This was published yesterday. I wanted to post it though, because my recollection of watching Donohue any chance I got, for years, was that he always treated his guests, on stage and in the audience, like human beings equal to him. I saw more than one very empathetic show about trans people, about gay people, about women in various situations solely because they were women, about so many who were marginalized during the years Phil Donahue was on TV. His show, along with Oprah’s, never got into the reality show circuses that those who came behind them went with (no disrespect to Jerry Springer, who started out like Donohue, but bowed to pressure.) Anyway, here is this; Godspeed, Mr. Donahue.

https://www.latimes.com/obituaries/story/2024-08-19/phil-donahue-dead-talk-show-host

By Dawn Burkes and Alexandra Del Rosario

Aug. 19, 2024 Updated 11:33 AM PT

Phil Donahue earned praise for his “insatiably curious and accepting” nature and his ability to hold a “mirror up to America” when he received the Medal of Freedom from President Biden in May.

The groundbreaking daytime talk show host reinvented the relationship between TV hosts and their audiences, opening the medium up to genuine conversations about race, religion, reproductive healthcare and scores of other hot topics over more than 6,000 episodes.

“He saw every guest as worthy of interest and worked to build understanding, bringing us to see each other not as enemies but as fellow Americans,” a White House announcer said of Donahue in May.

Donahue died Sunday “peacefully after a long illness,” his family said in a statement to The Times. He was 88. NBC’s “Today,” where he was a contributor, broke the news of the host’s death. (snip-More on the page linked above)