The Peculiar Truth about the Father of Trash TV

• In the 1980s before Maury Povich revealed his first baby-daddy paternity test and before Jerry Springer’s first on-air girl fight, there was Morton Downey Jr.

• Imagine the emotional and physical theatrics of World Wide Wrestling combined with the far-right ideology of Rush Limbaugh. That was Morton Downey Jr.’s schtick. Each weekday episode had him railing against “pablum-puking” Liberals, hollering expletives at guests, blowing cigarette smoke in their faces, jabbing fingers at them, kicking them off his set, and encouraging his live studio audience to yell along with him.

• It was the birth of news as infotainment. By Downey’s own admission, his syndicated show was trash TV.

• Born in Los Angeles in 1932, Morton Downey Jr. was the son of a popular singer and an actress. During the summers of his youth, his wealthy parents resided next door to the Kennedy estate in Hyannis Port, MA.

• After attending New York University, he helped with humanitarian aid to Africans for which the Pope gave him a special commendation. He also tried, and failed, to follow in his father’s footsteps as a pop singer.

• Downey’s broadcasting career began in radio. He hopscotched from station to station and eventually landed in Sacramento, CA where he was a controversial firebrand. The station manager considered him too harsh, though, and ironically replaced him with a new talent - Rush Limbaugh.

• 1987: WWOR-TV in Secaucus, New Jersey offered him a syndicated daytime talk show. The producers were looking a fiery personality. Downey’s TV career began with a bang.

• No topic was taboo. Downey and his guests argued over abortion, gun control, atheism, child beauty pageants, and more. The more controversial the better. His premiere episode focused on the morality of porn stars - a subject that 1980s afternoon TV viewers were unaccustomed to seeing.

• Downey’s television persona possessed virtually no redeeming qualities. He was offensive, verbally abusive, unapologetic, egotistical, and rude. When Downey was fed up with an opposing viewpoint and wanted a guest to shut up, he used his signature catchphrase: “Zip it!”

• Every show purported to be an adult conversation about a societal topic but inevitably devolved into anarchy with hollering, finger pointing, and occasional physicality. It was like watching a televised domestic disturbance.

• An episode erupted into chaos when a LGBTQ activist used an expletive, something that Downey did all the time. So Downey slapped him in the face. The guest was thrown out of the studio. Shortly thereafter, the live audience had to leave, too, after a bomb threat.

• Then Downey covered the sensational story of Tawanna Brawley, a black NYC girl who claimed rape at the hands of white men. Downey railed against the racially-motivated hate crime. But Brawley’s story was deemed fake. Downey had egg on his face.

• His downfall came after he claimed he’d been assaulted by skinheads in a San Francisco Airport bathroom. The allegation struck even loyalists as bizarre. Skinheads in liberal San Francisco? With no witnesses in a heavily-trafficked airport bathroom? Why would they attack him of all people? Also, the swastika the attackers supposedly drew on his face was backwards, suggesting Downey had put it there himself in a mirror. The event was seen as a failed publicity stunt.

• The Morton Downey Show had gotten out of hand. It was too much for the general public to stomach.

• The daytime series lasted only two years and was cancelled in 1989. But it paved the way for Jerry Springer, Maury Povich, and all of the imitators who followed. Fox News host Bill O’Reilly adopted a somewhat tamer yet equally confrontational version of Downey’s style, which he made successful for years.

• Downey chain-smoked throughout every episode as well as in real life. That caused him grave health problems. The man who actually advocated in favor of cigarettes changed his tune in 1996 after a lung cancer diagnosis. That led to a surgery to remove part of one lung. But it was too late. The damage was done.

• After a few failed comeback attempts, Morton Downey Jr. died in 2001 at age 67.