You used to have to turn a knob before the answers to life’s questions could fit in our pockets. If you’re lucky, Phil Donahue will be there, ready to guide you toward enlightenment. If we’re lucky, Dr. Ruth Westheimer might stop by for a visit yes inspiration. He is a search engine. She is a trustworthy result.
Donahue is from Cleveland. The windshield, snow-white hair, marble eyes, occasional suspenders and obvious affability read “Card Catalog,” “Reds Manager ’79,” “Stage Manager in Chevrolet’s production of Our Town “. Dr. Ruth is the antonym of Donahue, a stepping stool on his ladder. She wore her hair in a butterscotch helmet, favored a jacket-shirt-skirt uniform, and helped us through Germany with a voice like a crumpled tissue paper. There were less than eight years between them, yet he was so childish and she so mature that he was considered her grandson. (She may have reached his armpits.) Together and apart, they were public servants, American utilities.
Donahue is a journalist. His forum was a talk show, but with a twist, and the main attraction bypassed celebrities. People – all kinds of people – line up to witness other people being human and experience Donahue’s radical enlightenment, recognition, curiosity, shock, amazement, anger, astonishment and debate, all available at the show’s TV Awards See: our camera, react, take it all in, nod, gasp. When a celebrity takes the “Donahue” stage — say, Bill Clinton, LaToya JacksonThe Judds – they too are expected to be human and take responsibility for their humanity. In more than 6,000 episodes from 1967 to 1996, he held us accountable.
Donahue knew that we—especially women—crave, crave to be understood, to learn, learn, learn. We call his job “Host,” and really, the way he works is by running the microphone up, down, and around the audience, sticking it here and then here and then here, closer to a “switchboard operator.” It’s “The Hot Dog Stand at Madison Square Garden.” This person intervened. He lets us do more questioning than he does—he just edits, explains, clarifies. Egalitarianism reigns supreme. Connection is fine too. Anyone who needs a microphone usually gets it.
The show is as much about what we think as it is about things we never imagined. atheism. Nazism. Colorism. childbirth. prison. rapist. AIDS. Chippendale, Chernobyl, Cher. Phil Donahue tries to get to the bottom of a fetish, sometimes even trying it himself. (Let us never forget that scene where he appeared in a long dress, shirt and bow One of many cross-dressing studies used for the show. ) Now it’s time to add that “Donahue” is a morning Talk show. In Philadelphia, he arrived at 9 a.m. every weekday, which meant that, in the summer, I could learn about compulsive shopping or changing gender roles from the same kitchen TV as my grandmother.
Sex and sexuality are major themes in the play. There is so much that needs to be acknowledged, corrected, validated, heard. For that, Donahue needed an expert. Many times, that expert was Dr. Ruth, a godsend who didn’t come to this country until her twenties and didn’t appear on television until her fifties. Ruth Westheimer came to us from Germany, originally known as Karola Ruth Siegel, but her life was as twisted as the novel, she was Fastened to a seat belt. Her family likely perished in the Auschwitz death camp after she was whisked away to a secure Swiss children’s home where she was cleaned. Those twists and turns included sniper training for an army that became the Israel Defense Forces, being wounded by a shell on his 20th birthday, doing research at Planned Parenthood in Harlem, single motherhood and three husbands. She earned her doctorate in education from Columbia University and studied human sexuality as a postdoc. Thanks to her perfect timing, she emerged in the early 1980s as the era’s affable counterpart to the era’s craze for aphoristic saints (Zelda Rubinstein, Linda Hunt, Yoda), masterpiece brands, and dirty things. carrier.
Her era was the era of Mapplethorpe and Madonna, Prince, Skinemax and 2 Live Crew. In her radio and television programs, in numerous books and playboy Through a mixture of columns and talk shows, she aims to eliminate sexual shame and promote sexual literacy. Her feline accent and hints of joy have promoted products like Honda Prelude, Pepsi-Cola, Sling TV and Herbal Essences. (“Hey!” she said to a young elevator passenger. “This is the place us get off. “) The instructions for Dr. Ruth’s Beautiful Sex Games say it can be played by up to four couples; the board is vulvar, including “Yeast Infection,” “Chauvinism,” and “Goose Him.”
In “Donahue,” she is direct, explicit, thought-provoking, humorous, clear, common sense, serious, vivid. Professional therapist. The comedy was directed by Donahue. exist Visited once in 1987the caller wanted advice about her husband cheating on her because he was having sex more frequently than she was. Dr. Ruth told Donahue that if the caller wanted to stay married and her husband wanted to keep doing this, “then what she should do is masturbate him. And it doesn’t matter if he masturbates himself a few times.” The audience was rapt, Or just feel uneasy. So Donahue reached into the war chest of his parochial school students and pulled out a joke about a teacher telling a third-grade boy: “Don’t play with yourself or you’ll go blind.” Donahue looked like the back of the classroom Like the kids, they raised their hands and asked, “Can I do this until I need it?” Glasses? “ Westheimer chuckled, perhaps noticing the big eyes on Donahue’s face. This is the cold opener of the day.
Both were the children of salesmen; his father was in the furniture business, while hers sold what people in the clothing industry call concepts. They inherited the salesman’s personnel and packaging facilities. When a “Donahue” viewer asked Westheimer if her own husband believed she meant what she said, she said that’s why she never takes him anywhere. “He would tell you and Phil: ‘Don’t listen to her. It’s all talk,'” which made the audience laugh.
But consider what she said—and consider how she said it. My favorite word from Dr. Ruth is “joy.” Coming from a German mouth, the word conveys something that is lacking in American language: an unfolding of sensibility. She vowed to use the right terminology to talk to the masses about sex. Damn euphemism. People have been waiting a year and a half for tickets to “Donahue” them You can also curse them. But of everything Westheimer proposed, of all the terms she used with precision, joy was her most telling product, a gift she believed we could give to others and a gift she swore we owed ourselves .
I miss Donahue’s reinvention of talk radio. I miss the way Dr. Ruth talked about sex. It’s somehow fitting that this anti-dogmatic yet devout Irish Catholic would sometimes join forces with a carnal, lucky-to-be-alive Jew to urge people to explore our bodies while showing respect, courtesy and reciprocity . They believed in us and believed that we were all interesting and that we could be trusted panelists in the discourse about living. Trauma, trivia, tubal ligation: let’s talk! They didn’t seem to develop fear. In other words, even if there is, it is by no means a deterrent. They went boldly. ——With her encouragement, we came bravely.
Wesley Morris is a staff writer for The New York Times and a staff writer for the magazine.
