The Right Stuff? Maybe. But Rotten Timing

When obnoxious people get their comeuppance, it’s usually a time for celebration. So, when longtime, bombastic Orange County talk-show host Wally George recently filed for bankruptcy, claiming a net worth of $1,900, why did I feel pangs of sadness?

For a guy who made a living on his TV show calling his opponents “whiners, freaks and idiots,” why not revel in his misfortune?

I’ll tell you why. But first a bit of the George legacy.

It’s a stretch to say that George, usually described in the 1980s as “ultraconservative,” contributed negatively to Orange County’s national reputation for right-wing extremism, but let’s just say he didn’t help matters.

Now 68, he’s been divorced four times.

A jury in 1987 decided he helped engineer the ouster of a TV ad salesman because he intervened in George’s alleged advances on a female employee.

And then there’s the Wally George whose “Hot Seat” TV show on KDOC Channel 56 once specialized in the outrageous confrontational theatrics that now litter the airwaves.

He was the host who encouraged his audience of mostly youthful males to hoot and boo his guests.

He was the host who pounded the desk, waved an American flag and pointed fingers at his “guests.”

He was the host who somehow provoked a former Catholic priest to overturn George’s desk on the set after, the man said, George poked his shoulder. Security escorted the former priest off the set.

Not content to be a provocateur, there was also the Wally George ego.

“People out there need someone like me,” he said in 1984. “I’m tougher than Donahue. He’s nothing but a cutesy choirboy. I’m going to be bigger than even Carson.”

So why do I feel for the big lug?

Maybe it’s because he represents that element in a lot of us that yearns to make it big but can’t. In George’s case, he’d been a lifelong stutterer but still decided he wanted to make it in show business.

In the end, though, he was the little engine that couldn’t.

But what separates him from a million others with failed dreams is that Wally George did have the formula. He was on to something.

“He was outrageous,” says Harriett Wieder, former Orange County supervisor, who met George when she worked for Los Angeles Mayor Sam Yorty. “Wally was really kind of forerunner of the kind of talk-show hosts that get lots of mileage today.”

George’s thoughts to the contrary, he never was a significant media figure, she says. “I don’t think people took him seriously. Everything is timing. He was just not there at the right time. Maybe he was ahead. The environment wasn’t ready for him.”

And so Wally George ends up pushing 70 years old and in Bankruptcy Court.

He says he lives alone in a Garden Grove apartment and has withstood cancer operations, brain surgery and a serious car accident. His greatest joy, he says, is visiting his 10-year-old daughter.

For some reason, instead of razzing him, I find myself smiling at his shtick, such as when he invited a strip-o-gram performer on the show, only to feign being aghast as she started stripping . . . and then ordering her off the stage in mid-strip.

Or maybe I just feel for a guy who now is reduced to hearing only echoes of the way it used to be.

In February of 1984, when George was riding high, hundreds of people attended a rally for him at the Anaheim Hilton. George strode on stage to strains of “Battle Hymn of the Republic” and to the audience’s shouts of “Wah-lee, Wah-lee!”

“I had to fight back my tears,” he told The Times’ Herman Wong. “There was so much love and warmth coming at me. My gosh, I felt like a big rock star, a Sinatra up there. All my aches and pains vanished. You’re in command. No one can touch you while you’re doing it. No one.”

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Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Readers can reach Parsons by calling (714) 966-7821 or by writing to him at the Times Orange County Edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, CA 92626, or by e-mail to dana.parsons@latimes.com.