Posted on 08/19/2024 9:45:07 AM PDT by Cronos
Phil Donahue, who in the 1960s reinvented the television talk show with a democratic flourish, inviting audiences to question his guests on topics as resolutely high-minded as human rights and international relations, and as unblushingly lowbrow as male strippers and safe-sex orgies, died on Sunday at his home on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. He was 88.
His death was confirmed by Susan Arons, a representative of the family.
“The Phil Donahue Show” made its debut in 1967 on WLWD-TV in Dayton, Ohio, propelling Mr. Donahue on a 29-year syndicated run, much of it as the unchallenged king of daytime talk television.
Almost from the start, “The Phil Donahue Show” dispensed with familiar trappings. There was no opening monologue, no couch, no sidekick, no band — just the host and the guests, focused on a single topic.
... Few subjects, if any, were off limits for Mr. Donahue, who was said to have told his staff, “I want all the topics hot.” It mattered little that at times the subjects made some viewers, and local station managers, squirm. His very first guest was guaranteed to stir controversy: Madalyn Murray O’Hair, at the time America’s most famous, and widely unpopular, atheist.
...Among his thousands of guests, Mr. Donahue often cited Ralph Nader as his favorite; he campaigned for Mr. Nader when he ran for president in 2000. Less successful was Bill Clinton during the 1992 presidential election. Mr. Clinton grew annoyed with nonstop questions about sexual flings and marijuana use, and he angrily demanded that Mr. Donahue stick to “real issues.” The audience applauded him and booed Mr. Donahue.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Yes he had Rush Limbaugh on his show several times.
I am greatly honored to receive this award for two reasons: first, I believe as Norman Cousins did that the first priority of humankind in this era is to establish an effective system of world law that will assure peace with justice among the peoples of the world; second, I feel sentimental about this award because half a century ago Norman offered me a job as spokesman and Washington lobbyist for the World Federalist organization, which was then in its infancy. I chose instead to continue in the world of journalism. For many years, I did my best to report on the issues of the day in as objective a manner as possible. When I had my own strong opinions, as I often did, I tried not to communicate them to my audience. Now, however, my circumstances are different. I am in a position to speak my mind. And that is what I propose to do. Those of us who are living today can influence the future of civilization. We can influence whether our planet will drift into chaos and violence, or whether through a monumental educational and political effort we will achieve a world of peace under a system of law where individual violators of that law are brought to justice.
For most of this fairly long life I have been an optimist harboring a belief that as our globe shrank, as our communication miracles brought us closer together, we would begin to appreciate the commonality of our universal desire to live in peace and that we would do something to satisfy that yearning of all peoples. Today I find it harder to cling to that hope. For how many thousands of years now have we humans been what we insist on calling "civilized"? And yet, in total contradiction, we also persist in the savage belief that we must occasionally, at least, settle our arguments by killing one another. While we spend much of our time and a great deal of our treasure in preparing for war, we see no comparable effort to establish a lasting peace. Meanwhile, emphasizing the sloth in this regard, those advocates who work for world peace by urging a system of world government are called impractical dreamers. Those "impractical dreamers" are entitled to ask their critics, "what is so practical about war?"
It seems to many of us that if we are to avoid the eventual catastrophic world conflict we must strengthen the United Nations as a first step toward a world government with a legislature, executive and judiciary, and police to enforce its international laws and keep the peace. To do that, of course, we Americans will have to yield up some of our sovereignty. It would take a lot of courage, a lot of faith in the new order. But the American colonies did it once and brought forth one of the most nearly perfect unions the world has ever seen. The circumstances were vastly different, obviously. Yet just because the task appears forbiddingly hard, we should not shirk it. We cannot defer this responsibility to posterity. Democracy, civilization itself, is at stake. Within the next few years we must change the basic structure of our global community from the present anarchic system of war and ever more destructive weaponry to a new system governed by a democratic U.N. federation.
Let's focus on a few specifics of what the leadership of the World Federalist movement believe must be done now to advance the rule of world law. For starters, we can draw on the wisdom of the Framers of the U.S. Constitution of 1787. The differences among the American states then were as bitter as differences among nation-states in the world today. In their almost miraculous insight, the Founders of our country invented 'federalism,' a concept that is rooted in the rights of the individual. Our federal system guarantees a maximum of freedom but provides it in a framework of law and justice. Our forefathers believed that the closer the laws are to the people, the better. Cities legislate on local matters; states make decisions on matters within their borders; and the national government deals with issues that transcend the states, such as interstate commerce and foreign relations. That is federalism. Today we must develop federal structures on a global level. We need a system of enforceable world law --a democratic federal world government-- to deal with world problems. What Alexander Hamilton wrote about the need for law among the 13 states applies today to the approximately 200 sovereignties in our global village: "To look for a continuation of harmony between a number of independent unconnected sovereignties in the same neighborhood, would be to disregard the uniform course of human events, and to set at defiance the accumulated experience of ages." Today the notion of unlimited national sovereignty means international anarchy. We must replace the anarchic law of force with a civilized force of law.
Ours will neither be a perfect world, nor a world without disagreement and occasional violence. But it will be a world where the vast majority of national leaders will consistently abide by the rule of world law, and those who won't will be dealt with effectively and with due process by the structures of that same world law. We will never have a city without crime, but we would never want to live in a city that had no system of law to deal with criminals.
Let me make three suggestions for immediate action that would move us in a direction firmly in the American tradition of law and democracy.
1. Keep our promises: We helped create the U.N. and to develop the U.N. assessment formula. Americans overwhelmingly want us to pay our U.N. dues, with no crippling limitations. We owe it to the world. In fact, we owe it as well to our national self-esteem.
2. Ratify the Treaty to Ban Land Mines, the Law of the Sea Treaty, the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, the Convention to Eliminate All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, and the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Most important, we should sign and ratify the Treaty for a permanent International Criminal Court. That Court will enable the world to hold individuals accountable for crimes against humanity.
3. Consider, after 55 years, the possibility of a more representative and democratic system of decision making at the U.N. This should include both revision of the veto in the Security Council and adoption of a weighted voting system for the General Assembly. The World Federalists have endorsed Richard Hudson's Binding Triad proposal. George Soros, in "The Crisis of Global Capitalism," has given serious attention to this concept which would be based upon not only one-nation-one-vote but also on population and contributions to the U.N. budget. Resolutions adopted by majorities in each of these areas would be binding, enforceable law. Within the powers given to it in the Charter, the U.N. could then deal with matters of reliable financing, a standing U.N. peace force, development, the environment and human rights.
Some of you may ask why the Senate is not ratifying these important treaties and why the Congress is not paying our U.N. dues. As with the American rejection of the League of Nations, our failure to live up to our obligations to the U.N. is led by a few willful senators who choose to pursue their narrow, selfish political objectives at the cost of our nation's conscience. They pander to and are supported by the Christian Coalition and the rest of the religious right wing. Their leader, Pat Robertson, has written that we should have a world government but only when the messiah arrives. Attempts for world order before that time are the work of the Devil! This small but well-organized group has intimidated both the Republican Party and the Clinton administration. It has attacked presidents since F.D.R. for supporting the U.N. Robertson explains that these presidents are the unwitting agents of Lucifer.
The only way we who believe in the vision of a democratic world federal government can effectively overcome this reactionary movement is to organize a strong educational counteroffensive stretching from the most publicly visible people in all fields to the humblest individuals in every community. That is the vision and program of the World Federalist Association. The strength of the World Federalist program would serve an important auxiliary purpose at this particular point in our history. There would be immediate diplomatic advantages if the world knew that this country was even beginning to explore the prospect of strengthening the U.N. We would appear before the peoples of the world as the champion of peace for all by the equitable sharing of power. This in sharp contrast to the growing concern that we intend to use our current dominant military power to enforce a sort of pax Americana. Our country today is at a stage in our foreign policy similar to that crucial point in our nation's early history when our Constitution was produced in Philadelphia. Let us hear the peal of a new international liberty bell that calls us all to the creation of a system of enforceable world law in which the universal desire for peace can place its hope and prayers. As Carl Van Doren has written, "History is now choosing the founders of the World Federation. Any person who can be among that number and fails to do so has lost the noblest opportunity of a lifetime."
One of the hospital/charity ads came my way a few months back, featuring Marlo.
Even I was shocked by her appearance.
How does something like that happen? Maybe it just sneaks up on them, each treatment creating the need for more as the skin is stretched out. Sad.
Cronkite was a pos.
Was one of the first communists to spew their BS on American TV’s.
No comment
And the Devil have him.
Next to Ho Chi Mihn Cronkite did more to help the NVA win then anyone on Earth.
Caused more damage to this country than anyone of his era.
I’d make an argument for Walter Cronkite to win that honor. Granted he started a decade or so earlier.
It’s no accident most people in the media are extreme left and Marxists propaganda platform kingdom.
If he chose hell, well, there he is.
If he chose God, he is contrite for the first time (in his professional life, at least)...and that must be very painful for a smug, self-righteous Leftie who was never humble and always superior to everyone else.
What a painful "life review" it will be for Phil. There he is every day on TV...selling a lie.
Maybe Phil was just too nice of a guy to say to Marlo,
“Marlo, Sugar-Dumpling, Maybe tap the brakes on that plastic surgery, your looking like a cross between Nancy Pelosi and The Joker!”
Donahue may not have come from an influential family but his second wife, Marlo Thomas did. Her father was Danny Thomas, one of the trailblazers of early television and founder of St. Jude’s Hospital for children. I suspect there were plenty of connections for Phil to take advantage of as a result. Just sayin’. My two cents.
watched his show a couple of times when I was sick from school. Even then, he sure seemed left-wing but relatively sane.
he paraded around on his show like an arrogant pr####
Danny Thomas did a lot of good for many, many families needing medical care for their children. As far as I recall, he was never controversial in any way, akin to Red Skelton.
Ironically, this lack of (unnecessary) drama in his TV career is probably one reason why few ever think of him today.
I’m so old that I vaquely recall seeing The Danny Thomas Show on TV. It came on the same night we watched Hazel, starring Shirley Booth.
Only time in my life I’ve felt like I was in a lynch mob. Sitting in a med school lecture hall one day when a lecturer didn’t show and the powers that be instead ran Donahue hosting and supporting a medical impersonator. Perp had absolutely zero medical training, but had fake credentials and was working a resident ‘caring’ for patients until someone caught on and stopped it. Which probably should have happened much sooner. But perp was defending his behavior and Donahue kept supporting and normalizing him! My entire class wanted to lock up the perp, but hang Donahue as the more dangerous of the two. Don’t know if it was live nor where it was filmed, so we had no way to execute our sentence.
My recollections as well. Ihe Danny Thomas Show (Make Room For Daddy, ran from 1953 - 1964.) I remember his daughter Marlo’s show, That Girl (which ran from 1966-1971) better, but then again I think most young boys in that era had a crush on her anyway. Too bad she ended up being pretty much the opposite of her father, or so it appears.
Danny’s parents were Maronite Catholic immigrants from Bsharri, Lebanon. So, he was likely raised with the idea one is supposed to become a productive part of that Melting Pot which is/was America.
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