Froggy and Toady Go a’Courtin’ on CNN

The eternal Howard Stern caravan of self-glorification rolled on this week, first returning to David Letterman’s show on CBS and then making a Tuesday night stop at the Cushion You Sit On.

“Tonight, the one and only, yes, Howard Stern is here!” announced the Cushion, otherwise known as Larry King.

The big question was whether Stern, in his present panoramic starring role as human trailer for “The Best Reviewed Movie This Year” (his hyperbole), would sit on and flatten the Cushion, as other guests have done so effortlessly on CNN’s “Larry King Live.” Or would he go even further and verbally urinate on him as he often does from afar, berating and utterly savaging King with relish on television and radio and in the 1993 autobiography on which his movie, “Private Parts,” is based.

For example, Stern wrote about King: “How this guy has a television show and a radio show and a newspaper column is beyond me.” Actually, King no longer has the radio show. One down, two to go.

About King’s main livelihood, hosting an hour of global chat and call-ins in front of the camera, Stern wrote: “His television show on CNN is actually a game show. Everyone watches to see how long it’ll take one of my fans to penetrate Larry’s idiot screeners and mention my name in the context of a question.”

About King’s column in USA Today, Stern wrote: “I have never seen a greater collection of non sequiturs and idiot savant pearls of wisdom week in and week out. I always had a great time on my television show whenever I’d slick back my hair, put on my suspenders, don my bigger, craggier nose and be Larry King for a night.”

That was Stern in print. Here he was on his famous radio show Tuesday morning anticipating his coming appearance with King later that day, one he said King had initiated: “This should be a disaster. . . . There is something disturbing about him. . . . I hope it’s only a half an hour. That’s all I can take.”

Actually, it turned out to be an hour. Time flies when old chums are having fun.

How had this freak-show rapprochement between bully and bullied come about? Stern you could understand. He is who he is: a bright, gifted, outrageous farceur and hypocrite who, by hitting nearly every major venue on the media moonscape in his quest to publicize “Private Parts,” has been imitating the very talk-show-visiting celebrity suck-ups he has blasted for years. He tries futilely to separate himself from them by saying that at least he’s being honest in publicly confessing to being a phony, as he did with Letterman Monday night.

*

But why would King, who has no trouble booking even bigger names than Stern, leave Washington and make a special trip to New York to have on his show someone who so often had rubbed his nose in pooh-pooh and, to boot, was adding another dollop of humiliation by granting King a shot only after appearing just about everywhere else?

The expression on King’s face much of Tuesday night held the answer. It pleaded, “Love me, pretty please love me!” The condition appears congenital. The man is just desperate to be adored even by his tormentors.

It was classic TV symbiosis, mutual interests prevailing over animosities. If someone can do you some good, you suck it up and take care of business, just as John Tesh once had appeared on Stern’s radio show to promote his musical career, knowing that Stern had relentlessly attacked his music as well as his looks, even calling him a blond Frankenstein.

Stern announced on the radio Tuesday that his only purpose in joining King was to win over King’s fans so they would see his movie. Evidently King’s only purpose was to win over Stern.

So . . . for an hour in front of the camera, they made up.

Stern “has a lot of fun picking on this show from time to time,” King acknowledged amiably at the top of the program. Actually, Stern’s ridicule often extends beyond the show to personal attacks on its host. “Larry, I’m happy to be here,” Stern responded just as amiably.

Much of the program was naturally devoted to “Private Parts,” featuring the usual talk and clip of Stern’s scene in the movie with “Pig Vomit,” his nickname for his boss at New York’s WNBC radio station where he once worked.

When Howard wasn’t talking about Howard, Larry sought to talk about Larry.

King: You don’t like me.

Stern: I never said I didn’t like you. I made fun of you.

King: A frog . . .

Stern: I said you looked like a frog. But look at me. You don’t think you’re good-looking, do you?

King: No, never.

Stern: Do I think I’m good-looking? No, I’m a horrible-looking man.

King: I’m a frog. What are you?

Stern: I’m just as bad.

King: Nobody’s tuning in now for Redford and Newman.

Stern: That’s right. We are not good-looking guys. I don’t think that’s a bad thing to say. I’ve made fun of you in the past. I’ve made fun of your marriages. I’ve made fun of a lot of different things. And we’ve picked on each other. And you attacked me. Didn’t you say I was the worst thing for the ‘90s or something?

King: I said what you do is an example of the ‘90s.

A little later, the conversation turned to matters of more substance.

Stern: I find speech defects funny. I find passing wind funny.

King: Cleft palates are funny?

Stern: Well, I don’t know if cleft palates are funny. Can’t they fix those things?

King: Yeah.

Later still, achieving something that even Ross Perot hadn’t, Stern made history by becoming the first guest on “Larry King Live” to publicly announce that after the show he planned to return to his hotel room “and have sex with myself.” Remaining true to his passive interview style, King didn’t press for details.

*

And so it went, Froggy and Toady now courting each other, having become fast friends on behalf of promoting “Private Parts.”

As the show ended, they shook hands. “It was great having you,” King said. “You were a wonderful guest. It was a fun night.”

Earlier in the program Stern promised this would be his last TV appearance for two years, and King seemed intent on making his show the initial vehicle for that return in 1999, no matter how much “wind” Stern may send his way in the interim.

None initially.

Stern was on the radio Wednesday morning fiercely attacking a New York Post columnist for saying he had been boring on King’s show. “If I went on and talked about Larry being a frog every 10 minutes, the guy would have been completely hostile and I wouldn’t have been able to talk about my movie,” Stern explained.

Stern also rebutted the columnist’s criticism of King. “He did what I thought was a very thorough interview,” Stern said. “I’ve taken that guy and bashed him over the years, and he did as good as he could.”

In other words, they had come together and embraced in television’s great pantheon of mutual gain, and in the tradition of the multitudes who had passed this way before them, each had given the other what he wanted.

Pig vomit.