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 sh1t? 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.
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