IN ITS OBITUARY for Phil Donahue, the "long-reigning king of daytime television" who died last week at 88, The Washington Post charted the arc of his career. "The Phil Donahue Show" began in 1967 on a TV station in Dayton, Ohio, with a controversial guest — the crusading atheist Madalyn Murray O'Hair. Before long Donahue was broadcasting from New York and his nationally syndicated program had millions of loyal viewers.
"Over the years," noted the Post, "he interviewed late night host Johnny Carson, pop star Elton John, boxer Muhammad Ali, anti-apartheid leader Nelson Mandela, comic filmmaker Mel Brooks, and tennis rivals Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs. Some of his more controversial guests included Albert Speer, Adolf Hitler's architect; novelist Ayn Rand; Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan; Ku Klux Klan grand wizard David Duke; and adult-film star Harry Reems." His most frequent guest was Ralph Nader, but I presume he would have said that his most significant guest was the actress Marlo Thomas, whom he interviewed in 1977 and promptly fell in love with. They exchanged vows three years later. When he died, their marriage had lasted 44 years.
Over time, Donahue's ratings began to slip. To boost them, the Post recounted, he "experimented with stunts and increasingly prurient or titillating subject matter." Which was how I came to be at the WNBC studios in New York one day in 1994. I was invited to take part in a show featuring Spencer Tunick, a photographer known for his shtick of photographing naked people en masse in public. At the time, Tunick was just getting started and Donahue, then in his "increasingly prurient or titillating" phase, put him on the air, together with a couple of models, a filmmaker who was making a documentary about the photographer ... and me.
 Phil Donahue amid the studio audience during the filming of his television show on Jan. 27, 1993. A year or so later, I was on stage in the same studio. |
It was evident from the get-go that I was the only person on the stage who didn't regard Tunick as the greatest genius with a camera since Alfred Stieglitz or Dorothea Lange. After conversing with Tunick for a while, Donahue asked me: "If you take pictures of naked people in public, can you call it art?"
"You can call it anything you like," I answered. "But labeling a gimmick 'art' doesn't make it more than a gimmick."
After a while the cameras turned off and the show went to a commercial break. Everyone except Tunick and the models — a man and a woman — was ushered off the stage. When the break ended and the cameras came back on, the models stripped and Tunick began posing them and snapping pictures. After seven or eight minutes of photographing the naked couple, the segment ended, the studio audience applauded, and Donahue wrapped up the show.
It was all quite silly, but it did give me a fine story with which to regale friends. When the show finally aired months later, all the nudity was obscured with floating blue circles, which only compounded the silliness of the whole thing. The episode was doubtless welcome publicity for Tunick, who is still going strong, but it did nothing to arrest the downward trajectory of Donahue's show, which ended in 1996.
Donahue struck me as a genuine and appealing personality. I didn't know it at the time, but he and I had some things in common: We both grew up in Cleveland, both attended religious schools, and both had fathers who were furniture salesmen. My single encounter with him was admittedly inane, but I'm glad I had the experience. There was no rancor or harshness in the man. May he rest in peace.
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The Democrats' new F-word
In Hans Christian Andersen's famous folktale, an emperor sets off on a public procession to display his magnificent new clothes, which his tailors claim can be seen only by people who are worthy and wise. As the monarch parades through the street, all his courtiers go along with the scam, oohing and aahing over the gorgeous new outfit — until a small child blurts out the truth: The emperor is wearing nothing!
I thought of "The Emperor's New Clothes" last week as I watched the Democratic National Convention elevate "freedom" to the party's new watchword, proclaimed by speaker after speaker on the DNC's third day.
"Democrats, we are the party of real freedom," declared Governor Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania. "That's right, the kind of real freedom that comes when that child has a great public school with an awesome teacher, because we believe in her future. Real freedom that comes when we invest in the police and in the community so that child can walk to and from school and get home safely to her mama. Real freedom that comes when she can join a union, marry who she loves, start a family on her own terms, breathe clean air, drink pure water, worship how she wants, and live a life of purpose."
Former president Barack Obama contrasted Republicans — who think "freedom means that the powerful can do pretty much what they please" — with Democrats, who "have a broader idea of freedom. We believe in the freedom to provide for your family if you're willing to work hard. The freedom to breathe clean air and drink clean water and send your kids to school without worrying if they'll come home. We believe that true freedom gives each of us the right to make decisions about our own life — how we worship, what our family looks like, how many kids we have, who we marry."
As he accepted the Democrats' vice presidential nomination, Governor Tim Walz told DNC delegates that "Mind your own damn business" is the party's golden rule. "When we Democrats talk about freedom," Walz contended, "we mean the freedom to make a better life for yourself and the people that you love. Freedom to make your own health care decisions. And yeah, your kids' freedom to go to school without worrying about being shot dead in the hall."
 Democrats are presenting themselves and their national ticket — Vice President Kamala Harris and Governor Tim Walz of Minnesota — as the party of "freedom." |
There is nothing wrong with embracing freedom, of course. Our national anthem describes America as "the land of the free" and the most famous passage of the Declaration of Independence extols "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." Political candidates should uphold freedom. As a small-l libertarian, I would love to see Democrats become genuine champions of freedom. And I would love to see Republicans, who hold themselves out as defenders of individual freedom, abandon their growing infatuation with illiberal populism and rigid "national conservatism."
But those Democratic speakers weren't talking about freedom. They were merely listing popular outcomes ("breathe clean air," "an awesome teacher"), most of which involve government spending or regulation, and mislabeling them with the F-word.
The Democratic Party's commitment to freedom is iffy at best. In a RealClearPolitics survey last fall, one-third of Democratic respondents (34 percent) said Americans have "too much freedom" and nearly half (47 percent) said speech should be legal "only under certain circumstances." Among Republicans, just 14.6 percent said there was "too much freedom" of expression, while 74 percent said that speech should be legal under any circumstances.
If freedom means the right to abort a pregnancy for any reason or perhaps the right of noncitizens to vote in local elections, then, sure, Democrats can make a plausible case that they are freedom's defenders. But in so many other areas, the party of Joe Biden, Harris, and Walz is the party of restriction, limitation, and prohibition.
For Democrats, "Mind your own damn business" is no golden rule when it comes to the freedom of American adults to carry guns. Or to buy and sell cigarettes. Or to use incandescent light bulbs. Or to charge market rates when they rent out property or sell groceries. Or to accept work that pays less than an arbitrary minimum wage. Or to keep their job without having to pay union dues. Or to use "wrong" pronouns without being penalized.
The instinctive response of many Democrats to the COVID-19 pandemic was not to maximize freedom but to stifle it. Among American governors, Walz was among the most repressive. Matt Welch, writing in Reason, summarized Walz's controversial record during the pandemic: "the school closures, the indoor (and some outdoor) mask mandates, the unsupported-by-science outdoor dining bans, the jailing of defiantly open bar owners, the state of emergency that lasted 474 days, the misspent relief funds, the state tipline for ratting out Minnesotans for gathering in overly large numbers by a lake."
In November 2020, well after Republican governors in many red states had lifted most restrictions and reopened public schools, Walz "took the extraordinary step," as The New York Times put it, "of banning people from different households from meeting indoors or outdoors, even though evidence has consistently shown the outdoors to be relatively safe." The governor's emergency order prohibited "indoor and outdoor gatherings, planned and spontaneous gatherings, and public and private gatherings" — and it applied "even if social distancing can be maintained."
A party genuinely committed to maximum freedom would be a fervent exponent of vouchers and other forms of school choice. It would protect the right of religious believers to provide foster care and adoption services, or to custom-design cakes or websites for weddings, while remaining true to their faith and conscience. It would have reversed Donald Trump's tariffs instead of retaining and expanding them. And it would not have deceived Americans by assuring them they were free to keep the health insurance they preferred.
In fairness, Democrats cannot be faulted for not wanting to let Republicans claim the party-of-freedom mantle. Under Trump, the GOP has sharply weakened its onetime support for free trade. It has become strident about decreasing even legal immigration and it plans a "mass deportation" of migrants who lack proper documents. It has become a party large swaths of which are almost as eager as Democrats to raise taxes on corporations and the wealthy. And it has nominated as its standard-bearer a candidate who says he won't be a dictator "except for Day One."
Once, Republican leaders spoke movingly about freedom and America's obligation to defend it. Again and again, Ronald Reagan called on Americans to defend and preserve their liberty. "Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction," he often said. George W. Bush made the promotion of freedom in the world a priority; his "freedom agenda" became a cornerstone of his second term. Today's Republicans may still be more freedom-oriented than their rivals. But their commitment is visibly waning. Why shouldn't Democrats try to grab the "freedom" message for themselves?
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The Last Line
"And they both realized that the end was still far, far away, and that the hardest, the most complicated part was only just beginning.— Anton Chekhov, The Lady with the Dog (1899)
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Jeff Jacoby is a columnist for The Boston Globe.
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