Summary
"I said, '[Eddie Vedder], I'm doing an anti-Iraq War documentary,' " [Phil Donahue] said. "He said, 'You want a song?' I said, 'Are you kidding?' "
A few years earlier, Donahue had joined MSNBC to host a nightly talk-show program that would compete with "The O'Reilly Factor" on Fox. At the time, the nation was preparing for war. "Everybody was go, go, go, bomb, bomb, bomb," recalled Donahue. "I thought, 'Well, people will watch my show because I'm different.' "He seemed content to be on the outside of the mainstream media looking in. "You still can't say that we're losing," Donahue said. "Just ask Harry Reid. You can't say that our soldiers have died in vain. You can't criticize the war because if you do, you're demoralizing the troops. You can't show flag- draped coffins."See the full content of this document
Extract
Donahue Strikes Back
In a recent Friday afternoon, Phil Donahue was sitting in a dimly lit production studio in midtown Manhattan when a reporter entered. Donahue looked up. He was wearing a checkered dress shirt over jeans and sneakers. Under a crop of shaggy white hair, his big blue eyes bulged mischievously.
He offered a mock warning to his fellow film producers in the studio. "Now watch what you say," Donahue said. "We have a member of t...See the full content of this document
