Does anyone remember Phil Donahue?
Phil Donahue had a talk show in the middle of the day, around the time school let out that had all manner of guests on it. He started the reality TV talk show. He had a guest, or guests on the show, and he would interview them for a bit, and then throw the floor open for questions while he dashed around the auditorium with his microphone on a 100 foot cable and let people talk and ask questions. It was brilliant. It was democracy - small "d". Sometimes he had on people you would love, sometimes people you would hate, sometimes people you would hate, but after you saw them being part of the system and having their say you would like them better or at least understand them.
The Phil Donahue Show was broadcast nationwide between 1970 and 1996. Donahue also briefly hosted a talk show on MSNBC from July 2002 to March 2003.
Around the time of 9-11 and the Iraq war Phil had a reboot of his show going, but he was forced to follow certain rules. For example, he could never have more Liberals on his show than Conservatives. If he had more than one person on his show - he, himself, was counted as two liberals. Finally, when he was not strenuous enough in support of the Iraq war Phil was fired and his show taken off the air.
From Wikipedia:
Soon after the show's cancellation, an internal MSNBC memo was leaked to the press stating that Donahue should be fired because he opposed the imminent U.S. invasion of Iraq and that he would be a "difficult public face for NBC in a time of war" [21] and that his program could be “a home for the liberal anti-war agenda”.[22] Donahue commented in 2007 that the management of MSNBC, owned at the time by General Electric, a major defense contractor, required that "we have two conservative (guests) for every liberal. I was counted as two liberals."[23]
Phil was very quiet about this at the time, but if you find and listen to his interviews about that time he will explain it clearly. Phil was the best at what he did, and a staunch supporter of democracy, and an amazing patriot and believer in our system - our system that has let him down. That is how America controls the media and rigs elections. share