The Daily - What Phil Donahue Meant to Me

Episode Date: August 30, 2024

Phil Donahue, the game-changing daytime television host, died last week at 88. Mr. Donahue turned “The Phil Donahue Show” into a participation event, soliciting questions and comments on topics as varied as human rights and orgies.Michael Barbaro explains what Phil Donahue meant to him.Background reading: An obituary for Mr. Donahue, who died last week at 88.Here are 3 episodes that explain Mr. Donahue’s daytime dominance.For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.

From the New York Times, I'm Michael Bobarro. This is The Daily. Today, a tribute to Phil Donahue, the king of daytime talk, from me. It's Friday, August 30th. When I was growing up, there were four television shows that I watched religiously. The Today Show. Because Matt and Katie were pure magic together on that set. 60 Minutes. Katie were pure magic together on that set. 60 minutes. How cigarettes can destroy people's lives.

Because nobody has ever told stories like that on network TV. You think that I don't trust my husband? General Hospital. I do trust my husband. He loves me and we're married and we're happy and there's nothing that you or Miranda or anyone is ever going to do to change that. Because all of us have a guilty pleasure. And finally, the Phil Donahue Show. Now why Donahue?

Your parents do not know that you leave this double life. You leave the apartment after they've gone to sleep, is that right? Yeah. Uh-huh, yes. Good, That's a good answer. Yes. Well, they have no idea. Or I sleep at other people's houses. Why was I, why were millions of other Americans drawn to this middle-aged host of a daytime talk show? You dress up like this because first of all, it's fun and hey.

Certainly. This guy with a helmet of gray hair and what always seemed to me anyway to be the world's longest, slimmest microphone, who sprinted around his studio in a beige three-piece suit. It never really occurred to me to try and answer that question. Donahue has been off the air now for more than 20 years. He's no longer a household name. The culture has kind of forgotten him. But then a few days ago, he died at the age of 88.

And suddenly, I wanted to know, what had it been about Donahue. So I logged on YouTube and I started to watch a show again. Why should I love the Lord? Why should anybody else love the Lord? What has the Lord ever done for any of us? And I was right back in my childhood basement with the gray commercial carpet and the exposed pipes. And if you're married, you can't have the job because you might have children. And if you have children, you can't have the job because they might get sick and you'd have to take care of them.

If you didn't, you'd be a bad mother. You know, I mean, any condition of being a female still may be used against you no matter what. And what I remembered right away was Donahue's extraordinary intellectual range. 135,000 citizens were displaced because of the explosion in Chernobyl, and some of them lived here. One day, he'd interview a presidential candidate.

Throughout this imperfect part of your marriage, did you ever separate you and Hillary? No, there's none of your business if we did. The next, an activist. If we don't put a halt to this new kind of nuclear war fighting which we're moving into, we are going to guarantee that we have a nuclear war. The day after that, a celebrity. Please welcome the Divine Miss M, here's Bette Midler.

An illiterate adult, You came out of the closet, so to speak, two years ago. October 16th, and no one knew except my wife. who somehow had outwitted his college professors and his bosses and still couldn't read at the age of 45 despite having a big corporate job. And I might add that I am healing as we all are healing from the trauma of being an illiterate in this dominant literate society. It must be terrifying. Now remember this is daytime talk at a time when daytime talk didn't really exist. Donahue is competing with soap operas and game shows and his show was the exact opposite of all

of that escapism. It was the AIDS crisis. To what? That we don't have to worry about catching AIDS in the air. AIDS is not transmitted by casual contact. It never has and it probably never will be. It was the hardcore scene in New York. He devoted an entire episode to that. Yeah, well, share with us some of the feelings that make you feel comfortable in this group. York. He devoted an entire episode to that. And it was this incessant curiosity about ideas and motivations, why people did what they did, why they believed what they believed, what made people who they are. But that doesn't quite explain why I think so many of us were watching Donahue. It was this thing he did on top of all of that.

It was how he treated his audience. Now remember, until this point, a studio audience was basically an inanimate object. Mike, you know about the evil presence in my office, right? Of course I do, Paul. She's standing right next to you. Boo-yah! They laughed, sometimes literally on a laugh track. They clapped in unison. They were basically a prop.

Let me go out in the audience and get some observations. What do you think of all this business of student protest? For example, Columbia, Berkeley, another... But in Donahue's hands, in the audience and get some observations. What do you think of all this business of student protest? For example, Columbia, Berkeley, another- But in Donahue's hands, the audience became just as important as the guest on the stage. Yes, ma'am. I think there's racism everywhere,

and you cannot pinpoint it on a particular race, but it depends on the individual. And I think that as long as we keep calling people black and white, that's when racism's gonna to continue. I know you want to count. But as soon as that happens, you let me know, okay? We're not making this, we're not making this. And this wasn't an accident. This was quite deliberate. Donahue made the audience central to the show from the very beginning, and he talked about how it happened and why it happened in

interviews. Welcome to Speaking Freely. I'm Ken Paulson. It's a pleasure to welcome Phil Donahue. Thank you. And he liked to tell the story of how the show's origins in Dayton, Ohio forced him to do it. We tried to get movie stars. Everybody but us had movie stars. We would call movie stars and they'd say, Dayton, that's the soapbox derby. I said, no, that's Akron.

Dayton is, uh. He could never persuade big name guests to come to Dayton. So he gravitated to issues. We discovered that issues would keep us on the air. Issues. And when it came to issues, it turned out that the most interesting perspectives were not his. And suddenly the audience is starting to ask better questions than I was during the commercials.

And I got up one day and walked out and we realize now that if it hadn't been for that, we probably would not have survived. I just don't think you can sell two talking heads in front of a curtain for very long. Now you tell me. And so slowly but surely he started to turn his microphone and his show over to his audience. And people's hands were going up all over, and I couldn't get to them fast enough. And since this was the 1960s and the 1970s, and it was in the middle of men's workday, turning his microphone over to the audience really meant turning his microphone and eventually

his show over to women. Sexism was rampant at the time. The mantra in the television game was the only thing women care about is covered dishes, needle point, and children, and mothering. That's all. And we came along and it was clear that behind this stereotype, we're thinking live human beings who wanted to get in the act, who had something to say, who wanted to kick tires, who wanted to get mad, who were mad at doctors for patronizing them. And we exploited

all this to our own advantage. So in the relative obscurity of Dayton, Ohio, Donahue was undertaking a pretty radical experiment in the history of television. He was asking women what they thought, and he was taking their lives and their needs very seriously. We are inside an abortion clinic in Chicago. The patient with her back to the camera is in the first trimester of an unwanted pregnancy. He televised an abortion.

Our patient having been told what to expect walks to the treatment room where she meets the doctor for the first time. The medical term for this abortion is vacuum aspiration curatage. He televised a tubal ligation surgery. He televised a child's birth. Of course, not all his gestures towards women were super high-minded. Ladies, for those of you that prefer Italian men, one of Houston's top models, Mr. GQ himself, the Italian stallion. There were the episodes about male strippers where these guys came out on the set, took off all their clothes, and the women went wild.

Wake up! And Donahue made very clear that those pitches came from the women on his staff, not him. Then there's this moment in an episode in 1979. Here's a woman who's read by millions around the world. She may be our most debated philosopher. Where all of these puzzle pieces of what made Donahue Donahue come together. His curiosity, his female audience, and these feminist ideas that his show so often probed. A warm human being who has a lot to say and comes straight at everything she says. I am pleased to present Ayn Rand.

Ms. Rand. It was an interview with the writer Ayn Rand. So your view is if we all became more comfortable with our natural tendencies, that is to say selfishness, there would be less horror, less war, less Hitler. There wouldn't be any. And just think about that for a moment. Ayn Rand, one of the great public intellectuals of her era or really any era, this champion of rational selfishness and capitalism unbound

on daytime television. The more selfish we are, the more tranquil and peaceful the world in which we live. And more benevolent toward other people if we're rationally selfish. And this moment starts, as so many great Donahue moments do, with a question from the audience. Ms. Rand, in your novels, you portray very strong women. I was wondering why you think in the world we don't have strong women leaders? Because if you're speaking about women's liberation, that whole movement, it's a very false and funny issue. It's a very false and funny issue.

And Rand responds by basically casting doubt on the whole movement for women's rights. Women are human beings, so they need leaders just like men. They need leaders who are men or women as the leaders have earned. And then Donahue jumps in. Well, but the point is that women feel because of the cultural inhibitors that have been placed on women, some sort of woman leadership is needed.

And he asks Ayn Rand how she thinks that women can get ahead. For him, this avowed feminist, the answer seems pretty obvious. What's needed is a formal, sustained effort to advocate for women's equality. You can do it only by education. You do it by spreading the right idea that women intellectually are not inferior of men. Of course not. But physically they certainly are. That's what feminists are doing. They're standing up and educating. No, but Rand totally rejects that.

They're asking for government power and government handouts. They go around the private men of jobs because you have to have water of so many women. But their point is that they have been denied jobs all these years. Donahue wants to talk about systemic barriers. Rand wants to talk about hard work. player as they're playing today and fight for their career as every man has to fight. In her mind, women simply have to prove themselves one by one. And in Rand's telling, in any reasonable, logical, free market economy, talented women will eventually just rise. It will happen.

All you have to do is show your ability. And if someone is prejudiced and doesn't hire you, the intelligent employer will. But then as the conversation keeps going, this heady, fascinating back and forth about feminism and capitalism, something really interesting happens when another woman in the audience asks Rand a question. 15 years ago, I was impressed with your books and I sort of felt that your philosophy was proper. Today, however, I'm more educated and I find that a company... This is what I don't answer.

Wait a minute, you haven't heard the question yet. And when Rand responds... She's already estimated her position and my work incidentally displaying the quality of her brain. If she says today she is more educated. I am more educated now than I was 15 years ago when I was in high school before I went to college and read the newspaper. She is exceptionally dismissive of this woman.

Let her make a point. It's very basic. If a company is permitted to do what it wants to do, like IT... Donna, who tries to create some space for this audience member to speak, but... Can we encourage you to make a contribution to that observation? I will not answer anyone who is impolite, but to show you... She wasn't impolite. I do not sanction impoliteness, and I am not the victim of hippies.

Hippies? Rand's disdain completely overpowers everything. If anyone else wants to ask the same question politely, I'll be delighted to answer. Well, there was nothing impolite. You are punishing this woman for the vigor and energy that she brought to the dialogue. And that's not fair to her. This is the kind of woman we spend a long time trying to attract to our television audience. And what I realized was that this was a moment that could only happen on Donahue. It was a moment that I don't think ever would have happened if it were just Donahue and Ayn Rand sitting on stage

talking to one another. I don't think Rand would have been that rude to this powerful TV host. She would only act that way toward an ordinary person. So what you get because of this complicated ecosystem that Donahue has created is this totally unfiltered version of this intellectual titan. And it's pretty ugly. And while you're watching this happen, you start to wonder what truly animates Ayn Rand? Is it this ruthless, uncompromising philosophy at the center of her bestselling books? Or is it maybe that she just doesn't like other people?

Whatever was really going on here, it is revealing, it is messy, it is unexpected, and it is fantastic television. And all of it was orchestrated by this guy, Philip John Donahue, whose biography in no way prepares you for this kaleidoscopic, boundary-pushing national conversation

that he invited the country to have day after day for 30 years. So who was Phil Donahue? You know, my father always had a job. I was born in 1935. So he would, you know, his unemployment preceded my birth. He felt the depression. Oh, yes, my parents did. Absolutely.

He was born six years after the Great Depression into an Irish Catholic family in Cleveland. His dad sold furniture, his mom sold shoes. I worked for the nuns for 50 cents an hour when I was 10, 12 years old, you know, switching the- He went to a Catholic day school and later a Catholic college. And in his telling, Catholicism was the scaffolding for his entire way of thinking. The guy, I had 16 years of Catholic education.

You know, I had most of the answers. Who made me? God made me. Why did God make me? I mean, it was, I knew the answers to the toughest questions. And then in the 60s, you know, everything started to fall apart. And then he starts to rethink everything, especially his relationship with the church. We began to realize that we really did have two Americas, a black one and a white one.

And the liberal guilt, my conscience began to manifest itself and I began to question the answers that had been given and suddenly my mind was racing, I guess I'd have to say. He gets really mad at his local diocese, which is building a fancy new cathedral where he thinks it's least needed. Who else would spend a million dollars on a building that is used about four and a half hours a week? And he begs the church instead to put that money into inner city Catholic schools.

And suddenly we were saying, hold it, hold it. Now we've been listening to you, now you listen to us. But the church leaders ignore him. The church was built at a cost of a million dollars, including a bell tower, it is centrally air conditioned. It stands today in Centerville, Ohio, I think, as a very hard, cold monument to what churches are everywhere, almost always dark and empty. And when he loses that battle to the church, the church loses him. So by the time he enters broadcasting, Donahue strongly identifies with the power less.

Don't talk about subsidizing the farmer, the man that printed the box made more than the man that grew the corn. Farmers. In our lifetime, we've traveled in a corridor of fear. Gay men. Fear of employers finding out, fear of fellow employees, fear of landlords, fear of the family. But we finally have decided at our respective ages to put that aside and to tell the world

about our relationship and that we're very proud of it. Black women. You're not surprised that there's not a greater participation of women of color in the women's movement. There are huge numbers of women of color involved in the women's movement. It's just that we don't get the media. This is a real treat for us. Yes.

And sees his job as challenging the rich and the powerful. Why couldn't the millions of men, women, and children who are Arab and who find themselves in this desperate conflict and look around wondering where peace will be, why can't they be angry with you for your characterization of them, your roundhouse? Criticism of them.

When you see them. That sensibility is a through line across every episode of his show. And you really see it in an interview that he did in 1987. Are you 40? I'm 41. 41. With a young Donald Trump. You're a star, Mr. Trump, and you're a businessman and you do not run away from publicity.

Trump is flying high. His first book, The Art of the Deal, has just come out. But Donahue keeps bringing the conversation back to the little guy. Well, this is interesting because as you know, you're the fat cat developer and you know, the book on you is that you throw little old ladies who can't afford the rent out of the apartment. I don't think that's the book on me. He wants to point it down to the street, not up at Trump's penthouse in Trump Tower.

Your father, was there a lawsuit? You didn't have enough blacks in his project? And that upset you. I didn't like it because it was't fact and I decided to fight it. And at one point, Donahue reads from a passage in Trump's book. The fact was that we did rent to blacks in our buildings. What we didn't do was rent to welfare cases,

white or black. In which Trump says that he would never rent a unit in one of his buildings to anybody on welfare. I watched what happened when the government came after Samuel LaFrac, another builder, and he caved in and starting taking welfare cases. They virtually ruined his building. Donahue at this moment dramatically rubs his hands

together as if preparing to go into battle. Isn't that, aren't you pretty close here to looking like an insensitive guy from atop your Trump Tower looking down on the to battle. a safety on the subway, these kind of things, then we can't continue to give you guys these big tax breaks. And that would go for— And Trump does what we all now know to be his go-to move when somebody tries to hold him accountable. So when everybody else in the city gets it but Donald Trump, when Koch and the administration tries to stop Donald Trump,

and I don't say, give me the tax breaks, I say, don't give everyone else the tax breaks. He makes himself the victim. No, I'm honest. Hey, I'm not running for anything, Phil. I'm not running for office. I don't have to else the tax breaks. He makes himself the victim. No, I'm honest. Hey, I'm not running for anything, Phil. I'm not running for office. I don't have to lie in a book. I want to tell the facts, okay?

And toward the end of the episode, as always… You keep saying you're not running for office, but why don't you run for mayor of New York? The most prescient questions come from the women in the audience. No, I wouldn't want to run for mayor of New York. I'd like to see somebody talented do that, but I really have no intention of running for questions come from the women in the audience. They saw Trump's future, even before Trump did. By the late 1980s, the Phil Donahue show was a bonafide hit. It's syndicated across the country, and the wait time for tickets to be in his studio audience is an astonishing 18 months.

And this success opens up an entirely new genre of TV. Copycats are popping up across the daytime schedule. Sounds scary? Well, the mothers on today's show say they are terrified of their own children. Sally Jessy Raphael, Maury Povich. You are not! Ah!

Ah! Geraldo Rivera, Jerry Springer. You have a secret to tell them. Not. Not. Not. Geraldo Rivera, Jerry Springer. You have a secret to tell him. Yes. And your secret is? I'm a man, Jerry. Oh. Oh.

And most important of all. You get a call. You get a call. You get a call. Oprah. You get a call. You get a call. Oprah.

Who told Donna Hugh that. If it wasn't for Phil Donahue, there would never have been an Oprah show. Her career would not have been possible if it weren't for him. So, this is a full, full, full circle for me. Well, we've watched Oprah as you've soared. There is no other single human being who has done with this media what Oprah has done. My Cubs cap is off to you.

Oprah aside, the shows that followed Donahue, his illegitimate children as he called them, were nowhere near as thoughtful as his show was. But Donahue steadfastly refused to criticize them, and he was asked to criticize them all the time. You talked about it being a naughty show, but it is a far cry from what you see today on television. Are you comfortable with where it's gone? Well, you know, it's hard for me to be uncomfortable with what's happening on television today because I don't, I've

been preached to so much in the 29 years I was on the air. I mean there were viewers who got messages from God to get me off the air. There were people who felt that the United States of America was going to hell and Phil Donahue was leading it there with atheists and doing shows like the march on Skokie by Nazis. We had Nazis on our program. So when people say, what do I think of this or that program, I'm a little bit hesitant. I don't want to, I feel that the show's not worthy of consideration will fall of their own weight. We don't want a bunch of white men, and that's usually what it winds up being, behind closed doors deciding what you and I should see.

Because for him, TV belonged in the hands of the viewer. Good, bad, smart, stupid, Ayn Rand or in-studio surprise paternity tests. They all had their place because the alternative was undemocratic. And one of the main bulwarks against somebody assuming power who knows what's good for you is a free press and unfettered speech by the citizenry, allowing all of us to be heard. We're looking for a cacophony of voices, not a well-trained

choir. But eventually, after three decades, that cacophony overtook Donahue. The viewers were voting and they were no longer voting for him. And his show ended its run in 1996. He briefly tried to make a comeback in the early 2000s with a reboot of the Donahue show on MSNBC. The anti-war movement is heating up. Resist the war! But all of his anti-establishment instincts ran up against the cruel realities of cable

news after the September 11th terror attacks. At a time when almost everybody else in TV news seemed to be beating the drums of war, Donahue very loudly questioned the coming U.S. invasion of Iraq. This is an email from Michael. I'm 17. I'm the person the Bush administration wants to hold a rifle and go off and kill Iraqis. I would like to know why. Is that too much to ask? And to hear him tell it, his bosses at MSNBC were not interested in a cacophony of voices. They wanted a well-trained choir. It really is funny almost when you look back on how the management was just frozen by the

anti-war voice. We were scolds, we weren't patriotic, American people disagreed with us, and we weren't good for business. And his show was canceled after just seven months. As it happens, the year he went off the air for good was the year that I began my career in journalism. And when I think about Phil Donahue now, and I try to answer that question of why I was always so drawn to his work, it's all right there in his show. He respected his audience. He never talked down to them. He sought out nuance wherever he could find it. He forced us way outside our comfort zones. And he challenged us to see ourselves and our neighbors in a

new and more generous light. A few months before Donahue died, back in May, President Biden invited him to the White House to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the country's highest civilian honor. Before social media and clickbait news, Phil Donahue broadcast the power of personal stories and living news all across America. He helped change hearts and minds through honest and open dialogue. Over the course of a defining career in television and through thousands of daily conversations, Phil Donahue steered the nation's discourse and spoke to our better angels. I wish you were still speaking there, pal.

It made a big difference. And for once, Phil Donahue, now seated in a wheelchair, didn't say a word. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. Vice President, Governor Walz, thank you so much for sitting down with me. In her first extended interview since becoming the Democratic nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris, joined by her running mate, Tim Walz, was pushed by CNN to explain positions she had taken during her first run for president in 2020, but has since backed away from, including banning fracking and decriminalizing illegal border crossings.

There was a debate you raised your hand when asked whether or not the border should be decriminalized. Do you still believe that? I believe there should be consequences. We have laws that have to be followed and enforced that address and deal with people who cross our border illegally, And there should be consequences. Harris insisted that despite shifting stances on specific policies, her core beliefs have remained the same.

How should voters look at some of the changes that you've made in your policy? Is it because you have more experience now and you've learned more about the information? Is it because you were running for president in a Democratic primary? And should they feel comfortable and confident that what you're saying now is going to be your policy moving forward? Dana, I think the most important and most significant aspect of my policy perspective and decisions is my values have not changed. Today's episode was produced by Michael Simon Johnson, Shannon Lin, Stella Tan,

and Asta Chathurvedi. It was edited by Michael Benoit, contains original music by Marian Lozano and Dan Pell, and was engineered by Chris Wood. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Lansferk of Wonderly. That's it for the daily. I'm Michael Bobarro. See you on Tuesday, after the holiday.