Did the late, loud and confrontational talk show host Morton Downey Jr. influence the tone of today’s politics? I’ve long contended that American politics now resembles a combination of political sports team worship, professional wrestling — and a talk show where anger and rage takes priority over thought and solutions. Downey most assuredly played a role in what we see (and hear) today. On CNN’s Reliable Sources today, host Brian Stelter interviewed CNN’s Michael Smerconish, the country’s leading independent, centrist talk show host on Downey Jr.’s influence on the political environment & discourse, — and on Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. They also discussed whether there’s an antidote for the tone Downey passed down to our political scene.
Here’s the key interview section:
Smerconish on seeing Downey Jr.’s influence on today’s political environment: “I see shades of Morton Downey Jr. in so much of the political environment today, where a member of Congress would shout out at the president of the United States, “You lie,” during an address to a joint session of Congress. I mean, it was not like this pre-Downey. Downey was a mile post in the transformation of talk radio on a local basis. Ideology didn’t used to matter. What mattered was your ability to conduct a conversation and to interact with telephone callers. This was the beginning of litmus tests. This was the beginning of everybody reading from the same talking point hymnal.”
CNN host, Michael Smerconish, on how Morton Downey Jr. influenced political discourse: “I think, if you were to chart the lack of civility today and go back in time as to when it all began, this man would be a milestone. I mean, Morton Downey Jr.’s program in the late ’80s was absolutely a turning point in terms of what talk radio then was and what cable television eventually would become. …sadly, I think this stuff works. …If Morton Downey Jr. were among us today and a talk radio host, he would have bought into birtherism. He would likely have been the one to call Sandra Fluke a slut. I can easily imagine him to have said what Glenn Beck said, which is that Barack Obama is a racist with a deep-seated hatred for white people. …I think that these individuals with microphones – have led too many of our elected officials, because they control primary voters. – so the lack of civility and the polarization in Washington, I say, is directly attributable to this style of media performance.”
Smerconish on seeing Downey Jr.’s influence on Trump’s presidential campaign: “I think that the Trump appeal is likely to some of the same people, those 20- and 30-somethings who would show up in Secaucus and applaud Morton Downey when he would do this nightly television program. I think it’s the same mentality and frankly that it plays to the very lowest common denominator.”
Smerconish on whether there’s an antidote for the tone he influenced: “I think that there is. And I think it’s a recognition of people, that they need to stop conflating where they get their news and where they get their entertainment, because I think so much of what we see today is entertainment that is masked as news. And when individuals among us are reliant upon these type of sources, I think it really does take the nation in the wrong direction.”
GO HERE for the CNN video of the segment.
If you want to investigate yourself to see if any of the tone seems familiar to you, there are a lot of videos on You Tube.
The most (in)famous is when a then heavy Rev. Al Sharpton got physically attacked by Roy Innis of CORE:
I did this article for The Week online about Évocateur: The Morton Downey Jr. Movie and pondered a bit more on his influence on our political talk and scene. It also has some videos.
Here’s a segment from The Morton Downey, Jr. show with Ron Paul from 1988:
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