Free Fail Up by Tavis Smiley Page A

the air. After his impromptu but apparently impressive debut, Zeiger was hired as a news and sports commentator at $55 a week.
    Today, Lawrence Harvey Zeiger goes by the name of Larry King.
    After a steady ascent, King’s world crashed in December 1971. A former business partner sued him, and King was arrested and charged with grand larceny. Even before his day in court, he was fired from his radio, television, and newspaper jobs.
    King was acquitted of larceny but pled guilty to passing a bad check.
    Four years later he was rehired by WIOD to host an evening interview show. By 1978, his career had recovered to the point that he was offered a late-night talk show, The Larry King Show . It was a stepping-stone to a 25-year legacy, Larry King Live , which premiered on the Cable News Network (CNN) in 1985.
    A dream deferred, disgraced, and deep in debt, King must have carried an unimaginable extra burden in the early 1970s when not one but three jobs disappeared at once.
    Yet there’s a lesson in King’s depressing tale. Sometimes in order to fulfill our destinies, either we’re pushed or we force ourselves to jump into the unknown. Getting to your designated place in life often boils down to constant motion versus forward motion. The difference is as distinct as my running ten miles on my treadmill inside my house or going outside and running ten miles through the streets of Los Angeles. The first is an example of constant motion; the second, of course, forward motion. Many of us don’t make the distinction. We think just because we’re moving in life that we’re moving forward.
    If you’re going to truly advance, sometimes the jump, the push, or the pink slip is a prerequisite.
    By the end of 2008, 2.6 million Americans had lost their jobs. The country’s recession, which began in 2007, resulted in the highest percentage of annual job loss since the end of World War II. Hundreds of thousands more jobs disappeared in the succeeding two years, with an unemployment rate at a staggering 9.6 percent in September 2010.
    What does all this mean? It means a whole lot of people were pushed into the unknown.
    King lost three jobs at once. But he didn’t stay stagnant once he was cleared of the larceny charge. He wrote articles and took on radio gigs in smaller markets, all the while inching toward his destiny—defining the real Larry King.
    His story is one of many that reinforce the need to get yourself in forward motion.
    Mine is but another.
    Thank You, Bob
    Not a year goes by where one or two of my close friends don’t fail to suggest that I send Bob Johnson, founder of Black Entertainment Television (BET), a gift for firing me.
    In my memoir, What I Know For Sure , I detail some of my beginning and ending with BET. At the time of its writing, what I did not know was the profound impact it would have on my forward motion. I do now.
    To recap briefly, I went to work for BET in 1996. When it hired me, I was still doing national weekly commentaries on the Tom Joyner Morning Show , which I continued. My contract also allowed me to form my own production company. In that respect, I produced a number of programs on my own; the most familiar was the “State of the Black Union” symposia, which I also hosted every year. Ironically, in all the years I was at BET, conducting those conversations with high-profile Black Americans, BET had no interest in airing them. It already had its poster boy for serious Black dialogue on five nights a week. It was perfectly content with the 99-to-1 entertainment/ information ratio on the network. Consequently, C-SPAN was happy to carry the gatherings live each year.
    Don’t misunderstand me. Because of the dearth of critical and enlightening commentary on BET, my program became an oasis for viewers thirsty for uplifting and challenging information. My status rose exponentially at BET. I became a household name in Black America and the go-to guy when