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Talk Shows Multiply but Say Very Little

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Talk shows are refining their guest lists. It’s no longer just prostitutes, but parents of slain prostitutes (“Geraldo”). It’s no longer just women who divorce “real jerks,” but women who stay married to them (“Oprah”). It’s no longer just transvestites, but transvestites over 60 (“Sally Jessy Raphael”).

And their daughters who love them.

There continue to be more talk shows on the air than subjects to talk about. Not that the dearth of topics stops the talking. Listen:

“What’s the worst date you ever had, Mary? You went through how many dates this summer?”

The questions come not from Oprah Winfrey, Phil Donahue, Sally Jessy Raphael or Joan Rivers, but from Jane Wallace, best known not for fussing about singles, but for her brashness and tough reporting as a correspondent for the defunct CBS News series “West 57th.” Wallace, who once covered Central America, now has a new career hosting her own daytime talk show on cable’s Lifetime network.

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Not to pick on Wallace, but it’s hard to imagine anything more redundant than “The Jane Wallace Show” (1 p.m. weekdays), a new low-budget, seedy looking, shriveled clone of “Oprah,” “Donahue,” “Sally Jessy Raphael” and “Geraldo.” Imagine a bunch of people in an office planning this show: “We’ll not only have a host, guests and an audience, but we’ll knock ‘em dead with topics like ‘dating’ and ‘relationships.’ ”

Oh, it’s true that no other talk show host would describe single females as “new old maids.” But Wallace attempts to work the audience just like her older, bigger-profile counterparts do, and covers much the same ground. New show, old turf. So what’s the point?

Wallace: “We’ll be right back with some coping strategies.”

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The fact is that just about anyone with a little bit of fame or notoriety can have a talk show, or at least a shot at one. A proposed talk show starring Watergate figure-turned-Hollywood maven G. Gordon Liddy seems to have fallen through. But watch out for Iran-Contra figure Richard V. Secord, a retired general now facing a possible sentence of five years in prison after recently pleading guilty to lying to Congress. In exchange for his guilty plea, 11 other counts against him were dropped.

With such a pedigree, no wonder he’s being mentioned as prime talk-show-host material (“Herrrrrrre’s Gen. Secord!!!”). You can just picture the inevitable cooking segment. Maybe he’ll do it from his prison cell.

A talk-show host candidate with even stronger backing is the Rev. Jesse Jackson, proposed by Warner Brothers for a syndicated weekly hour called “Voices of America.” As the trade ad says: “Most talk show hosts discuss the news. Jesse Jackson makes it.” Not without careful planning, moreover.

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Love him or leave him, Jackson at least can talk and would give TV something fresh: a black talk show host whose focus is politics. But can he listen?

Just what Cristina Ferrare and Ron Reagan Jr. would offer remains to be seen should MCA-TV succeed in selling enough stations on a weekday hour of talk co-hosted by them. An electrifying prospect, right?

In spite of its conspicuous excesses, meanwhile, “Geraldo” is a show whose very energy draws you to the screen. And Geraldo Rivera has come to be master of a format that Donahue first perfected, ironically even as Donahue’s own skills are diminishing.

Once peerless as a devil’s advocate, Donahue is now the Merv Griffin of daytime. He now can be counted on to play ball with controversial guests--witness his fawning hour with Zsa Zsa Gabor in which he did everything but lead cheers, much like his interview earlier this season with Tammy Faye Bakker.

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The poets have finally spoken. I noted recently that KABC-TV Channel 7 commentator Bill Press had observed that the dismantling of the Berlin Wall was a time for poets. As a result, several poems have arrived in the mail.

One comes from Ray Johnson of Yucca Valley:

Hear this, you tyrants and you commissars,

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And listen well,

Man’s destiny resides in heaven’s stars

And not in your hell.

Chains are not the lot of humankind

For very long;

Oppression that obscures the human mind

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Is ever wrong.

There’s something in the heart of liberty

That hates a wall,

And pulls it to the ground repeatedly,

Mortar, bricks and all.

Very nice. However, it’s Paul Wordweaves of Los Angeles who sends the emotional poem that puts a lump in your throat:

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Russian red

Is now brain-dead

Will perestroika

Feed the woiker?

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