Ralph Nader - I flew to Dayton, landing just before midnight. Surprise. Who was there as I was getting off the plane? A gracious Phil Donahue. He drove me to the hotel. That was the kind of earnestness, authentic courtesy and persistence in giving voice to the underdogs in our society that propelled him for nearly 30 years to become America’s leading daytime national TV talk show host.
Of course, he was much more than that during his over 6000 shows. In between his shows with flamboyant entertainers (to keep a large audience) he offered hundreds of hours to compelling and controversial leaders of emerging social justice movements and the people who were harmed by wrongdoers.
“Hot
topics,” he called them. When necessary, he would take a Donahue Show
to “hot spots” such as to Chernobyl in Ukraine, the site of a disastrous
partial meltdown in 1986 of a giant nuclear power plant whose
radioactivity forced the permanent abandonment of nearby villages. I can
still see him, with his ever-present microphone, standing by the eerily
swinging doors of the empty houses. More
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