Hoofers
Now that we've all thoroughly masticated last night's bizarre, expletive-punctuated walk-off of Bob Novak on Inside Politics, there's nothing much to do on this matter except wait til the next clown shoe drops on the Prince of Darkness.
But in the meantime, here's a question: what are some other notorious incidents of guests and/or panelists hoofing it off the set of television talk shows?
You media-saturated Young Folks need to help me out here. The only parallel that comes to my AARP-qualified mind is way back in the late 1960s, when then-Governor Lester Maddox of my home state of Georgia walked off during a feckless appearence on the Joe Pyne Show. As Lester stood and grinned crookedly at the camera before walking away, Pyne wished his guest a fond farewell with the words: "Take a hike."
This is the incident alluded to by Randy Newman in the song Rednecks, which said of Maddox: "He may be a fool but he's our fool."
Incidentally, Maddox's chief of staff at the time was a guy named Zell Miller, who would have been well-advised to have taken a walk himself during some of his recent television appearances.
This isn't exactly what you're looking for, but many of us young 'uns remember when Crispin Glover, coked within an inch of his life, got kicked off Letterman's show because he almost kicked Dave in the face.
Man, that was funny.
August 5, 2005 12:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
My favorite Hoofer moment has to be when Bill O'Reilly stormed out of an interview with NPR host Terry Gross on her show, Fresh Air.
Bill: So this is 'Fresh Air' is it? This is 'NPR' is it? Were you as hard on Al Franken as you are on me?
Terry: No. No I wasn't.
Bill: Let me tell you, Madam... blah blah blah... and that's the end of this interview!
For a tough talking interviewer who regularly tells his guests to shut up, Bill sure is a soft interviewee.
August 5, 2005 1:57 PM | Reply | Permalink
Well, of course, there's Zell Miller's "I wish we lived in a time when you could challenge some one to a duel" meltdown on Hardball; my personal fave was Prince Bandar's use of Novakula's exact expletive (also on Hardball) when questioned about Saudi 'friendship' in the wake of 9/11.Of course, Bandar got away with it and no fuss was raised.
August 5, 2005 2:04 PM | Reply | Permalink
And that was what life was like when we still lived in caves.
August 5, 2005 2:13 PM | Reply | Permalink
It's inspiring enough that it, er, inspired a copycat storm-off from Triumph the Insult Comic Dog, here.
August 5, 2005 2:31 PM | Reply | Permalink
Here's an oldie, but Jack Paar, then The Tonight Show host, walked off the show when NBC cut one of his jokes for being too off-color. He was persuaded to return less than a month later. The night he returned, he said, "As I was saying...", and the audience burst into applause.
August 5, 2005 2:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
My favorite, too. The best bit of this was when Terry later interviewed Triumph the Insult Dog and they used O'Rielly's transcript as the comic fodder:
"Werre yew thees hard on kermeet the frog?"
Hilarious.
August 5, 2005 2:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
British viewers remember the Tory politician John Nott (Defence Secretary during the Falklands war) walking out on an interview with the great Robin Day, who responded to a personal aattack by calling Nott a "here today, gone tomorrow politician". See http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/1518975.stm for this and other examples.
August 5, 2005 2:50 PM | Reply | Permalink
Maybe there was also a Pyne episode, but I remember watching Lester Maddox on Dick Cavett's show. There was also a black football player, and the three were talking.
Maddox claimed that he was actually quite moderate on racial issues. The football player asked him, "Does that upset the racists?" Before Maddox could answer they went to a station break.
When they came back, Cavett said "Where were we? Oh, that's right. Governor Maddox, are any of your supporters upset with your moderate policies?"
Maddox responded, "You just called my supporters racists -- and I demand an apology!" After hemming and hawing Cavett said, "If I have called any of your supporters racist, who are not in fact racist, I apologize." Maddox walked.
August 5, 2005 4:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
I dunno, I think O'Reilly had a point. If Fox did a similar interview against Al Franken, it would seem pretty out of line. What Terry Gross was doing was pretty much blatantly dredging up things to get O'Reilly pissed off, or to call him on past mistakes.
I understand why O'Reilly gets under people's skin, clearly Terry didn't think highly of him and was trying to make him look bad. It was quite an adversarial interview, and while it takes two to tango, Terry set the tone with her confrontational questions.
I think people on the right (like OReilly) overestimate things by saying there's a "conspiracy" to get people to do "hatchet jobs" and all that. That's just fevered imagination. But the kernel of truth there, which applies both to NPR and to Fox, is that if you're in some kind of ideological echo chamber, you're going to start building walls that shut out disagreeing points of view. And then when different liberal people interview an outsider like O'Reilly, they'll all bring the same collective mindset of "this guy's a boob, let's have some fun with him."
It's not a conspiracy or anything, just what happens when people from different, opposing worlds try to talk to each other. The interview becomes less about communication and more about each side defending their echo chamber.
By the way, I believe O'Reilly when he says he's more an independent than a Republican. He's conservative, but he's much too full of himself to believe in anyone else's ideology.
August 5, 2005 5:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
Not a talk show, but perhaps relevant: in 1987 CBS cut into the evening news in order to show the U.S. Open. Rather left the studio, and CBS had 6 minutes of dead air.
August 5, 2005 5:27 PM | Reply | Permalink
Dunno if it counts but Harvey Pekar getting silenced on the Dvid Letterman show when he started talking trash about GE owning NBC comes to mind.
More recently, I think Bernard Goldberg wishes he had the guts to walk off the Daily Show after John Stewart humilaited him. I actuallty felt a little bad for the guy. Not a lot, but a little.
August 5, 2005 6:41 PM | Reply | Permalink
This isn't political but a long time ago when I was a kid naughtily staying up late one night after the family went to bed, I remember that a certain Regis Philbin, who was known then only as Joey Bishop's sidekick in a short-lived late-night television show, walked off the live set because he heard that there were people involved in the production who were thinking of dumping him. I don't remember the specific reasons but what does stick in my memory was the unexpected drama of this guy walking off the set leaving Joey Bishop totally flummoxed. It got a lot of publicity, he was invited back to show, and, thus, was a career born.
August 5, 2005 7:50 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yeah! O'Reilly and Novak can NOT stand scrutiny under any circumstances. Having been an Inside Edition hack, you'd think Billy would have a tougher skin. Novak is so old that he probably sees himself as immortal - and how dare anyone question the integrity of an immortal!
ds
August 5, 2005 7:57 PM | Reply | Permalink
Shit like that happens to lots of people. O'Reilly does it to people himself -- a LOT. He's a bully, and a crybaby too.
Gross had no obligation to be fair to him or to treat him the same as Franken. TV and radio don't work that way, and O'Reilly especially doesn't. Everyone has to take their lumps -- but O'Reilly can't handle it.
Why bother being fair to the guy? That's just liberal weeniness. He can dish it out, but not take it.
August 5, 2005 8:24 PM | Reply | Permalink
In the best foreign film category, I nominate former French President Valery Giscard d'Estaing for his walkout of his own televised farewell address to the nation after having lost the 1981 election to Francois Mitterand.
After completing a short, and deliciously bitter statement, he got up and walked off the set, leaving an empty chair for (IIRC) about 40 seconds.
August 5, 2005 10:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
Okay, this may be a little far afield, but three years ago St. Louis Rams running back Marshal Faulk walked out on an interview with Bob Costas on HBO's Inside the NFL.
August 5, 2005 11:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
I stongly disagree with your characterization of Terry's interview. I listened to the whole interview twice and Terri was not hard on Bill "big wuss" O'liely AT ALL. It is true she was going to bring something up in her next question he did not want to answer, so that is why he pretended to be upset and walked off. Also, it created a lot of "news" on his show and for his audience.
Hey, that sounds a bit like Bob "No guts" Novak avoiding questions he does not want to answer. Jon Stuart is right about Bob, CNN had shorted him on his supply of fresh puppy blood that day.
August 6, 2005 12:28 AM | Reply | Permalink
O'Reilly, if you recall, went on Fresh Air because he had been long complaining about NPR's liberal bias. Once NPR agreed to bring him on, placating his bias complaint, he was still hostile, and brought that hostility to Fresh Air.
August 6, 2005 7:20 AM | Reply | Permalink
I try to avoid the Sabbath Gasbag shows but last year I caught the tail end of Meet the Press with Bob Novak, Tim Russert and Joe Klein. Novak was talking about Whitewater and how the Clintons "got away with it". He then went on to suggest that people had been killed, darkly suggesting that Clintons had had something to do with it. To my shock Tim Russert just let it go. He did not challenge Novak or demand that Novak expain himself. He just moved on to the next topic. Also I noticed that there was no partisan Democrats or liberals on the show. Joe Klein calls himself a centrist and he is certainly not a political partisan. For some reason on Sabbath Gasbag shows the guests schedule foaming at the mouth right wing partisans with lukewarm centrists like Klein for balance. I don't know why they do it. My own private theory is pressure from corporate bosses to tilt the shows to the right.
August 6, 2005 10:12 AM | Reply | Permalink