Gay Rights TV Host
Welcomes Pat Buchanan
By AP from the
NYTimes on the Web, August 21, 2005
NEW YORK -- For the second
episode of her new talk show, Elizabeth Birch welcomed a guest she knew much of
her audience would have preferred shouting at instead of listening to.
That was precisely the point.
Birch, a veteran gay and lesbian rights activist, had frequently been matched
against Pat Buchanan on the kind of cable news debates that favor the quick and
the loud. She wanted conversation that promoted understanding.
Her hour-long talk with Buchanan can be seen starting Friday on Here, a premium
network aimed at gays and lesbians that's available in nearly half of the
nation's homes with television. ''Birch & Company'' debuted earlier this
month with a Rosie O'Donnell interview.
''I have a theory that the gay community is craving more than mudslinging back
and forth for one minute -- verbal assaults and then you go to a commercial,
which is what it's really been for 10 years, in my experience,'' she said.
''You never get a chance to really go down deep.''
Long-ago talk show hosts Dick Cavett and David Frost are her models.
The personable Birch is a true Washington insider, a lawyer who spent 10 years
running the Human Rights Campaign advocacy group before quitting in 2004 to help
raise, with her partner, six-year-old twins.
Her contacts enabled Birch to secure a guest list that would be the envy of many
shows on larger networks: Al Gore, Sen. Edward Kennedy, Democratic
National Committee Chairman Howard Dean, ''Will & Grace'' creator Max Mutchnick,
fellow TV host Chris Matthews and conservative commentators Tucker Carlson and
Laura Ingraham.
Buchanan, a Catholic and former Republican presidential candidate who believes
homosexual behavior is wrong, will probably never see eye-to-eye with Birch.
But he considers her a friend.
''She's very well-liked,'' he said. ''She has a lot of friends and she
represents her point of view with dignity.''
The idea behind ''Birch & Company'' is to give viewers a picture of the guests'
personalities, filtered through issues that have been important to the gay and
lesbian community over the years. But Birch didn't just want gay guests,
and doesn't want to speak exclusively to a gay audience.
What better challenge to tackle than Buchanan?
''I want to be able to understand him,'' she said. ''I want to go in there
not with an ax but with a scalpel and try to figure out what motivates him,
where do his values come from, and try to get people to open up in a way they
don't have the opportunity to open up.''
Buchanan, for his part, thought it was ''was an opportunity to get our message
out and de-demonize ourselves.''
Birch asked Buchanan about his family and how his Catholic and conservative
beliefs were formed. Buchanan talked about the Reagan administration's
view of AIDS with an insider's perspective and about how his polarizing speech
at the 1992 Republican national convention came about.
They went back two decades to where Buchanan urged the closing of gay bathhouses
and wrote a newspaper column saying gays and lesbians ''have declared war on
human nature, and nature is exacting an awful retribution.''
From Buchanan's perspective, the bathhouses were dens of iniquity where disease
was spread. From Birch's, they were an important gathering place for
homosexuals.
''It's like saying, `We want to get to all the Irish, shut down St. Patty's
day,''' Birch said.
''Well, if there's poison in the beer, you shut down St. Patty's day,'' Buchanan
shot back.
In another exchange, Birch asked Buchanan about whether he knew many gay people.
He said he knew many, including some when he worked in the Nixon White House,
whose orientation he didn't learn until much later.
''There's many, many, many more, it seems to me,'' he said. ''They're all
over the place!''
Replied Birch: ''We came out.''
Their discussion was cordial, if occasionally uncomfortable. No minds were
changed, although Birch said she sees a ''softer heart'' than she did during the
AIDS crisis.
''On an intellectual level, it stayed up on that level,'' Buchanan said later.
''It didn't get down to anything grisly, so I was delighted.''
Birch said that she was ''tremendously grateful'' that Buchanan agreed to the
interview.
''He not only came and did the show, but he was gracious, cooperative, he gave
us all the time that we needed and he could not have been more of a gentleman,''
she said.
At the end of the interview, Birch attached a postscript. She explained
the difference between Catholic conservatives and evangelical Christians and
said of Buchanan: ''He is a man who believes that if you turn everything
over to the people, the people will always make the right decisions. We
know from American history that is not true.''
The ending was the show's only sour note, sounding like an attempt to get in the
last word or patronize viewers by explaining what they had already seen.
Birch later said she was speaking to Here's younger audience. She didn't
want to show up Buchanan.
''I was trying to do a little bit of teaching at the end,'' she said.
''I'm not sure if it will stay. These first few episodes are
experimental.''
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