The Pit Bull of Talk-Show Hosts

By Richard Zoglin

He bounds into the studio with a flurry of high-fives for his raucous fans. Once the show is under way, he paces the stage hungrily, a cigarette dangling from his knuckles and venom dripping from his toothy grin. Liberals are "Pablum pukers"; the current presidential candidates are "baboons." Guests or audience members who rile him are fair game for ripostes like "Don't be a smartass with me, punk," or an escort out the door. He ignites the crowd -- mostly young males who appear to be bused in from the stands of some local sports arena -- into bursts of cheering, hoots of derision or their favorite chant: "Mort! . . . Mort! . . . Mort!"

Welcome to Wrestling from New Jersey -- er, The Morton Downey Jr. Show, TV's wildest talk program. Since its debut two months ago on WWOR, the Secaucus, N.J.-based superstation, Downey's verbal slugfest has made Phil's and Oprah's "lively" discussions look like sherry-sipping college seminars. Critics are appalled ("A disgrace to television," said Kay Gardella of the New York Daily News), but ratings are rising, and blue-collar fans are flocking to the studio for tapings. After just two weeks, all the seats were booked through the end of the year.

The crowd comes partly to hear Downey's right-wing rantings but mainly to cheer on his bullying tactics, as in this typical recent colloquy. Fringe Presidential Candidate Lyndon LaRouche: "Why don't you shut up?" Downey: "Why don't you shut up? All you're doing is spewing garbage." Porn Star Seka walked off one program in disgust; Downey threw Journalist Rich Taylor off another show during an argument about alleged defects in the Audi 5000. Two weeks ago, Downey was arraigned on an assault charge filed by Gay Activist Andrew Humm, a guest who claims Downey slapped him after a heated exchange during a show (never aired) on the Roman Catholic Church. Downey has pleaded not guilty.

Downey, 55, seems oddly cast as the pit bull of TV talk-show hosts. The son of an Irish tenor popular with radio audiences during the 1930s and '40s, he worked for a time as a singer and songwriter. His eclectic, not to say bizarre, career has also included stints as co-owner of the New Orleans Buccaneers franchise in the American Basketball Association, an activist for victims of the Biafran war in Nigeria and, briefly, presidential candidate of the American Independent Party in 1980 (he turned down the nod, he says, because the party was too right wing even for him). A New York University dropout, Downey once spent two months in jail for passing a bad check, an incident he mentions freely on the air. In 1982 he answered a newspaper ad and landed a job as talk-radio host in Orlando. He later honed his act in Sacramento, Cleveland and Chicago.

"I'm rude, I'm overbearing," Downey admits. But he insists such tactics are needed to "break away the Madison Avenue veneer that all these experts come on the show with nowadays. You get them angry enough, they'll blow their stack and tell you what they really think." The show's producers say Downey's abrasive style fills a gap left by the departure of Joe Pyne and other strident talk stars of the '60s. Though Downey's audience outside the New York City area is limited to about 14 million cable homes that receive WWOR, there is already talk of nationwide syndication. This could be the start of something big, or at least loud. Several other confrontational talk shows are being planned, including one starring convicted Watergate Conspirator G. Gordon Liddy. Anyone for sherry?

With reporting by William Tynan/New York