t run through the park with no clothes or

Flash anyone. Ridiculous. Absolutely atrocious.

The injustice! Some gumshoe at the P.D.

Was out to enhance his crime-stopping reputation

And now I am an outcast crying bootlessly

For the crime of emergency urination.

With fortune and men’s eyes I’m in disgrace

But you still love me and I refuse to hide my face.

Mr. King, I know what you’re thinking; there’s no way something like this would inspired by something as crass as public urination.

You, like I, would be wrong:

It was inspired, if you must know, by observing a man taking a leak in the bushes at a park where a Cuban band was playing, and a line of dancers formed impromptu next to the stage and did a lovely salsa step, so simple, graceful, slide slide turn slide, arms up, turn step step slide, and you had to think, O my God how beautiful we are. And beyond was the man disgracing himself, and he was beautiful, too.

Mr. King, I am so sorry. You read like Hemingway, taut and acerbic, compared to Keillor’s flabby drivel; indeed, while Jesse Ventura and Al Franken may be Minnesota’s greatest embarassments, Keillor must be closing in.

Please accept my apology. Write about toe corns and brooklyn bagel shops to your heart’s content. I have a newfound appreciation for your oeuvre.

That is all.

This entry was posted by by Mitch Berg on Monday, January 12th, 2009 at 7:10 am and is filed under St. Paul. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.