Chairman Ralph's Ministry Of Truth

Phil Donahue turned 76 last month (December 21). The man credited with creating “tabloid TV" hasn't held a regular gig since 2005, when MSNBC yanked his last show – either because he opposed the Iraq War (Phil's version), or his ratings lacked the candlepower of yore (everybody else's).

In July 1981, The Decline of Western Civilization gatecrashed art houses and midnight flicks across the land – led by its iconic poster image of Germs lead singer, Darby Crash, who never lived to see his big screen debut. (Crash died via deliberate drug overdose on December 7, 1980, only to be overshadowed the next day, by a certain J. Lennon's murder...you know that story.)

However I didn't get to see the fuss for myself until early '83. Living in West Michigan, we didn't entertain any debate about what constituted proper music. My Top 40-driven classmates had enough trouble understanding Elvis Costello, or Deborah Harry, let alone someone like Darby Crash – lying flat on his back, down for the count, oblivious to the chaos whirring around him...such as those adoring fans squiggling all over his body with Magic Markers (or “Magick Markers,” perhaps, in light of all those murmurings about punk's satanic connections)...see what I mean?

At any rate, Decline triggered a mini- punksploitation wave, including Fear's legendary “Saturday Night Live” appearance (Halloween '81) – instigated by John Belushi, of course – and laughable punk-related episodes on “CHiPS” (“Battle Of The Bands,” aired 1/31/82), and “Quincy, ME” (“Next Stop, Nowhere,” aired 12/1/82). (Interestingly enough, all three were NBC shows. For those who enjoy keeping score, the TV punk bands were dubbed Pain, and Mayhem, respectively...a fair indication of the mentality at work, eh?)

Phil did his part for punksploitation, too – knocking heads in his Chicago studio enclave with every sort of margin-walker imaginable. You name it, he had it, from crossdressers, to faith healers, neo-Nazis...and yes, punk rockers, which brings us back where we started.

Clips of Phil's '84 and '86 sitdowns with the hardcore tribe have popped up on Youtube, but not this occasion, documented on a hissy C-60 cassette tape (not Maxell or TDK, but some crappy off-brand, Cycles) that came into my hands. The date is given as 6/28/82, which may (or may not) be accurate. I don't know if this copy documents a rerun, or an original broadcast.

On this occasion, Phil referees between a group of avowed punks – how many are onstage, I'm not sure – and their uncomprehending antagonists, including Parents of Punkers founder Serena Dank, who grabbed her 15 minutes' worth during this sweater-clad, investment-obsessed decade as some kind of self-appointed expert on the genre.

Along the way, Phil treats the audience to a performance clip from Decline – in this case, “I Just Want Some Skank,” by the Circle Jerks – and pops the inevitable question about its depiction of slamdancing. “The dances are stoned, or otherwise mind-altered – throw in a little music, a couple of macho personalities, and you've got an inflammable situation. True?” Not so, the punks retort: “They're anti-drug. They're anti-drunk, lady – they're not into that.”

But Dank's not having any of it, claiming the scene attracts young people “that just don't know how to digest the message.” As Exhibit A, Dank cites “Robbie,” a teen who's apparently no longer interested in punking up, yet seems unable to muster more than a cursory explanation of motivated her in the first place: “I don't like being bored, and hanging around these people that I didn't like, and doing stupid things that I didn't like.”

Phil soon changes the subject to lyrics. Unfortunately, Phil chooses to quote from “Revenge,” and “Spraypaint The Walls” (Black Flag), plus “Nazi Punks Fuck Off” (Dead Kennedys), with all the solemnity of Winston Churchill addressing radio listeners during the London Blitz.

I had a writing teacher who did the same thing, and it gave me a headache, between my bouts of yawning – but that's exactly how Phil chooses to intone the opening salvo of “Nazi Punks”: “Punk ain't no religious cult (BIG PAUSE)...Punk means thinking for yourself (BIG PAUSE, BIG PAUSE, YET AGAIN)....You ain't hardcores 'cause you spike your hair (BIG PAUSE, DEAD AIR)...When a jock still lives inside your head” (SHORTER PAUSE, SILENCE).

However, Phil's deliberate mangling of the title as “Nazi Punk” gets him in trouble – since the song lyrics are an emphatic broadside against Nazis – which prompts a furious barrage of cross-talk from the punks: “NO, IT'S NOT! THAT'S NOT THE NAME!” (The Dead Kennedys' label, Alternative Tentacles, also references this incident on its website's biography page.)

Unruffled, Phil protests that he can't drop the F-bomb on TV – even it's part of a song – and, hence, that's why he shortened the title. So why not pick a song title that he can utter, without any problem?

Because, like any bigtime TV host, Phil enjoys playing every possible end against the middle; that's why roughly a third of this show gets devoted to the issue of his guests' appearance. Naturally, the audience gleefully weighs in on that score (“If it were my child, he wouldn't live in my house looking like that, that is for sure”), when not indulging in the odd bit of moralistic finger-wagging (“just be a good citizen, help other people, and be a good Christian – you're accomplishing nothing”).

Phil piles on, too. After conceding that his spiky-haired subjects might have legitimate grudges against a society “filled with corruption, a lot of poor people, a lot of drinking, a lot of injustice,” he goes for the jugular: “What you've done is make yourselves so bizarre, that you are – in effect – saying, 'Now, look, see how I look! Do you love me, anyway? Do you love me now?'”

Sufficiently warmed up, Uncle Phil further claims that his guests find “some sort of comfort in your own absurdity,” and “getting some joy out of making this corrupt society angry at you” – this, mind you, from the man who wore a skirt over his suit (however briefly) during a show about crossdressing!

The disconnect is enough to make a 16-year-old punk identified as “Jeff” – who assumes the thankless task of designated spokesman's role, as this show goes on, and on, and on – concede as much. However, he maintains that such gestures became necessary, “because the punks were sick of this whole hippie thing by the '70s, right?” he says. “The way it deteriorated in the '70s was, [by] not caring, and doing nothing.”

As capsule summaries go, that's a fair expression of the hardcore generation's distaste for the hippies-cum-boomers who felt so comfortable judging them – though, to be fair, Phil redeems himself (somewhat) in mid-show. After a woman voices puzzlement about why punks wouldn't feel compelled to fight for their country, he recalls the country's failure to question the Vietnam War.

“That's the kind of thing that'll get you 57,000 young men coming home in plastic zipper bags,” Phil warns. “So they [the punks] want you to think for yourself, and not be such a puppet, and kind of knee-jerk responsive person to a government that may or may not call a war in its own best interest.”

The line draws some thunderous applause – providing an interesting rebuttal to those “morning in America” ads that defined Ronald Reagan's successful re-election to the presidency, only two years later – and provides one of the few real meaningful insights to emerge from this particular “Donahue” episode.

However, insights were in short supply around this time. I wound up seeing Decline with a female friend of mine, at the long-defunct Eastown Theater, in Grand Rapids – which meant getting up around 9:30 a.m. (or so), on a Friday, to catch our bus from the GVSU campus. Unlike me, my friend wasn't really into punk, but – like yours truly – always up for an entertaining experience.

We had to catch the first matinee showing, because the last bus hissed back to Grand Valley at 4:30 p.m. This timeline ensured an abbreviated experience, to put it mildly, but we managed.

Back at the GVSU cafeteria, we tried to explain what we'd seen. I brought up Darby's big Magic Marker-clad moment, only to have one of our tablemates tartly dismiss our report with a flick of his sweater-clad collar: “They're just the dregs of society!”

“Excuse me?” I ventured.

The answer didn't change, with each word repeated for emphasis: “They're...just...the dregs of society!”

I gave up trying to explain anymore, and went back to whatever was hanging off my fork.

My mind flashed back to a comment uttered near the end of Phil's televised punk rock run-in: “Why should people have to conform to everything, you know? What's the point about being the same as everybody else?” Looking back, that strikes me as a fair comment about my Eastown experience.

There we sat, my friend and I, among roughly eight to 10 fellow travelers – some looking like hippies or punks, and others, not so much – united, if only temporarily, by our shared desire for an off-the-beaten-track experience.

A guy that everyone knew as Rainbow took our tickets, which allowed us the privilege of staring at a single screen. We felt like the last of a dying breed, huddled together in a 523-seat room that had definitely seen its share of better days.

We wondered where the hell everybody else went, and if something like this might happen again...proof positive, for anyone needing it, that those cynical freewheeling '70s were finally dead and buried.

Not long afterwards, the Eastown closed; from what I gather, it's now home to a church (Uptown Assembly of God). But we still have those memories, along with the music – and that Magic Marker-clad guy frozen on the poster.

As the old cliché goes, “You had to be there.” But, given a choice between seeing Darby go through his paces once more...and another finger-wagging lecture from somebody kitted out in a sweater...I know which experience I'd pick in a heartbeat.