Name: Phil Donahue For President? | David Letterman
Uploaded: 2024-08-22T15:35:37.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Phil Donahue For President? | David Letterman' from Letterman on Comedy Buff. Published 2024-08-22. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Phil Donahue For President? | David Letterman' from Letterman on Comedy Buff. Published 2024-08-22. Transcript available.

they love me in here they love you you get that everywhere you go people are
that crazy
not in the lobby and uh not out on fifth avenue this is very nice to hear nice
to see you again
now you were here about nine months ago eight or nine months ago was it december
roughly yes yeah
and uh you came into the building moved from chicago started your show right
and was it like
a week into it you had that unpleasantness in the audience what was that
nonsense well that was a
not too funny uh hoax can you laugh at it now or you still steamed well you
know i don't uh
i i don't have a lot of enthusiasm about giving the guy more publicity but it
was don't mention
well it was fainting the people pretending to faint yeah of course everybody
said well welcome to new
york yeah but but at first there there was all sorts of uh rumors that it was
something in the
ventilation well i scared me i thought it was uh catching you know you can
there's a sympathetic
response that some people enough people faint yeah a lot of people but it must
have been really
annoying at the time well i still snap my head i still when i when there's a
noise in the studio
that's not explained it shook me oh yeah more than i more than i realized that
it did yeah uh we've got
all kinds of information here about you in the newspaper this is from the uh
the washington no i'm
sorry this is from the uh uh new york post it must be true it says here uh you
were on larry king's
uh cable news network uh program yeah and you're talking about possibly being a
political candidate
did i say that well let's see what it says yep i won't have to spend a million
on a campaign you said
and be beholden to anyone because i already have the name and face recognition
said phil
yeah i said wouldn't it be interesting to go to washington beholden to nobody
yeah and it'll
make people in washington chuckle um but i i have i'm very flattered at uh at
the thought that somebody
might think it'd be a good idea for me i we should say that uh that the idea
does not get a standing
ovation everywhere and i have no plans to run but but in the back of your mind
before you fall asleep
want to be what what what young american boy wouldn't want to be in congress
marlo would
like to see a run wouldn't she or young american woman be in congress um but
that does raise an
interesting question because you really have done 19 how many years you've been
on the 18 18 years of
campaigning behind you already in essence uh but i think the kind of show i do
uh brings with it its
own baggage i i don't kiss a baby and wave a flag every day and uh i think i
have i am telling you
the truth when i say i do not consider myself a shoe-in for elective office by
any means so whether
that that happens i'd like to get a couple more bucks in the bank you know i
got bills to pay yeah
that's what you say now but what about after a couple of drinks you never know
you know by the way i never i never uh i wanted to thank you for having me on
your show
i got a lot of response people said that the people i normally don't hear from
and they thought it was
a real nice show and thank you very much for that and we re-ran it i'll tell
you yeah you run with
the winners you know what you know what i like to the woman at the end the very
last question after
all of these people have been very nice very pleasant and uh inquisitive about
things that
really didn't make too much difference one woman said uh i have a question what
why are you here
she said are you just trying to get better ratings for your show and i thought
yeah well that's
of course that's what i was there for um anyway thank you very much you made it
a lot of fun you
did well now we have another little news item this time it's from the washington
post and uh you have
received a good guy award you and alan alda well there's more than just the two
of us we have a
dozen men who have contributed to the advancement of women in politics will be
named good guys by the
national women's political caucus it's always you and alan alda though isn't it
you know i don't get to see alan uh that often i i admire his work and enjoy a
friendship with him
but i can only speculate on how he feels about the press dragging me into uh
his copy i i uh i think
both of us are probably a little bit uh i don't know it's unsettled by that i
mean we i'll speak for
myself i'm married to a woman who chuckles every time she reads about this uh
male who's so sensitive
is is there trouble at home that we ought to know about
no there's no trouble well anyway congratulations okay now this is a really
impressive looking thing
the human animal now it seems to me you couldn't have covered a a a broader
topic than the human animal
that's true it uh it's a three-year uh project it's the it's some of the
scholarship uh of more than 50 of
the brighter lights in the behavioral sciences community akam additions from
all over this country
and europe as well why are we behaving this way that's and what way are we
behaving badly i mean uh well
listen we have half the nations of the world at this moment are at war we can't
wait to commit our nation's
crown jewels to more military uh hardware we seem to be scared to death of each
other we are putting
more locks on our doors most violence is male why is that uh no other species
kills itself more often
more frequently and with greater efficiency than than we do and all this book
does is say look we've been
really preoccupied with the the rockets and and the hard technical sciences and
we have failed to
look at ourselves and if there was ever a time to do it let's do it now we're
not pretending it's all
here but i think what this might do is trigger people to first of all there's
an awful lot of
scholarship out there that is just being ignored we run full tilt away from
this issue we just don't
want to take a look at ourselves and all this book is saying you know our our
it's about our kids future
it's now in the nuclear age is the time to do it so is is there one reason or
two reasons that the
things are what you think worse now than ever before um is that true is this
the worst they've ever been
well first of all we have certainly the ability to kill each other more often
and more efficiently
well there's more people but i'm talking about representing the the population
increase i mean
you know uh per capita isn't it is it worse than it was i think we have more
imaginary lines now i think
we have uh i'm able not only to hate you for some something you might have done
but i'm also having a
large brain which which enables me to go to war with you or be suspicious of
you or to arm myself against
you not because of what you do but because of what i think you might do yeah
and then i can go even
further and imagine that you already did it we go to war for that reason not
for what the other guy
does but for what we think he's going to do and suspicions it's an amazing
thing i mean baboons
don't have this problem i mean when you uh and they certainly don't have uh now
what's your point
there phil exactly well my point is you get you get some you get extra baggage
with an enlarged brain
you get this magnificent most natural selection most magnificent natural
selection of all the human
brain as far as we know there is nothing like it it's majestic but we also get
all these other
things for a second did you cover things like uh uh what other animals use
tools uh as a matter of
fact there as a matter of fact we do there are there are certainly more than a
few examples i think
i know of a couple there's primates use leaves to uh right not very pleasant
idea but uh to do what
get insects out of the barks of trees oh yeah well we do the same thing with
dip pretty much what we
do uh but isn't there kind of a seabird that uh uh also drops a shellfish on
rocks isn't that using
a tool right and there's also uh marine life that actually fires a uh a globule
of water and i've
also seen a dog change a tire but that's a whole different deal um i'm sorry phil
uh uh but so now what what does that mean does that mean anything that a dog
changes no no no that
that yeah i mean we're talking about things you've learned about other species
here well look we are
we are uh we evolved in a we came up from the ocean floor and then the desert
floor became bipedal and
we had to be a little nervous i mean we selected for an arousal mechanism which
i think is especially
triggered easily triggered in the males that's hollywood learned that a long
time ago murder rate
is far higher among men than among women uh oh absolutely i mean we uh murder
violence especially
spontaneous violence is almost exclusively not totally but almost exclusively a
male exercise
we are it is easier to arouse the the the mechanism than it is to pacify it
that's what the three
stooges is all about we are we like it we're that's what rambo's about and i
think what's
happened is we've over speaking of animals who can use tools um um all that all
that
let me let me just make the point that uh all we're saying here is this the
book uh the book says a
lot about who we are and where we where we've been and i think uh presents it
in a way that uh that is
not at all a textbook but a way that i think will encourage especially young
people to take to to
maybe even pursue this as a is this an easy read for layman i think so you know
i understand it i think
obviously we we we prepared it for uh for an audience that uh is not a graduate
school
oh yeah how's it going it's floating out there pretty good i could ask you one
picture about this
question because we were debating this up in the office yeah now just bear with
me
this is an illustration freud was his own first patient he began by analyzing a
boyhood dream of
his mother being carried by two two bird-headed creatures he did okay and then
we have a photo
this book by the way is packed with photos now there we have this is a
depiction of that now look at
this now is that marlo did you do this at your place
marlo would want me to tell you that it is not marlo
um anyway uh good luck with the book uh now what was that what are they why are
they whining don't
no it's all right uh and congratulations on almost uh your first year here in
new york it's been exciting
it's better than ever isn't it oh it's been exciting 10 months the audiences
have been sensational as
it's clear yours are this is a very creative building it's fun isn't it i get
to steal ideas from
you hey wait a minute uh nice to see you again good to see you david thank you
very much i appreciate you being
it's good to see you again good to see you again good to see you again good to
see you again good to see you