Feeling Phil

AS YOU MAY know from MSNBC's Normandy-style ad campaign, Phil Donahue, the man who practically invented the gutter genre of talk television, who paved the way for Oprah and the rest, he of the bulging eyes, concerned hand gestures, and sensitive male persona has entered the fray of nightly political talk on cable. For the last three nights, I watched. I watched, so you didn't have to.

Monday

To be honest, I missed the first fifteen minutes of the first show. When I turned on the television, Scott Ritter was screaming his denial that there is any proof that Saddam Hussein is developing weapons of mass destruction. Ahmed Chalabi of the Iraqi National Congress, Saddam's likely successor if "regime change" were to happen, is screaming back. I have the distinct impression that there is nothing new here.

Phil Donahue, however, is hot on the trail of a hypocrisy catch. He is troubled that the United States once backed Saddam Hussein and now we want him gone. This gives Phil an extreme case of what's called "pause." So do Ritter's claims. So does the possibility that were we to get rid of Saddam, we might end up supporting yet another bad guy--the same logic that was used to argue we shouldn't have gone after bin Laden. All in all, Donahue sounds like last year's Democratic party. That is, when it comes to big bad regimes like Saddam's Iraq, this very passionate man proves himself bolder and dumber than your average liberal.

When Donahue's not disburdening himself of some Alan Alda impression on what being an American means to him, he's emoting, touching studio guests on the forearm, anything to make that trademark human connection. It's the exact opposite of Bill O'Reilly's use-and-abuse style. Following the news of Johnny Walker Lindh's guilty plea, Donahue welcomes onto his show the sister of slain CIA agent Johnny Spann, who died in the prison uprising in Mazar-i-Sharif. Sending her off, Phil tells Spann's sister, "You are the member of a very large family of loved ones." When Pat Buchanan comes on for batting practice against the gray-haired icon, Phil calls him Patrick (full-name-like, Irish Catholic to Irish Catholic) and tells him he's a part of the family. And guess what Phil tells NBC colleague Bob Costas later, at the end of the show: "It's very nice to be part of your family."

Two highlights. One, Phil challenges Patrick Buchanan on his majority-rule defense for keeping God in the Pledge of allegiance. What if the relevant majority is composed of Muslim Americans?, Phil asks. Is it okay that they pledge allegiance to "one nation under Allah"? Phil also went provocative for the second highlight. On the baseball crisis: "The guys I went to high school with," would never have used steroids. "All you had to say is it will give you smaller gonads."

Tuesday

Things are fine at first. Bill Goodman of the Center for Constitutional Rights is facing off against Cliff May of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies for another seen-this-before screaming match. A few points are scored on either side. And then: cut to the human connection. Donahue questions May, saying "No one is accusing you of coming from anywhere but the heart. . . . Aren't you somewhat respectful and empathetic of Goodman's position?" The answer is clearly no.

The next guest is the wife of a detained Islamic foreigner who'd violated the terms of his visa. The husband co-founded a Michigan organization called the Global Relief Foundation. The sad wife act comes off like a sympathy letter dropped in the middle of "Crossfire." The wife's talking about her "proud husband" suffering the indignity of prison, one day stuck in isolation, the next sitting in a pen with ten others. Only no one else on the show is familiar with the case. I get the impression that this isn't the whole story, only the weepy part. But just as some of the basics are finally being covered, after another guest asks some elementary questions, a new guest is introduced: the husband of a woman who died on the airplane that crashed into the second World Trade Tower. Phil has brought to political television the talk-show principle that no two guests have so little in common that they can't be thrown together in a free-for-all.