Boom
Boom Donahue
If
there were a lifetime achievement award for sucking, Phil
Donahue would get my vote. As the father of the daytime talk
show, Phil Donahue is the Marco Polo of trash TV and the
reason that modern presidential elections are won by the
candidate who causes the most autoerotic secretions by women
watching Oprah. It was Phil Donahue who birthed a
television format where one day his audience could watch an
abortion and the next day stick a dollar in the crotch of a
Chippendale dancer. In its 29-year-run (1967-1996), there were
nearly 7,000 Phil Donahue shows. Shows that brought to the
surface a subclass of human existence so vile and ignorant
that it should have been left unnoticed, free to rot away in
oblivion. But Phil Donahue needed ratings. Phil Donahue had an
agenda. An agenda so radically leftwing that it made Thomas
Eagleton look sane in comparison.
Since
1996, Donahue has mercifully been removed from the scene,
overwhelmed by the spin-off monsters he created. Thanks to
Phil Donahue, the likes of Rosie, Springer, Jones, and Oprah
pollute our airwaves with their mindless dribble. So I am
amused and repulsed at the news that Phil is set to step back
in front of the camera to remove any doubt—if some
existed—that he is an asinine, conceited, obnoxious mass of
human tissue. To the unaware or uninitiated Phil Donahue may
come across as an earnest liberal who is confident in his
beliefs. But there is a fine line between being confident and
obnoxious, and Phil Donahue has been on the wrong side of that
line for a long time.
How
liberal is Donahue? He once said, "I
don't know if there's an issue the ACLU takes I disagree
with." Like most liberals, Donahue touts tolerance
while parading his intolerance before the world. Complaining
of Catholicism, Donahue charged,
"The Church has always thrived on ignorance and
oppression." One would think he was applying for a
position at Bob Jones University. I'm surprised he didn't
accuse the Church of being a cult...oh, that's right, he did
accuse it of being a cult. Anyway, if any institution or
ideology can be accused of thriving on ignorance and
oppression it is the institutional ideology of Phil Donahue's
style of liberalism.
Of
the military, Phil opines, "Supporting
the military ought to mean supporting our uniform personnel,
improving their housing and their lifestyles...instead of
buying all these things that go boom, that make profits for
Fortune 500 companies."
Isn't
the purpose of the military to defend us? What better way to
do that than by blowing up shit? In a Phil Donahue military
our bombers will drop flower petals and our missiles will be
de-targeted from those non-existent threats of China, North
Korea, and Iraq and aimed at the real threat to America; the
Fortune 500 companies. And while you're at it, Phil, how about
retargeting some of those big-boom missiles toward the homes
of daytime talk show hosts.
The
'things that go boom' phrase is classic Donahue. He has been
using that line for decades and it exposes his outright
hostility to all things military. In a 1988 exchange with Pat
Buchanan, Phil said, "You
and the Reagan ideologues have spent us into oblivion—our
children are going to have to pay this bill—and
you step forward, like some religious figure saying, 'more
bombs, more bullets’." Phil, I cannot
believe that out of 100,000 sperm, you were the quickest. As
is so often the case, you didn't have a clue then as to what
you were talking about, and I’m certain your new show will
prove you don't have a clue now. You are living proof that if
an imbecile is given a microphone and put in front of a
camera, someone somewhere will take them seriously.
Need
a clue as to how close to the insane asylum Phil Donahue is?
Phil said of Ralph Nader, "I
believe he is America's No. 1 private citizen of the 20th
century."
Okay, Phil, so real heroes like the Wright Brothers, Jonas
Salk, Albert Einstein and Edwin Hubble all take a back seat to
the guy who became a millionaire destroying the Corvair. These
men were true geniuses who through their work changed the
entire course of history for the betterment of mankind. And
Ralph Nader? If Nader and Donahue had been spreading their
brand of socialism in the early 20th century they
would have attacked the Wright Brother's machine as too
dangerous to fly, the polio vaccine as too risky to use,
Hubble's research as a waste of money better spent on a
single-payer health care system, and the many accomplishments
of Albert Einstein would have been ignored as Donahue attacked
him for being infatuated with things that go boom.
I
believe that you, Phil Donahue, bear a great deal of
responsibility for the tawdriness of television talk shows,
the sensationalism of the evening news, the coarsening of our
culture, and the erosion of standards of decency in television
programming. So in my book, that puts you damn near the
bottom on the list of America's private citizens of the 20th
century. Down there with Ralph Nader, Leopold and Lobe,
and the guy who decided the Brady Bunch Variety Show
should see the light of day. I long for the day your head goes
boom.
Bryant
Gumbel: This is Your Sorry Life
You
were born Bryant Charles Gumbel in New Orleans, Louisiana on
Sept. 29, 1948, the second child of Democratic Party activist
Richard Dunbar Gumbel and Rhea Alice Gumbel.
You
were raised in the Hyde Park neighborhood of Chicago. You
attended Bates College in Maine, graduating in tumultuous
1970.
In
1972 you took your first job on television as a weekend
sportscaster at KNBC in Los Angeles, where you became sports
director. Alluding to your belief that you received the job
because you were black, not because you were the most
qualified applicant, you said, "Did
affirmative action play a part? I don't think you have to be a
Phi Beta Kappa to figure it out."
In
1981, you were promoted to Today Show co-host, where you
remained until 1997. While host of the Today Show, you never
let the fact that you were a "journalist" keep you
from injecting personal opinions into your work. Take Ronald
Reagan for example. You didn't much care for Reagan and you
always found a way to let us know, like when you said, "Largely
as a result of the policies and priorities of the Reagan
administration, more people are becoming poor and staying poor
in this country than at any time since World War II."
Then
there was the time you told Lee Atwater, "Blacks
have looked at the past eight years and seen this [Reagan]
administration retreat from civil
rights, retreat from affirmative action, make South Africa no
priority, continue to see a greater disparity economically
between blacks and whites, foster a spirit of racism that
hasn't been seen in 20-plus years."
When
questioning Richard Corlin of the American Medical
Association, you said, "In
the greedy excesses of the Reagan years, the mean income of
the average physician nearly doubled, from $88,000 to
$170,000. Was that warranted?"
Yet
during the Reagan year of 1982, you signed a contract with the
Today Show paying you $750,000
a year. In 1985—still
a Reagan year—your
salary was raised to $1.5 million a year. Now that is economic
disparity. I know that being the host of a morning
"news" show is more important than being a
physician, but tell me Bryant, was that pay raise warranted?
Your
vitriol is not reserved solely for Reagan. Speaking of Kenneth
Starr you opined, "Given
Starr's track record, should we suspect that he's trying to do
with innuendo that which he has been unable to do with
evidence?"
And
of Linda Trip you asked, "Has
she always been a snoop and a gossip with a particular
interest in other people's romantic lives?"
Had
you reserved your venom for political operatives you would
have been looked on as nothing more than an average, liberal
media personality, but, as is your wont, you decided to tear
down those closest to you professionally. In 1989 you wrote
the infamous memo that explained how everything and everyone
was wrong at the Today Show—everything
and everyone except Bryant Gumbel. As a result of your
petulance, ratings for the Today Show sank.
Over
the ensuing years your self-inflicted wound began to fester, so
in 1997 you divorced NBC, several weeks later ending up at
CBS. For your service to CBS you received a salary of $5
million a year. I ask you, Bryant Gumbel, was this warranted?
Your
first venture with CBS was the prime-time news show,
"Public Eye With Bryant Gumbel.” Your show was a
failure and canceled less than year after it began. In the
subsequent year, with a lot of time and money on your hands,
you played plenty of golf and engaged in plenty of hanky
panky. CBS executives were incensed that you were spending
more time on your passion for golf, and your passion for
adultery, than on creating your next CBS news failure, all the
while collecting 5 million dollars. I ask you Bryant Gumbel,
was that warranted?
With
no ideas of your own, CBS forced you to take over the
seldom-viewed “CBS Morning Show” turning it into the
“CBS Early Show.” Having never crossed a bridge you didn't
burn, you explained your primetime failure by lashing out at
former colleagues, saying of Katie Couric, "You
know, Katie had a primetime magazine fail under her." What
few viewers the Morning Show had were not fooled. They knew
who you were and left in droves, leaving the show with fewer
viewers than public access television.
Like
the rest of America, your family had enough of Bryant Gumbel,
too. Citing years of "habitual adultery," your wife—the
woman who married you when nobody knew your name—sued
you for divorce. And though you and your hot, blonde fiancé
were living in your new 10 million dollar pad, you offered to
pay your wife of 26 years $250.00 a month. Which makes me
think that, largely
as a result of the practices and priorities of philanderers
like you, more divorced women are becoming poor and staying
poor in this country than at any time since World War II.
So
here you are Bryant Gumbel. As an educated black man who
started his career in 1970, you had the world at your
disposal. And while you had an admirable beginning, your
pettiness, petulance, and arrogance has led you down the road
to failure: failure in your professional life, and (although,
with a hot blonde thing by your side, you may not realize it
now) failure in your personal life.
You
are as loathed as any member of the media in my memory. In
twenty years, when fame and fortune, and the broads who are
drawn to them are gone, what will you have left? Not much.
This is your life Bryant Gumbel, and it sucks.
