This bonkers old white guy from Orange County is the model for the cable news talk shows of today
Meet Bill O’Reilly’s daddy, Wally George
He parted his hair in the back and leafed it over his forehead and ears into a platinum blond helmet. He sat in front of an American flag and a photo of the space shuttle launch, with the caption “USA is #1.” He was always angry and yelling things about “ludicrous liberal lunatics.” And audiences loved him for it.
This was Wally George, conservative pundit and host of Hot Seat. The talk show wasn’t a network hit but it ran for a decade, supported by a cult following in California’s conservative stronghold of Orange County. Though he died virtually penniless, George’s aggressive interview approach influenced an entire genre of histrionic talk shows — from Jerry Springer to Glenn Beck to Bill O’Reilly. Today, his brawling rhetorical style is more familiar than ever.
Hot Seat first aired in July of 1983 on KDOC, an independent station in Anaheim, California. A year later, hordes of college students would wait up to six months in order to score a seat in the 80-person audience, where they would chant “Wally, Wally!” in bald eagle T-shirts and backcombed heavy metal hair. The host would shout at them all to quiet down so he could talk.
The show gained national attention and syndication deals when, on its November 5, 1983 airing, George manhandled guest Blaise Bonpane, a pacifist. In response, Bonpane got up from his chair and flipped George’s desk over. He was escorted out by security.
“They say that I’m a lunatic, that I’m a maniac,” said George in a 1984 interview. “But why do you have to smile at your guests and be nice and let them say what they want to say?”
It was an epiphany that would come to define political television. The show’s central logic (and entertainment) was to allow mostly left-leaning guests a platform in exchange for an onslaught of verbal abuse. George hurled offensive questions at interviewees and repeatedly interrupted their answers. In the end, guests walked away with 10 to 20 minutes of airtime, even if most of it was taunting.
And George had a way of riling even the most collected and intelligent guests. In his first year, for instance, George invited then-ACLU lawyer and later journalist Jeff Cohen to talk about police brutality and surveillance of lawful, politically motivated organizations. At first, Cohen’s responses to questions like “Why do you want to handcuff the police department from catching criminals?” seem prepared, choreographed. But after a few minutes, the interview intensifies, both raise their voices, the audience clatters and gesticulates. George interjects with an age-old challenge: “I have nothing to hide, so what do I care if police watch me?!” The audience brays with joy.
But for all his cruel bravado and personal attacks, George consistently stumbled when the tables were turned. His ideology was full of contradictions. In one episode, he spits, “I say Martin Luther King does not deserve a national holiday in his name. There are many more Americans who deserve it a heck of a lot more,” and in another he decries the hate speech of former KKK Grand Dragon Tom Metzger. By way of introduction, George announced, “Coming up, one of the most indecent pieces of garbage I’ve ever had on my show” — adding a thumbs-down sign for good measure. Later, George points his finger and says, “You, Metzger, you are responsible for the death of many, many people in this country.” During the episode, the camera cuts to a stoic black woman sitting in the audience. The implication: See? We’ve got buy-ins from everybody.
Over the years, the studio audience varies. The crowd is mostly white but some people of color attend; fewer stand to ask rehearsed questions that reinforce George’s worldview. Others in the background giggle and cover their mouths, clearly in it for the spectacle. There are countless muscle tees and pimply teens wearing sunglasses. Some stand in the back or sit cross-legged on the linoleum floor in front. The impression is unconstrained and informal, but far from relaxed. The audience squirms and punches the air, then curls in on itself waiting for the next cue to be angry.
In 1988, Hot Seat brought on Larry Rice, a same-sex marriage and AIDS awareness activist, who George introduces as “a real looney tune.” He calls Rice “sweetheart” and jerks a thumb his direction: “Hey, I bet he’s stepped over the lines many times in West Hollywood.” The audience laughs and cheers. Rice demands he sticks to the subject and lay off the personal attacks. “I don’t want to destroy the sanctity of anybody’s marriage,” he insists. “I want to let people who want to join together for the future in a lifetime of matrimonial bliss.” George goes on, “Here in the United States, we don’t want perverts marrying each other!” When the subject turns to AIDS prevention, George bellows, “I don’t want these gay AIDS-carriers to spread their disease to all of us heterosexuals…People like you are spitting at me. I could catch AIDS from you!”
When political figures and activists weren’t compelling enough, producers simply booked Playboy centerfolds, porn directors, and self-professed “bimbos” who flashed their crotches to the camera.
Watching it today is a mind-warp. Hot Seat commodified Old White Man Anger and gave it room to fester. George’s fury was the entire point. It gave audiences permission to act out their basest impulses during the conservative Reagan era. The allure of the show was merely having an outlet for anger, period. It was a contractual yelling match, with the viewers invited.
George coined the phrase “combat TV” in his 1999 autobiography and claimed to have pioneered the form. Fellow broadcast personalities like Jerry Springer, Rush Limbaugh, Howard Stern (who called George his “dog” and a “wig-wearing hump”) had already found major success with shock-value tactics or unabashed partisanship.
Hot Seat quickly took a backseat. Ratings began to drop in the 1990s. In the middle of the decade, George’s wife left him, taking their 7-year-old daughter with her. The Los Angeles Times reported he had “married and divorced at least four times” by the time of his death in 2003. Others claim it was six. He had several children, including actress Rebecca De Mornay, but she had long since cut her father out of her life. In 1999, he filed for bankruptcy.
During his final years, George pieced together a living, taping intros for Hot Seat reruns, appearing for the occasional autograph signing, and singing lounge songs at restaurants. The man who, early in his career, had called Los Angeles “nothing but a carnival town with a bunch of freaks walking down the street, winos, and degenerates” was now subsisting on its lingering goodwill. His remaining fans comprised a “small but enthusiastic crowd, the punk rockers and misfits, freaks and outsiders he had excoriated on his show,” wrote Los Angeles Magazine in George’s obituary. “They were his enemies and his fans, and he was one of them.”
