Why Tv Likes Bad Guys

November, 1993

I was on the verge of a male meltdown. I was at home watching TV and had turned to Donahue. The show was supposed to examine men who were physically abused by their wives, but it quickly turned into a yuckfest. At one point, a woman stood up in the audience and told Phil and the rest of America how she had hammered her husband with a pencil holder she had flung across the room. It had bounced off the wall and whacked him on the back of his head. "A bank shot," said Phil to much laughte...