Phil Donahue passed away on Sunday night at the age of 88. Most headlines, so far, refer to him as a “legendary talk show host,” and they’re not wrong. He was. And while “daytime talk shows” eventually became synonymous with “trash TV,” he did some pretty impressive work in that space. And, you know, we’ll get to that in a minute — but what I’d like to talk about first is the very reason I have so much respect for Phil Donahue, as a human being.
There are two narratives I hear about early support for the Iraq War. One narrative is “What are you talking about, Robyn? Everyone was against the war, from the beginning!” The other is “Come on, everyone supported the Iraq War in the beginning! You can’t fault people for that! No one knew there weren’t any weapons of mass destruction!”
Both are incorrect, though the latter doubly so, because from the beginning there were former UN weapons inspectors saying that they could not possibly have had WMDs because the weapons we gave Iraq would have expired by that point.
I know this because I was, actually, against the war from the beginning. I was out there protesting on the first day and there are pictures to prove it. Somewhere. In a box.
Phil Donahue was also against the war from the start. Before the war even started, he was beating the drum against it on his MSNBC show every night. He was right, and one of the very few people in the mainstream press who were right at that time. And he was fired from MSNBC, despite having the most popular show on the air at that time, because of it.
Well, that and the fact that Chris Matthews hated him. Matthews hated the fact that Donahue was a far more beloved male white-haired media figure and the fact that he kept bringing anti-war liberals on his show. Part of my deep, deep enjoyment of Matthews’s final exit from the station was fueled by this. (That and all the gross sexism!)
A memo that was released a few months after Donahue was fired showed that NBC had commissioned a study that determined that Donahue’s anti-war stance was a "difficult public face for NBC in a time of war," warning that it would make it look like MSNBC was "a home for the liberal antiwar agenda at the same time that our competitors are waving the flag at every opportunity."
Ah yes, the liberal media we all know and love.
“I thought I was offering the network something — a show with real debates, real ideas that Americans who wanted something more than cheerleading would tune into,” Donahue said in a profile in The Nation in 2008. But no, that was not what the network wanted at the time.
Network executives were also very upset with Donahue’s choice of guests, which included people like Molly Ivins, Studs Terkel, Ralph Nader, and other known liberals. They wanted more pro-war voices. They wanted to wave the flag along with everyone else, and people pointing out that the war was stupid and unjust and, frankly, made no goddamn sense were just not any fun.
The line, at the time, was “you’re either with us or you’re with the terrorists” — that no one could possibly be against the war, unless what they really loved was terrorism and what they really hated was “the troops.” At best, we were not “very serious people.”
Let us recall that the sheer number of ostensibly liberal commentators who were gung-ho for the war before they were against it — Jonathan Chait, Matthew Yglesias, Paul Berman, Fareed Zakaria, Jeffrey Goldberg … the list goes on.
It was one thing for weird-looking lefty students like me to oppose it, but it took a hell of lot of courage, back then, for a mainstream guy like Phil Donahue to oppose the war — he had a lot more to lose, and he did. He opposed the war on a national, mainstream platform at a time when the press was not even covering the fact that there were protests against it at all.
I have such fucking admiration for that, I cannot even begin to tell you.
But Donahue was always unafraid. The first episode he ever did of “The Phil Donahue Show” in 1967 featured an interview with atheist Madalyn Murray O’Hair, frequently decried as the “most hated woman in America” for her work getting the Supreme Court to declare school prayer unconstitutional.
Donahue’s interviews with Very Bad People like David Duke and Ayn Rand are still impressive to watch today, especially for the way he was able to just let them hang themselves with their words. He didn’t have to fight anyone, because he was able to bring out the the worst in them in a way that was even more effective than if they had. That’s a skill.
Phil Donahue was not just a pioneering, legendary talk show host. He was a fucking badass and one of the people I admire most in this world. He is a reminder to stay calm and to stick to your guns when you know what you know, even if everyone is against you (as long as you’re not a warmongering sexist creep like Chris Matthews who doesn’t actually know anything). He will be missed.
I have a Phil Donahue story -
In 1979, I lived just up the street from one of those super wide screen movie houses with giant speakers. A great thing to have with him walking distance. On some week night I went to see " Cross of Iron" a Sam Peckinpah film, the only war film he ever made. Not everybody's cupa, I thought it was brilliant. I was standing out front of the theater after the show ready to walk home. I look over and there is Phil Donahue. He started out in Dayton Ohio television. He was quite the local celebrity. I said Hello and told him my mom wanted to marry him. He laughed and shook my hand. I asked him how he liked the film. He told me he had already made arrangements to come back and see it again the next night. He couldn't have said anything more impressive. I loved his MSNBC show. Every time I watched it ( several times a week) I told whoever was listening, usually the dog or a wall " I met Phil Donahue once." The dog seemed impressed.
I was called a traitor by a coworker back then. My crime was to say "Attacking Iraq for what a bunch of Saudi terrorists did is like kicking the cat because the dog peed on the floor."