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Before the answers to life’s questions came into our pockets, you had to answer the phone. If you were lucky, Phil Donahue would be on, ready to guide you into the light. Fortunately for deluxe, Dr. Ruth Westheimer may have passed there be enlightenment. He was a search engine. He was the hoped-for result.
Donahue is from Cleveland. The windshields, the frosted hair, the marble eyes, the pendants and the obvious intelligence say “card catalog,” “manager of the ’79 Reds,” “Stage Manager in the Chevy Motors production of ‘Our Town.'” Dr. . Ruth was Donahue’s antonym, the rung to his vertical ladder. She kept her hair in a butterscotch hat, loved the blouse-skirt uniform and came to our rescue, via Germany, with a crumpled tissue paper voice. They had not been separated for eight years, yet he was still young and experienced enough to learn like his grandson. (Perhaps it reached his armpit.) Together and apart, they were public servants, American utilities.
Donahue was a reporter. His forum was a talk show, but a new genre where the appeal goes beyond celebrities. People – all their kind – lined up to witness other people being people, to hear Donahue’s great channel of creation, identification, curiosity, shock, surprise, anger, surprise and contradiction, all visible in the jackpot of a television show: cut to us, react, take it all in , he nodded, and gasped. When celebrities came to the category of “Donahue” – Bill Clinton, say, La Toya Jackson, the Judds – they were expected to be people, too, to answer for their personalities. From 1967 to 1996, more than 6,000 episodes, he allowed us to answer to ourselves.
What Donahue knew was that we – women especially – longed, desired, to be understood, to learn and learn and learn. We call his job “host” when, really, the way he did it, running that microphone to every audience, running up, down, around, sticking it here and then there, was close to a “switchboard operator.” “It was a hot dog vendor in Madison Square Garden.” The man put in his steps. It allowed us to do more than ask what it did – it simply organized, interpreted, clarified. Equality reigned. Articulation, too. And anyone who needed a microphone usually got one.
The show was about both what was in our minds and what never happened. Atheism. Nazism. Color. Giving birth. Prison. Rapists. AIDS. The Chippendales, Chernobyl, Cher. Name the elf, Phil Donahue has tried to get to the bottom of it, sometimes by trying it himself. (Let’s not forget the episode when she walks in wearing a long skirt, blouse and pussy bow for one of the show’s many lessons.) Now it’s time to add that “Donahue” in the morning talk show. In Philadelphia, he arrived every weekday at 9 a.m., which meant that, in the summer, I learned about compulsive shopping or reversing gender roles on the same kitchen TV set as my grandmother.
Sex and sexuality were the main themes of the show. There was a lot that needed to be acknowledged, corrected, confirmed, a borrowed ear. For that, Donahue needed an expert. Many times the expert was Dr. Ruth, a god who didn’t come to this country until she was 20 years old and didn’t stay on TV until she was 50 years old. Ruth Westheimer came to us from Germany, where she started as Karola Ruth Siegel and was arrested as her life was arrested, as the legend was funny. His family probably died in the Auschwitz death camps after being taken to a safe haven for children in Switzerland, where he was expected to clean up. The twists include sniper training in one of the military outfits that would become the Israel Defense Forces, being shot by a cannon on her 20th birthday, doing research at Planned Parenthood in Harlem, being a single mother with three husbands. He received his doctorate from Columbia University, in education, and spent his postdoc researching human sexuality. And because his time was right, he appeared in the early 1980s, a madman of the era of gnomic scholars (Zelda Rubinstein, Linda Hunt, Yoda), the production of art and evil.
His was the age of Mapplethorpe and Madonna, of Prince, Skinemax and 2 Live Crew. In her radio and television program, in her book and Playgirl column and in her loose manner of appearing on talk shows, she aimed to de-stigmatize sex, to promote sexuality education. His feminine style and satire featured, among other things, Honda Prelude, Pepsi, Sling TV and Herbal Essences. (“Hey!” asked the young passenger. “Here we come down.”) Game of Good Sex instructions by Dr. Ruth says it can be played by up to four couples; the board is vulval and includes stops on “Yeast Infection,” “Chauvinism” and “Goose Him.”
In “Donahue,” he is direct, transparent, dismissive, funny, articulate, common-sense, serious, clear. Professional therapist. It was Donahue who was in charge of the comedy. During one visit in 1987, a caller needed advice about a cheating husband because he wanted more sex than she did. Dr. Ruth tells Donahue that if the caller wants to keep the marriage, and her husband wants to do it all the time, “then all he has to do is masturbate her.” And it’s okay for him to masturbate with her a few times.” The audience is a hear-a-pin-drop rapt or maybe squirmy. So Donahue reaches into his war chest with a regular school student and cracks a joke about a teacher who tells third-grade boys, “Don’t play with yourself, or you’ll go blind.” And Donahue raises his hand like a child at the back of the class and asks, “I can do it until I have to glasses?” Westheimer giggles, probably seeing the huge frown on Donahue’s face. It was cold that day.
They were the children of merchants, these two; her father was in the furniture business, hers selling what people in the clothing industry call ideas. They inherited the human broker and packaging area. When audience member “Donahue” asks Westheimer if her husband believes she practices what she preaches, she says that’s why she doesn’t bring him anywhere. “He was saying to you and to Fili: ‘Don’t listen to him. It’s all talk,’” to the audience.
But think about what he’s talking about—and think about how he said it. My favorite name of Dr. Ruth was “joy.” From the German mouth, the word conveys what it means in the American language: sensual openness. He vowed to talk about sex to many people using appropriate words. Damn the euphemisms. People have been waiting a year and a half to get “Donahue” tickets for it see can throw them away, too. But for everything Westheimer said, for every word he used accurately, fun was his shining product, a gift he believed we could give to others, a gift he swore he owed us.
I remember the talk show Donahue reinvented. I remember how Dr. Ruth was talking about sex. It is somehow appropriate that this Irish Catholic man who is against the faith-but-a-priest, at times, joins the fleshly Jew, who is lucky to be alive to encourage the examination of our bodies while showing respect, reverence, giving back. They believed in us, that we were all interesting, that we could be honest panelists in the conversation of life. Trauma, infertility, tubal ligation: Let’s talk about it! Fear does not seem to have arrived. Or, if it did, it wasn’t an obstacle. They walked boldly. — And with his encouragement, we came boldly.
Wesley Morris is an editorial critic for The New York Times and a staff writer for the magazine.
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