Phil Donahue with Iraq U.S. war veteran soldier Tomas Young at the American Film Institute Film Festival last November in Los Angeles, California, at the premiere of their documentary "Body Of War". (Photo: Frances Holland)
By Omar P.L. Moore/The Popcorn Reel
April 21, 2008
During this conversation Phil Donahue will frequently mention that the American public needs to see the horrors of war and the scars that the country's military families have to bear. The American mainstream media has not shown such images of war or the American flag-draped coffins that the less fortunate soldiers have waiting for them. On this past Friday morning Mr. Donahue is on the telephone from Washington, D.C., from where would go on and fly to San Francisco to attend several Q&A sessions in the Bay Area city as well as in nearby Berkeley on Saturday following afternoon showings of his film "Body Of War", which he and Ellen Spiro co-directed and co-produced. The documentary, about Tomas Young, a 20-something American who from Kansas City returned home paralyzed while serving in the military in Iraq, opened in both cities over the weekend and is currently playing in New York, Boston, Seattle and elsewhere.
Mr. Donahue, the former veteran television talk-show host may have a shock of white hair, but his passion, fervor and outrage against an unauthorized war has neither slowed or grayed.
"Body Of War" is a moving and powerful chronicle of Mr. Young's arduous daily routines as a paraplegic, his mother Cathy Smith's pain and anguish, her second son Nathan's eagerness to go to Iraq despite the irreversible condition of his older brother Tomas, and the examination of the men and women of the U.S. Congress who sent many American men (like Tomas) and women into battle in Iraq (Mr. Young volunteered to go to Afghanistan to fight Al Qaeda there in the wake of the devastating events of September 11, 2001, but was instead sent to Iraq.) The documentary was fomented by a meeting of Mr. Donahue with Tomas Young at Walter Reed Army Medical Center more than three years ago. Or as the long-time journalist and proclaimed grandfather of television talk said more succinctly: "He didn't meet me there because he was so medicated." Paralyzed from the chest down, Mr. Young had returned from Iraq, without the ability to move his joints or limbs. He cannot cough and his temperature and blood pressure fluctuate in wild extremes, many times within a matter of seconds. Mr. Young, like more than a few returning U.S. soldiers, is now an anti-war leader and advocate, putting himself through a grueling schedule, traveling the country to speak to people about his experiences.
"The closer you get to this," said Mr. Donahue, "the more it just blows you back."
In his 41 years as a television talk show host Phil Donahue has covered many of America's most cutting edge events and current affairs stories, bringing a town hall meeting into millions of Americans' living rooms each weekday afternoon prior to drive time before Oprah Winfrey was even close to becoming a household name. Mr. Donahue enjoyed the highest television ratings for many years for his talk show for a number of years, but now wishes that the television ratings for news of Iraq war casualties of American soldiers would go through the roof. "You know, I think we have a very sanitized war here, Omar. People do not see this pain. The American people have no idea how horrendous is the struggle for thousands of families whose loved ones have come back with very grievous wounds that not only alter the lives of the victims but turn the lives of the family upside down. And what you see in our film 'Body Of War' is a story that's playing itself out in thousands of homes in this country -- many thousands. And they're hidden. They're unseen." Mr. Donahue speaks these words and others in reference to the ongoing conflict in Iraq with a directness and resolute anger. He has seen this nightmare reality movie before with Vietnam -- about which he did shows early in his television career. And he is no less angry about the current war than he was the war which took more than 58,000 American lives and the lives of between one million and two million Vietnamese civilians.
At 72, Mr. Donahue is an elder statesman of the American news media, yet he politely and courteously rejects being ranked with the likes of famed newscaster Walter Cronkite and top investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, though he said he was "honored to be friends" with both.
Last week, during a special pre-release screening of "Body Of War" he decried the American mainstream press, all but calling the very institution for which he once worked a lapdog, collectively sitting back on its heels, he said, refusing to cover the physical and emotional costs of the war, with the returning coffins as an initial symbol. During this conversation he avoided taking on some of his former colleagues (he was asked who in today's cadre of U.S. mainstream journalists were on par with distinguished journalists like Mr. Cronkite and Mr. Hersh), but did address the question indirectly. "Dissent is very, very difficult in the land of free speech. That's the irony here. It was hugely difficult to oppose this war, especially in October 2002, which was the month the resolution was passed," Mr. Donahue said. "Our mood was very dark. America was angry. Millions of people wanted to bomb something. And for me and a lot of other people -- I should say I was not alone, you know -- to stand up and say, 'wait a sec' -- you took a lot of abuse. You didn't love America. You weren't patriotic. You didn't respect the troops. 'They' had God and you didn't. I mean, the marginalization of the progressive or -- "
Here, Mr. Donahue interrupts himself, invoking something he has repeatedly invoked, before, during and since his tenure as a television news personality: "And liberal by the way, is the political idea that dare not speak its name in this country. That's how effective has been the right-wing drumbeat against dissent and those who want to exercise the right that's been won for them by the way, by thousands and thousands of young Americans who fought the past wars to protect it. You know . . . if we're not gonna use it, stop wasting their blood! And by the way, there's a lot of pretense here too: the people beating the biggest drumbeat of this war are people who would never think of sending their own children to fight it."