Lifestyle
Pioneer talk show host Phil Donahue dies at 88
![Pioneer talk show host Phil Donahue dies at 88 Pioneer talk show host Phil Donahue dies at 88](https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims3/default/strip/false/crop/3000x1688+0+0/resize/1400/quality/100/format/jpeg/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fae%2F49%2F10199f644c73ae70763677d68116%2Fgettyimages-87217442.jpg)
Emmy award-winning talk show host Phil Donahue.
Frederick M. Brown/Getty Images
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Frederick M. Brown/Getty Images
Phil Donahue united a broadcaster’s telegenic appeal, an insistent curiosity, and a taste for provocative topics to create a new genre of television – the audience participation talk show – which briefly took over daytime television and sealed his status as a TV pioneer. The broadcaster, who was age 88, died on Sunday, his family said.
No cause of death was given, though his family said he’d “passed away peacefully following a long illness.”
But even though he built his legend on cheeky stunts, Donahue often led earnest conversations on newsy topics. From interviewing former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke in 1991 as he was running for governor of Louisiana to jousting with conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly, Donahue dug into hot-button issues with the zeal of an investigative journalist – emulating the kind of mainstream media figures who always inspired him.
“I grew up in this game with stars in my eyes,” Donahue said in an interview with NPR in 2021. “I always admired mainstream media types. They went right for the jugular. It appeared to me they didn’t have to be popular. They just had to be aggressive and have their facts straight.”
Donahue sat his guests before a large studio audience, stalking through the crowd with a microphone, mixing questions from the onlookers with his own queries and – for a time – questions from callers over the telephone.
The former radio announcer lobbed questions with a down-to-earth charm and a flair for dramatic pauses so distinctive that impressionist Darrell Hammond captured it on Saturday Night Live. Another SNL alum, Phil Hartman, actually lampooned him to his face in 1989.
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One of Donahue’s innovations was that he spoke to a predominantly female TV audience without talking down to them, highlighting a single topic per show: atheism, abortion, racism.
The host himself said controversy was the key to his show’s survival. “The coin of our realm is the size of the audience,” Donahue said in a 2016 interview with the New York Public Media show MetroFocus. “What will draw a crowd, especially to a visually dull program? And we thought: Controversy. Controversy is what will do it.”
Born Philip John Donahue in Cleveland, Ohio, he graduated from the University of Notre Dame and worked for a radio station in a small town in Michigan. “I could stop the Mayor of Adrian, Michigan in the hallway,” he told NPR in 2021. “I was, like 21 – I may have looked 16 – and it was kind of a first-grade lesson in the power of journalism.”
In 1967, Donahue moved a radio talk show he was hosting in Dayton, Ohio to local TV, and The Phil Donahue Show was born. His first guest was renowned atheist Madalyn Murray O’Hair – who had brought a lawsuit against prayer in schools — and a few years later, his show was syndicated nationally, kicking off a 26-year run in daytime television, mostly with little competition.
His mix of hot-button topics with earnest discussion was so successful that it was eventually emulated by everyone from Geraldo Rivera, Jerry Springer, and Morton Downey Jr. to Oprah Winfrey. Winfrey said as much while handing Donahue a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Daytime Emmy Awards in 1996, noting, “Had there not been a Phil Donahue, I don’t think there could have been an Oprah.”
Donahue, speaking with the Archive of American Television, said he was always surprised no one came along to really try copying what he did until Winfrey’s debut in 1986. “Along comes Oprah Winfrey, and it is not possible to overstate the enormity of her impact on the daytime television game,” he said. “In many ways, she raised all the boats with her success. If you didn’t have Oprah, you had to have me. And we were a lot less expensive.”
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Winfrey’s success led many other hosts to try the format, with some featuring increasingly combative and tawdry subjects, including fistfights onstage. Once considered outrageous himself, Donahue found his show beaten in ratings by more explicit programs and retired from daytime TV in 1996 after more than 6,000 shows.
He wouldn’t return to a regular TV job until 2002 when he hosted a show for MSNBC called Donahue. He tried emulating the fearless truth-telling he always idolized in mainstream journalism, but Donahue lasted less than a year there. He didn’t hold back when telling NPR why it was canceled.
“I was fired because I did not support the invasion of Iraq,” he added. “I thought I was going to be a hit because I was different. Everybody else was beating the war drums. I wanted to get on the air and say, ‘Why are you doing this?’”
Donahue said the firing essentially ended his TV career. He did co-direct a 2007 documentary Body of War and co-wrote a book in 2020 called What Makes a Marriage Last with wife and actress Marlo Thomas.
He married Thomas – a TV star, producer and outspoken feminist — in 1980 after meeting her when she was a guest on his show.
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Lifestyle
Robert Morris’ son-in-law, Ethan Fisher, renames Gateway Church Houston in wake of scandal
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![Robert Morris' son-in-law, Pastor Ethan Fisher, and his wife, Morris' daughter, Elaine.](https://cdn.christianpost.com/images/cache/image/15/33/153319_w_700_422.png)
Further distancing himself from the Gateway Church brand in what he describes as a call from God, Ethan Fisher, senior pastor of Gateway Church Houston, who is also the son-in-law of embattled Gateway Church founder Robert Morris, announced Sunday that his church has been renamed Newlands Church following the child sex abuse allegations against his father-in-law.
“I believe that during this season, as a church, that God is once again calling us into something new, and I simply want to follow,” Fisher, the husband of Morris’ daughter, Elaine, told his congregation as he directed them to watch a recorded announcement of the rebranding.
“We believe the Lord has given us a new name. This next chapter is about obedience and stepping out in faith to be who God has called us to be. In Scripture, when God changed a name He was speaking prophetically to who that person was to become. I believe today God is speaking to us to look forward to who we are to become. I am excited to announce that Gateway Houston is becoming Newlands Church,” Fisher revealed in the video. “I am full of hope and expectation that God has amazing things in store for you, your family, and our church, and I believe the best is yet to come.”
Fisher’s announcement follows the revelation of allegations from 54-year-old Cindy Clemishire that Morris began sexually abusing her when she was 12, on Dec. 25, 1982, then continued with the abuse for four-and-a-half years after that. Morris resigned from Gateway Church on June 18.
Without naming Clemishire, Morris admitted to CP that he had engaged in “inappropriate sexual behavior with a young lady” while he was a pastor in his early 20s.
Elders at Gateway Church had initially told CP that Morris was transparent about his past and believed he had been biblically restored to ministry. However, after Clemishire’s report was made public, they said Morris did not tell them the “young lady” was 12 years old at the time.
Reacting to the scandal in late June, Fisher said he was left at “a loss for words” after the news broke.
“This past week, we have been obviously grieved and shocked over the child sexual abuse allegations that have been brought to light regarding Robert Morris,” he told his congregation, which he said is not a campus of Gateway Church but an independent, autonomous operation. “For years, he has shared about a moral failure early on in his marriage. But prior to this past week, the leadership, including myself and even Elaine, for the leadership here at Gateway Church Houston, did not have all the facts regarding the allegations.”
After Morris resigned from Gateway Church, Fisher said he was also removed as the apostolic and overseeing elder of Gateway Church Houston.
“Elaine and I, we’re processing it, obviously, as family. Elaine is a daughter, and I’ve done my best to be there for her. Me, as a son-in-law, we’re processing the pain in real-time in the same way I know many of you are,” Fisher told his congregants.
On Sunday, Morris’ son-in-law explained that his “church is more than a name on a building.”
“It is full of people who are willing to say yes to God, to pray consistently, give generously and serve sacrificially, to see people everywhere know God, belong to family, discover purpose, and build the kingdom,” he said.
“In Hebrews 12, it tells us to fix our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfector of faith. A pioneer is one who sets the path for others to follow. As God’s people, He is calling us to be not mere spectators but participators in this journey of faith. Every path we have walked has been following the voice of God as He builds His Church,” he added as he explained how God had been speaking to the congregational leaders for more than a year about “creating a distinct localized identity.”
“Over the next few months what you’re going to see is, you’ll see Gateway and kind of Newlands walking parallel, and by 2025 it will shift 100% to that,” Fisher noted.
“So you’ll see signage at locations going up and you’ll just see some changes as we navigate this. But really, I’m excited for the future and all that God is going to be doing.”
Contact: leonardo.blair@christianpost.com Follow Leonardo Blair on Twitter: @leoblair Follow Leonardo Blair on Facebook: LeoBlairChristianPost
Lifestyle
'A Wilder Shore' charts the course of a famous bohemian marriage
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A Wilder Shore
Penguin Random House
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Penguin Random House
As a portrait of a marriage, it’s bizarre. I’m talking about the dual portrait John Singer Sargent painted in 1885 of Fanny and Robert Louis Stevenson.
Louis, whose first novel, Treasure Island, had been published two years earlier, is captured pacing in a darkened room. Tall and thin, Louis looks every inch like an “insane stork,” which is how fellow writer Henry Adams described him. Louis stares out beyond the confines of the portrait at us, the viewers, as if to share an idea he’s just had.
Fanny sits barefoot on a chair at the opposite end of the room, all but shrouded, like a piece of furniture, in a golden Indian sari. No fool, Fanny recognized Sargent’s depiction as yet another attempt by an admirer of her husband’s to diminish her. “I am but a cipher under the shadow,” she complained to Sargent.
![An illustration of a person reading a book in the grass.](https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims3/default/strip/false/crop/1526x1527+1589+347/resize/100/quality/15/format/jpeg/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F3a%2F54%2F6420aa224a2fb1da82c3b717e781%2Fillustration-booklist-24-03-copy-wide-ca5c9fe266f7ac17663e087ce9bf90361ee1cf26.jpg)
Camille Peri’s lively and substantive dual biography of the Stevensons, called A Wilder Shore, whisks those obscuring draperies off Fanny and restores her to full personhood. But, Peri aims for something even more ambitious than a feminist recovery of a mostly forgotten wife of a famous writer. In her “Introduction,” Peri describes her book as: “an intimate window into how [the Stevensons] lived and loved — a story that is at once a travel adventure, a journey into the literary creative process, and, I hope, an inspiration for anyone seeking a freer, more unconventional life.”
“Inspiration” is something of a quaint term these days in lit crit circles and, yet, it’s always been an abiding draw of biographies. Speaking for myself, after reading A Wilder Shore, I’m inspired to do two things: I want to reread Robert Louis Stevenson’s three great works of fiction: Treasure Island, Kidnapped and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. And, I want to schedule a séance with Fanny to get some one-on-one instruction on how to live more fearlessly as a woman.
Peri opens A Wilder Shore with a scene that could have been written by Louis but, instead, was lived by Fanny: In the summer of 1875, she and her three children and their governess rushed aboard a train in San Francisco to cross the country and catch a ship in New York harbor that would carry them to Belgium.
This was no pleasure trip: To reach their destination the little band rode a wagon through floodwaters, but Fanny was desperate to escape her humiliating marriage to a prospector who lived openly with his mistress. With the little money she’d earned by sewing, Fanny planned to enroll herself and her teenaged daughter in art school.
Hurtling into the unknown put the 36-year-old, still-married mother of three in the orbit of Robert Louis Stevenson — a sickly Scottish writer who was 10 years her junior. It was love at first sight, at least for Louis. Peri says that:
Fanny likely saw their affair as something that could not last. For him, though, sexual intimacy with Fanny was not simply a romp with an older woman. It cemented his emotional commitment to her — a kind of role reversal that is striking for a Victorian man.
Peri details how the bohemian relationship that evolved between Fanny and Louis included other such gender role reversals: The frail “Louis was what the Scots call a “handless” man,” she writes. During the couple’s honeymoon spent squatting in an abandoned silver mine in California, it was Fanny who “out of scraps of wood and packing crates … nailed together furniture.” Of course, the Stevensons’ union caused dismay among Louis’ friends who disparaged Fanny for her age, her American-ness, her short hair and cigarette smoking, and, most virulently, her olive skin.
As convincing as she is about the progressive relationship between the Stevensons, Peri is also clear-eyed about the fact that Fanny still got the somewhat shorter end of the stick. While Louis respected Fanny as his best critic, he also assumed she would handle the mundane household routine and provide nursing care.
Louis’ undiagnosed illness — he chronically coughed up blood — did have the “upside” of broadening the couple’s life through travel in search of a healthier climate. They spent their final years together before Louis’ death in 1894 at the age of 44, in Samoa. Fanny lived on for 20 more years, writing, traveling and attracting male protégés. No doubt her contemporaries derided her for that, too; but, thanks to Peri’s vivid biography, Fanny has the last fearless laugh.
Lifestyle
Sexyy Red Launches NSFW Lip Gloss Names
![Sexyy Red Launches NSFW Lip Gloss Names Sexyy Red Launches NSFW Lip Gloss Names](https://imagez.tmz.com/image/b2/16by9/2024/08/19/b2a3e79bf1484689b8755d1c78d8d8db_xl.jpg)
Sexyy Red is heating up summer with a new business venture … a line of NSFW lip glosses, seemingly channeling her “Pound Town” anthem.
The rapper revealed the sexually-charged makeup brand online Monday, called “Sexyy,” by posing for a series of provocative photos … including one where she held the box of lip glosses on her behind as she bent over.
She also gave fans a close-up of the glosses’ erotic names … which are “Coochie Juice,” “Bootyhole Brown,” “Nut,” “P***yhole Pink,” “Yellow Discharge,” “Gonorrhea,” “Blue Ballz,” and “Sex on the Beach” — which just so happens to be fruit-scented.
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While the lip glosses are sure to make a Midwestern mom clutch her pearls, fans are already showing the new business love online on the Instagram post … with some even labeling Sexyy Red a “marketing genius.”
Sexyy Red isn’t the first musician to get into the makeup business, however. Just take Rihanna, for example … the singer has made a killing on her Fenty Beauty line. Though, fans would rather she spend more time on new music than on makeup … but that’s a story for another day.
Selena Gomez even dipped her toe into the beauty biz when she launched Rare Beauty back in 2019.
In fact, Lady Gaga, Jennifer Lopez, Halsey, and Alicia Keys have all dropped their own beauty lines in recent years … so, we can’t blame Sexyy Red for wanting a piece of the pie — while also making it her own thing.
We wonder what the expansion pack will be called???
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