Eminentoes/Downey's Syndrome
Marin, Richard
EMINENTOES DOWNEY'S SYNDROME n antichrist of the airwaves is upon us! A broadcast Beelzebub, a syndicated Satan! His name: Morton Downey, Jr. And, yes, he is a conservative. But first the...
...How'sthat...
...The Morton Downey Jr...
...That all these figures, Downey included, should have got their start in radio is no coincidence...
...I honestly believe that television's problem is not controversy, but blandness," Phil confided to the Washington Post's Tom Shales (one of the pro-"Downey" few...
...There is yearning for peace in Israel, a deep desire to be done with the wars that have been pressed on it without surcease since the very day of its birth...
...Pulitzer Prize-winner Ron Powers, in his TV column for GQ magazine, let out an equally apocalyptic wail following his exposure to Downey & Co...
...Does anybody really expect the Israelis to turn over the strategically crucial "West Bank" to those who are sworn to destroy it...
...Etc., etc., all the way to this choice formulation from Screw magazine: MORTON DOWNEY: MORON OR PERVERT...
...Again, it won't be the viewers who get mad (though they might lose interest), just the critics,whose blandly conventional sensibilities wilt in the face of television that so flagrantly breaches the bounds of politesse...
...One would expect that to be on the model of Lebanon...
...In addition to "Downey," two other head-butting talk shows have been tossed around the syndication market...
...This diminished and indefensible territory was to be the dreamed-of Jewish homeland and the haven for the pitiful remnants of Nazi Holocaust survivors...
...he enlivens it...
...Happens all the time, not only to evil fascists but often to the many liberal "Pablum-pukers" invited on the show...
...Israel is surrounded by implacable enemies...
...And Israel has proven that it is ready to make territorial concessions for peace...
...21.95 hardcover...
...It is a fundamental error to believe that the "occupied territories" are at the root of the problem in Palestine...
...The PLO continues to oppose any policy that does not include the destruction of Israel or calls for the establishment of a "secular state" in Palestine instead of Israel...
...THE PIT BULL OF TALK SHOW HOSTS—Time...
...The voyeuristic impulse is at work with "Downey," too...
...Almost all of our revenue pays for our educational work and for these clarifying messages...
...Actually, closer examination reveals many a "Bubba" to be a slumming Wall Street suit or Rutgers mini-conservative...
...In fact, it works...
...But a New Jersey court dismissed the case...
...When the British resigned the Palestine mandate in 1948, the United Nations offered a partition plan to the Jews and Arabs living in the area...
...No solution of the territorial dispute of the "West Bank" and Gaza is possible until the Arab nations give full recognition and acceptance to Israel and are genuinely willing to make peace and to establish full normalization of relations...
...But the enmity of the Arabs against Israel is of a different nature altogether...
...By taking an extreme stand on capital punishment ("Fry their meat...
...This ad has been published and paid for by Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America PO...
...The root of the "problem" is not Israel's administration of the territories...
...Or, as a columnist in Ad Age succinctly translated it: "a TV winner...
...Liddy," a vehicle for the former Watergate co-conspirator and sometime "Miami Vice' guest star, will debut this fall...
...But Downey doesn't debase The Cause...
...A superb job on war, nuclear arms, and the bishops," says William F. Buckley, Jr...
...It's "Crossfire" with live ammo, Phil Donahue on a murderous crack binge...
...Such insolent viewer misbehavior irks to no end the guardians of "quality" TV...
...What will he do next...
...In Vanity Fair, James Wolcott squirted venom from his poison pen all over Downey and his tribe of admirers, "no-neck Bubbas who seem to have been shipped into the studio in cages and crates...
...And for that to happen, the Arabs must rethink the role of Israel in the Middle East and their relationship to it...
...The purpose of the Arabs to "wipe Israel off the map" was re-asserted...
...It's just possible that, tired of being lectured by the ponderous hucksters of contemporary neuroses, they want the tables turned...
...Downey's theater of rage is a video-age approximate of the State of Nature...
...In one renowned instance, an Aryan Nations leader made the mistake of accusing Downey of "prostituting" himself...
...Crude, vulgar, and bellicose though he may seem on screen, Downey is no Jersey thug...
...By wrapping his derriere in the American flag and inviting an Iranian student to kiss it...
...People in the United States believe that conflict between nations can be resolved or at least be kept from exploding...
...What's more, his revival-tent advocacy does have a purpose: get people mad enough to blurt out what they really think, instead of neatly packaged sound bites that have become the worthless currency of "mainstream" TV...
...This from the man whose devotion to controversy has degenerated to mediating such sniveling symposia as "Mansharing," "Touching," and "The Right to Bare Breasts...
...As Newsday's TV columnist Marvin Kit-man observed: 'The Morton Downey Jr...
...The eponymous son of the beloved Irish tenor, Sean Morton Downey was weaned with a silver spoon and spent summers alongside the Kennedys at Hyannis Port...
...It's just possible that the greater American viewing public has grown weary of watching the same old parade of bullying feminists, defiant transsexuals, contrite spouse-abusers, heinous pederasts, and the inevitable coterie of social workers and pop psychologists who travel in their wake...
...Your tax-deductible contributions are welcome...
...TV HOST OPENS HEART TO HIS DYING BROTHER, screamed page one of the New York Post in May, after a tearful "Downey" taping during which Tony Downey (a younger sibling) revealed that he had AIDS...
...Underneath the TV terrorist demeanor, Downey is a pussycat...
...Surely, at the very least, Downey is relief from the stale, stifling boredom of TV as we know it...
...Then along comes Morton Downey making Phil look like a regular Socrates...
...It called for "jihad" — holy war...
...takes place in a context of relative civility...
...After watching the studio audience file out of the WWOR building, Powers writes: "I saw satiation...
...By calling liberals "Pablumpukers...
...He's hardly more inflammatory or Manichaean in world-view than, say, Pat Buchanan...
...trigger mob—chanted, Out...
...For those still in the dark regarding this latest threat to the Republic, all that's happened is there's a man on television—call him Attila the Host—spouting a particularly loud-mouthed, bilious political screed and lots of people seem to be enjoying it...
...Five Arab armies attacked the Jewish state at the very moment of its birth...
...Unfortunately for the GardellaBianculli brigade, words like "poor taste" and "mindless" tend to backfire when applied to commercial television...
...Our overhead is minimal...
...All of the above...
...to move in that kind of controversial direction...
...Then came the famous Downey trump card: "GET THAT FAT SLOB OUT OF THE BUILDING...
...It's not an attractive prospect for the Jews of Israel, or for its Arab citizens, for that matter...
...It would be only nine miles wide at its "waist...
...He is, as most people who have come in off-air contact with him attest, quite sane...
...It was pure secular televangelism—lachrymose and embarrassingly public And yet for all its pyrotechnics, there is some substance to Downey's incendiary style, a method to his mayhem...
...Send Order to: Wyndham Hall Press, Box 877, Bristol, IN 46507 Pre-payment required...
...These goals and sentiments are embedded in the PLO Covenant...
...For the last 40 years, the Arabs have committed themselves almost single-mindedly to the destruction of Israel — by war, by terror, and now by mob violence, sending their women and teen-age children to throw Molotov cocktails at Israeli soldiers...
...Israel's intent, declared and repeated over and over, was to return YES, I want to help in the publication of these ads and in countering anti-Israel and anti-Zionist propaganda...
...Confrotalk," as one pundit penned it, is the product for sale on the "Downey" show: high-decibel and no-holdsbarred...
...FOREIGN POLICY SINCE 1933 by Anthony T. Bouscaren (The President's National Advisory Board), $12.95 paper...
...He assailed the show as "raw, caustic and mindless," an appropriately Hobbesian triple...
...Why anybody would allow himself to be a target and whipping boy for such an offensive, unpleasant, abrasive, opportunistic person boggles the mind...
...Suddenly, confro-talk is all the rage again...
...They were defeated, but they managed to occupy and to stay in control of the "West Bank", of Gaza, and of the eastern part of Jerusalem...
...Because he made me promise not to...
...Eek...
...I saw the afterglow of adrenaline rush...
...The Fox network's unabashedly sleazy "A Current Affair" paid $10,000 for a videotape of "preppy murderer" Robert Chambers frolicking at a private party with a quartet of tittering females in sexy lingerie...
...I saw the face of television in the twenty-first century...
...Especially when it whips the masses into a lather of populist conservatism...
...That's what happened with Egypt, to which Israel returned the vast Sinai Peninsula — over 90% of the territory taken by Israel in the Six-Day War — in exchange for recognition and peace...
...34 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR AUGUST 1988...
...So if someone from Secaucus, New Jersey, has a television program in which they're either throwing pies or storming out of the studio, or in the minds of some viewers producing a circus, it may sit easier for other programs THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR AUGUST 1988 33 What are the facts...
...The Arabs rejected that partition plan out of hand...
...Homosexual activist Andrew Humm alleged that Downey—a fierce opponent of "perverted love"--slapped him in the heat of debate...
...No postage or shipping charges NA, You deserve a factual look at . . . The "Troubles" in Israel Should Israel withdraw from the "West Bank" and Gaza...
...His show averages a solid 5.0 Nielsen rating (about 800,000 viewers) in NYC...
...A week later David Bianculli of the New York Post echoed Gardella's high dudgeon...
...In 1967, following the victorious Six-Day War, another war that had been imposed on Israel by the Arabs, Israel assumed the administration of Judea/Samaria and Gaza, and united the liberated city of Jerusalem as the nation's capital...
...But in the Arab League Khartoum conference, immediately following the war, the Arabs pronounced their "three unalterable no's": no recognition, no negotiation, and no peace with Israel...
...Downey's hype—the image of a crude, bullying neanderthal—neatly satisfies the liberal stereotype of what's wrong with the right, as well as the right's paranoia about what's wrong with itself...
...The goal of the terror group known as the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) was obviously not to "liberate" Judea/ Samaria and Gaza, which were under Arab control, but to "wipe Israel off the map and to send the Jews back to Poland, where they belong...
...Even Donahue, whose bloodletting Gestalt Downey carries to its logical extreme, has welcomed this shot in the arm...
...circus in which boneless wimps and liberals are fed into the big maw...
...Even the cold war between the U.S...
...Box 590381E San Francisco, CA 94159 CAMERA is a tax-deductible, non-profit educational 501(c)(3) organization...
...His populist, Elmer Gantry vulgate of the conservative canon embarrasses Movement elitists...
...The Arabs were the occupiers: the Jordanians in the "West Bank" and the Egyptians in Gaza...
...He satirizes right-wing politics," Corry complained...
...But much greater guarantees with responsible and immediately involved governments would be required to induce Israel to cede any territories in Gaza and Judea/Samaria (the "West Bank...
...National syndication will no doubt set off more ripples of disgust in the heartland...
...Before Israel could make any further territorial concessions at all, it would have to have ironclad guarantees...
...All of its major population centers, its industries, its military installations would be within easy mortar range of enemies on the "West Bank...
...and the U.S.S.R...
...Show' . . . I gather from the press, is the worst thing to happen to civilized society since the Visigoths sacked Europe...
...No country should be asked to commit national suicide in order to appease world public opinion...
...Talk radio has long been a right-wing bastion, an open forum for the masses to sound off against the dominant culture, to browbeat the Pablum-pukers...
...I include my tax-deductible contribution in the amount of 16/AS My name is I live at In State—Zip Mail to: CAMERA, P.O...
...As of May 30, the gaping "Downey" maw (the show's insignia and its ethos) went into syndication, delivering to thirty television markets, including nine of the ten largest...
...Its purpose is to combat media inaccuracies, through public education and publicity...
...Corry resents the right being exposed to Downey's ideological "Gong Show," to what he calls "the new age of television tastelessness...
...Which is the greater offense to taste and propriety: to kick a neo-Nazi off your TV show, or to engage him in meaningful dialogue...
...DOWNEY AN UGLY DOWNER—the New York Daily News...
...Sulfurous reviews are the best adverby Richard Marin tisements a performer of Downey's ilk could hope for: irresistible bait bundled in tabloid fishwrap...
...Critics who imagine Downey as a foam-at-the-mouth extremist have very likely never watched the show...
...With astounding results and the blessing of the FBI, "America's Most Wanted" (also on Fox) enlists viewers' help in nabbing dangerous criminals by re-creating violent crimes in shocking video verite...
...Indeed, he's a much-needed shot of adrenaline to the moribund Reagan era...
...The local New York press corps spread the initial shock waves...
...T hat's not to cast Morton Downey 1 as a stark raving nutter...
...It isn't, of course...
...Both shows have a large, loyal audience...
...And I thought television in the twenty-first century was going to be nothing but professional wrestling and reruns of "Alf...
...But the Arabs would not allow this to happen...
...I won't say that Mort Downey is actually a good-humored man who can take it as well as dish it out," wrote Joe Conason of the Village Voice after an encounter with Mighty Mouth...
...They enable us to pursue these goals and to publish these messages in newspapers and magazines...
...Show" was born in October 1987 at a Secaucus, New Jersey "superstation," WWOR, which broadcasts over the air to greater New York City and via satellite to 2,488 cable systems around the country...
...After two decades of Donahue, Downey has arrived to even the score...
...Bianculli's rating snub: "(1/2) star...
...Nationally, the show has hit high numbers in Chicago, Boston, Miami, Philadelphia, and—surprise—San Francisco...
...The root is the Arabs' unalterable desire to destroy Israel...
...Kitman is just one of the very few among his colleagues to realize it...
...A debatefest called "Clashpoint," to be led by New York radio personality Bob Grant, was in the works but with only tentative backing...
...When Downey appeared as a guest on "Donahue," the result was a love-in of mutual admiration...
...He sneered at Downey's "conservative reaction," his "high-energy, low-I.Q...
...Or the old Ronald Reagan...
...For more than six months now, the "troubles" in Israel haw been daily front page features and daily fare on the evening television news...
...WE DON'T WANT ANY NAZIS HERE...
...Deafening, vein-popping stand-offs, the occasional ejection—it's all part of the spectacle, entertainment its 55-year-old host is happy to call "verbal rollerball...
...He kicked him off, just like that, while the crowd—a rambunctious, hairRichard Marin is television critic for the Washington Times...
...Phil has been fighting a losing battle against blandness, with Oprah Winfrey (and lately Geraldo Rivera) whipping him on his own tacky turf...
...But neither, for all his immaculately polished diplomacy, is Ted Koppel...
...The Jews accepted partition into a gerrymandered crazy-quilt and even accepted the internationalization of Jerusalem...
...Box 590381, San Francisco, CA 94159 most of these territories to Arab control, as part of a comprehensive peace treaty...
...According to John Corry, Downey is no conservative either...
...Because without the "West Bank", Israel would be militarily indefensible...
...But first the headlines: DOWNEY A DOWNER—the New York Post...
...Of course he's no "deep thinker," as Corry sarcastically remarked...
...The man is a disgrace to television...
...When placed in the company of genuine fanatics—vile pornographers, racists, hair-shirt feminists—Downey is invariably the voice of moderation, soothing the savage breast of his impatient following...
...His fellow critics, almost to a man (and woman), have taken the hard millenarian line, dancing hysterical fits of conniption to the advancing jungle beat of the devil Downey...
...There is nothing conservative about him," huffed Corry in his swan song as a TV critic (and token conservative) for the New York Times...
...Many thoughtful people may have come to the conclusion that peace could come to this troubled part of the world if the Israelis were to withdraw from Judea/ Samaria (the littst Bank") and from Gaza and if they turned these areas over to the Arabs...
...Tabloid TV, like its newsprint ancestor, does seem to be riding a wave of public infatuation...
...Downey's automatic retort: "Hey buddy, don't call me a prostitute you fat, ugly slob...
...T he New York Daily News's critic- 1 for-life Kay Gardella weighed in first last November: "The motormouth host of the weekday . . . talk show is a purveyor of poor taste, bad manners, and cheap talk...
...IsNX ENDURING THE SOVIETS: U.S...
Vol. 21 • August 1988 • No. 8
