Phil Donahue hosts his television show in New York on Jan. 27, 1993.Mark Lennihan/The Associated Press
Phil Donahue made my mother uncomfortable.
When he began to make a name for himself as a morning TV talk show host in the 1970s, she often sat on the end of the living room couch, unsure about the subject matter on Mr. Donahue’s show.
Abortion. Cross-dressing. Lesbianism. These were not topics she was interested in exploring to any great degree. She liked celebrity interviews. “Why doesn’t he just stick to those?” she would say.
And yet, she did acknowledge one thing about the man: he was a full-throated supporter of the feminist cause. He was on women’s side, without hesitation, on almost every outstanding issue of the day. That, she quietly admired.
I, meantime, was an unabashed Phil Donahue fan. I loved that he was not afraid to stir things up, tackle hard subjects that heretofore were seen as taboo. He was a liberal, through and through. Yes, he was a talk show host, an entertainer, but at his heart he was a journalist, always probing, challenging conventional wisdom, asking the uneasy question.
For those lucky enough to get a seat in his audience, there was always a chance you might get asked for your opinion on a particular topic or asked to pose a question to a guest.
Most often the audience members he put a microphone in front of were women, whose opinions back in the ‘70s and ‘80s were too often ignored.
Mr. Donahue died on Sunday at the age of 88 after a lengthy illness, according to his family. The moment unleashed a torrent of prepared obituaries that chronicled his amazing, consequential life. Talk show legend Oprah Winfrey conceded that without Phil Donahue there would have been no Oprah. He was a trailblazer.
Sometimes you don’t think about someone for years and then, suddenly, their past presence in your life rushes to the surface. That’s what happened when I began to recall the impact Mr. Donahue had on me and my decision to become a journalist.
Watergate was the seminal event that led to that decision but Phil Donahue was the person who regularly stirred my interest in the events of the day, the hot topics. His easy charm and beguiling personal style made him easy to like. Looking back, he was the first real male feminist I knew.
As much as my three sisters helped shape my view of the feminine world, Mr. Donahue worked on my brain in this regard too. “If Sigmund Freud had watched Phil Donahue he would never have wondered what women want,” Nora Ephron wrote in her 1983 best-selling novel Heartburn.
My views on the Catholic church were also shaped by Mr. Donahue. He was raised Catholic like I was. But he seldom held back from offering often withering criticism of the institution, calling it “unnecessarily destructive.” I wasn’t surprised to read in the New York Times obituary of Mr. Donahue that he had years ago left the church over his differences with it.
Of course, I did not watch Donahue daily. It was hit and miss. But whenever I did tune it, he seldom disappointed me, seldom didn’t make my late-teenager, early-twenties-self, think a little.
He wasn’t perfect. It did seem that he began to chase ratings a little bit, especially late in his 29-year run. He likely began to feel pressure from upstart rivals such as Geraldo Rivera and Jerry Springer, whose sensation-seeking, over-the-top shows began attracting wider audiences. (Mr. Donahue would later refer to them as his “illegitimate children.”) Perhaps rattled by their success, Mr. Donahue wasn’t above stooping down to their levels, although he never seemed particularly at ease doing it.
In 1996, he packed it in.
Six years later, he was lured back to television when MSNBC offered him a primetime interview show. It happened at a difficult time in American history, as the contentious, U.S.-ignited Iraq war was unfolding. Mr. Donahue was not a fan of the incursion, and much to the consternation of the suits who ran NBC seldom held back from expressing those views on air. The network bosses wanted his show to be more onside with the war, something Mr. Donahue wasn’t able to do.
Six months into his new gig he was fired.
While it was considered by many an ignominious end to a brilliant career, I viewed it much differently. Phil Donahue left the business with his dignity intact. If anything, his view of the war proved to be the right one. His firing should be regarded as a badge of honour.
Phil Donahue was a giant of the talk show world who left an indelible, inspiring imprint on many. While he’ll certainly be missed, his legacy will live on.