We had to turn the dial before the answers to life’s questions were in our pockets. If you’re lucky, Phil Donahue will be ready to guide you to enlightenment. Dr. Ruth Westheimer may have stopped by here during a stroke of great fortune. BE Enlightenment. He was a search engine. Her results were trustworthy.
Donahue is from Cleveland. Windshield glasses, increasingly snowy hair, marble eyes, the occasional pair of suspenders and obvious geniality said he was “a card catalogue,” “manager of the ’79 Reds,” and “stage manager for the Chevy Motors production of ‘Our Town.'” Dr. Ruth was the antonym of Donahue and the step on the straight ladder. She had a butterscotch helmet on her head, loved the jacket-blouse-skirt uniform, and with a voice like crumpled tissue paper had come all the way from Germany to help us. Not even eight years had passed, but he was so boyish and she was so skilled that he read as her grandson. (She probably touched his armpit.) Together and apart, they were civil servants, American utilities.
Donahue was a journalist. His forum was a talk show, but with a new twist where the main attraction bypassed celebrities. All kinds of people lined up to witness others becoming human and to experience Donahue’s radical edification, identification, curiosity, shock, amazement, anger, astonishment and controversy. All this can be seen in the show’s television bonanza. React, take it all in, nod, gasp. When a famous person came on stage to “Donahue” — Bill Clinton said: La Toya JacksonJudds – they were expected to be human and take responsibility for their own humanity. Over 6,000 episodes from 1967 to 1996, he allowed us to take responsibility for ourselves.
What Donahue knew was that we, especially women, want and are desperately trying to be understood, to learn, to learn. We call his job “facilitator.” When in reality he was more like a “switchboard operator” in the way he passed the microphone throughout the audience, jumping up and down and here and there, sticking it here, here and there. It was a ‘hot dog stand in Madison Square Garden.’ The man intervened. He left us asking more questions than he did himself. All he did was edit, interpret and clarify. Egalitarianism ruled. The same goes for articulation. And anyone who needed a microphone could get one.
The show was about what was on our minds and what never got beyond it. atheism. Nazism. Colorism. childbirth. prison. Rapist. AIDS. Chippendale, Chernobyl, Cher. Name a fetish, and Phil Donahue has tried to get to the bottom of it, sometimes by trying it himself. (Let’s never forget the episode where she appeared wearing a long skirt. Blouse And Pussy Bow (One of the show’s many cross-dressing studies.) Now “Donahue” morning Talk show. In Philadelphia, he arrived at 9 a.m. on weekdays, which meant he could spend summers watching TV in the kitchen with his grandmother, learning about compulsive shopping or changing gender roles.
Sex and sexuality were major themes of the show. There was so much to confess, correct, confirm, and listen to. To do that, Donahue needed an expert. Many times the expert was Dr. Ruth, a godsend who didn’t land in this country until he was in his late 20s and on television until he was in his 50s. Ruth Westheimer came to us from Germany. There she began with Karola Ruth Siegel, whose life was corked like a mockery of fiction. Her family most likely died in the Auschwitz death camp after being taken to a secure children’s home in Switzerland where she was supposed to clean up. Twists include sniper training for one of the uniforms that would become the Israel Defense Forces, being injured by a cannonball on her 20th birthday, conducting research at a Planned Parenthood association in Harlem, and being a single mother and three husbands. She earned her doctorate in education from Columbia University and did postdoctoral research on human sexuality. And because her timing was perfect, she emerged in the early 1980s. The gnome sages of the era (Zelda Rubinstein, Linda Hunt, Yoda) emerged as genial vectors of the craze for masterpiece branding and nastiness.
She was in the era of Mapplethorpe and Madonna, Prince, Skinemax and 2 Live Crew. on her radio and TV shows, numerous books and play girl Through her promiscuous approach to columns and talk show appearances, she aimed to destigmatize sex and promote sexual literacy. Her feline accent and hilarious sarcasm have set off Honda Prelude, Pepsi, Sling TV and Herbal Essences, among others. (“Hello!” she suggests to a young elevator passenger. “This is the place.” we Get off.”) Dr. Ruth’s Good Sex game instructions say it can be played by up to four couples. The board is vulgar and includes stops for “Yeast Infection,” “Chauvinism,” and “Goose Him.”
In ‘Donahue’ she is direct, explicit, offensive, humorous, clear, common sense, serious, and vivid. Professional therapist. It was Donahue who did the comedy. to Visited once in 1987The caller needs advice about her husband who is cheating on her because he wants to have sex more often than she does. Dr. Ruth told Donahue that if the caller wants to stay married and her husband wants to do that all the time, “then what she should do is masturbate him.” And it’s okay to masturbate a few times.” The audience may be enthused, or perhaps just bewildered. So Donahue reaches into the parochial school student war chest and pulls out a joke about a teacher who tells third-grade boys, “Don’t play alone or you’ll go blind.” And Donahue raises his hand like a child in the back of the classroom and asks, “Can you do this as long as you need to?” glasses?” Westheimer chuckled, probably noticing the large pair on Donahue’s face. It was a cold open today.
They were the children of salesmen. These two people; His father had a furniture business, and her father sold what they called concepts in the clothing industry. They inherited the salesman’s facility with people and packaging. When a “Donahue” audience member asks Westheimer if she believes her husband practices what he preaches, she says that’s why she doesn’t bring him anywhere. “He used to say this to you and Phil: ‘Don’t listen to her. “I mean everything,” he said, making viewers burst into laughter.
But think about what she said and how she said it. My favorite Dr. Ruth’s word was “joy.” Coming from the mouth of a German, this word conveys something that the American language lacks: a sensual development. She pledged to talk to the public about sex using appropriate terms. Damn euphemism. People waited a year and a half to get Donahue tickets. them They too can be cursed. But of all that Westheimer argued, of all the terms she used, joy was her most compelling product, the gift she believed we could give to others, the gift she pledged we owed.
I miss Donahue’s reinvented talk show. I am Dr. I miss the way Ruth talked about sex. It is somehow fitting that this Irish Catholic man, anti-dogmatic yet clerical, sometimes joins forces with secular and fortunately living Jews to urge exploration of our bodies while showing respect, courtesy and reciprocation. They believed in us, that we were all interesting, and that we could be credible panelists in the living discourse. Trauma, trivialization, tubal ligation: let’s talk about it! It seems that no fear occurred to them. Or even if it was, it was never a deterrent. They went boldly. — And with her encouragement, we came boldly.
Wesley Morris is a critic for The New York Times and a staff writer for the magazine.
