LIBERAL DONAHUE RETURNS ON CABLE

At 66, He Hopes Young Adults Will Watch Him Interview Newsmakers

PASADENA, CALIF. - Phil Donahue remains an unabashed liberal in an era
when what he sometimes calls ``the L word'' is considered an insult.

He worked in Ralph Nader's presidential campaign. His daytime talk
series began its 29-year run in 1967 with famous atheist Madalyn
Murray O'Hair as the guest. (He chuckles over people's assumption that
he, too, was therefore an atheist.) During the Reagan years, he said,
administration representatives refused to participate in his show.

But as he prepared to re-enter the talk-show wars with a new Donahue
premiering at 8 p.m. Monday on MSNBC, the Cleveland native suggested
that in many ways, he is truly a conservative.

``I believe in the Bill of Rights,'' he said Wednesday. ``I believe a
woman's home is her castle. I don't believe we should be knocking
doors down... (in) a drug war that isn't working. I believe in free
speech.

``I believe in the separation of church and state. I believe that the
more we encroach on that wall (between government and religion), the
more likely it is that somebody in a public school is going to fool
with your child's mind. Somebody in a public school is going to put a
Jewish kid in a nativity play...

``We're the most freely religious nation on Earth. We have more
choirs. We throw around more holy water than any other nation on
Earth. God is hot. We don't need the state to help with religion.
Don't do it. Don't go there. We've seen what theocracies do. Every one
of those 19 guys on those four airplanes (on Sept. 11) talked to God
every day.''

That's just a piece from one of several monologues Donahue launched
into in a news conference to promote his new talk show and in a
smaller discussion afterward.

It made clear that Donahue has become more outspoken, not less, in
recent years. But as his remarks went on, with parts of sentences
sometimes left hanging, Donahue also sounded like someone from TV's
past.

Where today's commentators (including his direct competition, Bill
O'Reilly) speak pithily, Donahue makes you dig a bit for the sound
bite. But that's who he is, and he still thinks there is an audience
for his ideas, however long they may take to express.

Indeed, it was the monotony that Donahue detected in TV commentators'
reactions to the Sept. 11 attacks that made him want to return to TV.

``We had very little dialogue,'' he said. ``Apparently we felt the
need to support totally our president, which I did, too. I can't
imagine a greater challenge in my lifetime for any president --
including (Franklin D.) Roosevelt -- than the one now before George
W.

``So I think that a deference and an understanding, and a salute, and
respect, is due to a man who is besieged. But I don't think there's
anything un-American at all about clearing your throat and saying,
`Excuse me, Mr. President, we've sent millions of Americans to die on
foreign soil for our way of life. Our way of life includes free
speech. It includes the right to privacy. It includes the right to
meet your accuser and be judged by a jury of your peers in an OPEN
trial.' We need the Bill of Rights now more than ever.''

While he will be offering up such opinions on the new Donahue, he said
he did not plan to deliver monologues -- and even if he told people
what he thought, he did not see that as telling them what to do.

As for the expected reaction, he said, ``I'm not unaccustomed to
criticism. I don't see how you can insult me in any original way. I've
heard it all....

``I'm not necessarily tougher than anyone else. I want to be loved,
too. But I appreciate that in this game, (being loved) is not a very
realistic objective. If you're going to do anything at all that's
important, you cannot walk down the center of every issue like a
mechanical man, never revealing how you feel.''

Still, he repeatedly said the show, which will interview newsmakers
and journalists on the day's top news, has an obligation to be fair.

But fairness is harder to come by on TV news, in part because
politicians tend to gravitate more toward places where they will get a
friendly welcome. Donahue's sense of his own conservatism
notwithstanding, why should a conservative guest come onto the MSNBC
show?

``There are conservatives out there who would salivate to get on and
show this pointy-headed liberal `who's always worried about poor
people' the facts of life,'' Donahue said. ``But there are those who
probably won't. We'll have to wait and see.''

Donahue said conservative gadfly Bill Bennett has already turned him
down, but he wondered whether that was more a function of Bennett's
ongoing relationship with CNN. And even in the Reagan years,
conservative activist Gary Bauer came to the old Donahue show.

Still, Donahue knows TV has changed. His new set at MSNBC is bigger
than the room for his St. Edward High School prom, he said. He will be
using a TelePrompter -- which he eschewed during the old show -- if
only to navigate from one topic to another. And having more than one
topic is itself a departure from the Donahue tradition.

Where some of the style has changed, something else hasn't: Donahue
still has to deliver an audience. Not beat O'Reilly, maybe not even
beat Connie Chung's competing show on CNN. But still deliver an
audience, especially the youngish audience that MSNBC is chasing.

Is that possible for a white-haired, 66-year-old grandfather?

``MTV, I'm not,'' he said. But he also recalled being on the Nader
campaign trail with Michael Moore, the untelegenic writer and producer
behind such projects as TV Nation, Roger & Me and Stupid White Men.

``When he came out during that campaign, he got a thunderous reception
from a lot of young people,'' Donahue said. ``I was very impressed
with his popularity among young people. So there is a thoughtful
generation out there.

``It is a mistake to suggest that, if you're 24, all you're doing is
looking for singles bars. These people give a damn. They're the ones
who may have to go to war to solve some of the problems that we may be
creating today.''

If they watch Donahue, they may find a guy who's proud to march under
one of MSNBC's slogans: ``Fiercely independent.''

``I think I fit there,'' he said. ``If I may flatter myself, I feel
that way. I have not been kissing a baby for the past three years. I
did not kiss a baby on the (old) Donahue show. I've been booed by my
own audience many times.''