THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, December 9, 1994 TAG: 9412090606
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: GUY FRIDDELL
LENGTH: Medium: 60 lines
Oliver North, who spent much of his campaign railing against ``the liberal media,'' wound up discussing his future with Larry King, the most liberal of all talk show hosts.
Who has the largest TV audience across the spectrum of that species.
North, moreover, announced that in January he will become host of a daily afternoon radio talk show.
He'll write a newsletter, campaign nationwide for conservatives, raise funds with Team America and try to trigger in 1995 in our General Assembly the sort of earthquake that wrought a GOP Congress.
Mornings he will mind his shop fabricating bulletproof vests.
But the main reason North will not challenge U.S. Sen. John Warner in 1996 is that he wishes to be with his wife and four children.
Who apparently will try to reach him on his drive-time talk show.
In fine-spun, homespun gab he said his ``poor old widowed Mom'' had advised: ``Son, don't ever mention my age on national television again. Second, if you're wearing a hair piece, get a better one.''
North said he'd replied, ``It's the same hair you and Dad gave me.''
And he is glib with sound bites.
Asked about a postage stamp depicting a mushroom cloud over Hiroshima, North said: ``We need to be focusing on things that really count. The heck with the shape of the stamp, get the mail delivered.''
And agile at exculpating pals.
Of Jesse Helms' warning that Bill Clinton bring bodyguards to North Carolina, North said, ``I watched as some of my statements were taken and just kind of twisted and turned into something other than what they were.''
When a federal employee lamented Newt Gingrich's bad-mouthing bureaucrats, North smothered the caller with praise, beginning: ``He gets up every morning and goes to work for his country. . . ''
Another asked why he didn't answer Nancy Reagan's trenchant charge that North had lied to Ronald Reagan. North merely replied, ``I never lied to her husband.''
He hymned Reagan as ``the greatest president in my lifetime.'' Of Reagan's admission that he has Alzheimer's disease, North said, ``It's nobility, that's what it is.''
When he said he would back the GOP nominee in the 1996 Senate race, King marveled at his charity toward the likes of Warner, who supported independent Marshall Coleman this year.
``Life is far too short for you, me or anybody else to walk around with recriminations or with vengeance in their mind as the only thing that drives them,'' he said.
In conceding defeat on election night, North had not mentioned his foe, U.S. Sen. Charles S. Robb. He revealed he had told Robb by phone: ``You won. Govern well.''
In the hourlong hug, King and North agreed that King will be on North's talk show and North will announce his next race on King's.
``I will run again,'' North said. ``It's not a matter of if. It is only a matter of when.'' by CNB