LOOK BACK IN ANGST : SHOW BIZ: WAS 1986 A YEAR, OR WHAT?

Can we squawk? About Joan Rivers?

In May she dumped Johnny Carson and now we get her five nights a week on “The Late Show Starring Joan Rivers,” all makeup and hair spray, coming out in several thousand dollars’ worth of clothes and clapping like a seal.

Rivers just can’t seem to get used to the idea of having her own show and can’t stop talking about how much it means to her.

“I wish my parents were alive tonight because this is really what America is all about--that an immigrant’s daughter can have her own talk show and end up being privileged enough to have the president of the United States’ wife on it,” she gushed the night she hosted Nancy Reagan.

As far as talk shows go, “The Late Show” is everything that David Letterman makes fun of on “Late Night.” But 1986 was the year talk-show hosts outnumbered the viewing audience.

If you didn’t get a talk show in ‘86, fire your agent. Networks or syndicates opened the airwaves to David Brenner, Robert Klein, Dick Cavett (again) and Jimmy Breslin. Even Shecky Greene. Barbara Mandrell started planning her own video gabfest, and Sydney Biddle Barrows, the “Mayflower Madam,” said she might want one, too.

But hats off to Merv Griffin. He gave up his talk show.

This was the year that Lee Iacocca joined death and taxes on the list of things you just can’t avoid. He was everywhere--pushing Chryslers and his autobiography, organizing the Statue of Liberty bash, doing a cameo on “Miami Vice,” denying he was going to run for president and starting his own line of gourmet olive oil, a la Paul Newman.

Some people fully expected Iacocca to walk out of Al Capone’s vault when Geraldo Rivera opened it up in television’s non-event of the year. Others were watching “Dallas” to see if Pam Ewing would wake up from a dream and have Lee walk out of her shower.

Don Johnson was equally ubiquitous in 1986. He didn’t get a talk show, but he did get a punkish new haircut, new clothes and a new car on “Miami Vice” and a snub from Eleanor Mondale. The former vice president’s daughter was at a Super Bowl party in New Orleans when Johnson had an aide ask if she would like to join him for dinner. Mondale said, no, she was with her boyfriend, a member of the Chicago Bears.

Johnson split with Patti D’Arbanville, his longtime girlfriend and the mother of his 3-year-old son, in a breakup that was so monumental it was announced in a press release. He almost broke up with “Vice,” too--not showing up for the first day of filming until he got a raise.

Lots of actors acted like politicians in 1986. Call it the Reagan Effect. Clint Eastwood made his day by being elected mayor of Carmel on a pro-tourism platform. Fred Grandy, the goofy Gopher from “Love Boat,” jumped ship and won a Republican congressional seat in his native Iowa.

Ben Jones tried to shed the image of Cooter, his “Dukes of Hazzard” character, but failed in his congressional bid. Jerry Butler, once one of those beautiful voices in the Impressions, was elected to the Cook County Board of Commissioners in Chicago.

Charlton Heston, President Reagan’s longtime conservative pal, had the right idea. Despite prodding and his belief that he could defeat Sen. Alan Cranston (D-Calif.), he refused to run. “Hell, I’d rather be playing in ‘The Colbys,’ ” he said.

Politics is so lucrative that a couple of criminals wanted to get into it. Or back into it, as is the case with John Jenrette, the former South Carolina congressman. Jenrette, whose conviction for taking bribes in the Abscam sting wasn’t near as interesting as wife Rita’s tales of sex on the Capitol steps, was hardly out of the halfway house when he said he might want to run for office again.

Another aspiring power broker is Joseph Bonanno Jr., who registered in Washington as a lobbyist. He wants to work on having the organized crime statutes revised, which is understandable since he’s the son of Mafia chief Joseph “Joe Bananas” Bonanno Sr. and has done time for perjury, grand theft and conspiracy.

Some political children--especially President Reagan’s--cashed in big in 1986. Maureen Reagan got to globe-trot, representing her father at diplomatic functions.

Ron Reagan the younger admitted that he had a “cheap kind of celebrity” and parlayed it into a role in the movie “Soul Man,” a writer’s position at Playboy and a correspondent’s job with “Good Morning America.” His parents raved about his guest-host appearance on “Saturday Night Live,” in which he stole the show with an underwear dance in a “Risky Business” takeoff.

Patti Davis didn’t get such good reviews from the White House for her book, “Home Front,” a semi-autobiographical roman a clef about a rebellious young woman, her distant governor-father and even more distant mother. The Reagans politely called it “a novel piece of fiction” but reportedly were very hurt by the book.