Mr. Bey said that he’d noticed Ms. Flowers was scheduled to appear on another talk show around the time of the 1996 presidential elections but that her segment never aired. He called up the singer-actress himself and booked her for his show since, as he put it, “mainstream media wouldn’t touch her.”
It’s worth remembering that at this point in history, talk shows were under intense scrutiny as part of an anti–“trash television” movement led by the former drug czar and Book of Virtues author William Bennett and Joseph Lieberman, then Connecticut’s Democratic senator. Both men were putting pressure on advertisers to help clean up the airwaves, creating a moral panic not unlike Fredric Wertham’s crusade against comic books in the 1950s or the PMRC’s attacks on explicit lyrics in heavy metal and hip-hop a generation later.
In 1995, a guest on The Jenny Jones Show killed another after being surprised on air with an admission of a same-sex crush. The murder was followed by a sensational trial that forever dashed the perception of talk shows as harmless, albeit tawdry, entertainment.
“There was a lot of crap coming down,” Mr. Bey remembered. It may not have been the best time for Mr. Bey to invite Ms. Flowers onto the air.
Mr. Bey still has little love for Bill and Hillary Clinton, but he said he had no problem with the president of the United States (or, at the time of his alleged relationship with Ms. Flowers, the governor of Arkansas) having extramarital affairs. It was the coverup that pissed him off.
“I do believe Bill Clinton screwed around like crazy, which I don’t give a shit about,” Mr. Bey said. “But if you screw somebody, you don’t threaten them! You don’t send them out of the country! You don’t have a squad called the ‘Bimbo Alert Squad!’”
“I hope somebody gets a blow job every day in the White House—I don’t give a shit about that,” he continued. “But you don’t go after the people afterwards to keep them quiet. You take your lumps.”
“He got a raw deal,” Ms. Flowers told The Observer. “He was very brave to have me on.”
She’s currently living in New Orleans, developing a stage play with music based on her life. Her partners want her to play herself and have their sights set on a Broadway run. She said she had no idea who could play Bill Clinton.
Of her appearance on The Richard Bey Show in 1996, she said, “I had some offers, but anybody that would give me an appropriate forum to tell my story in my words was not going to be popular with the Clintons. These people had tremendous influence over the governing bodies for television, radio and that sort of thing.”
Shortly after Ms. Flowers’ appearance, The Richard Bey Show was canceled.
Ms. Flowers hasn’t talked to Mr. Bey since then. (She does, however, claim she received a personal phone call from Mr. Clinton, who wanted to visit her after Hurricane Katrina in 2005.)
According to Ms. Flowers, whom President Clinton once called “a person who had spread all kinds of ridiculous, dishonest, exaggerated stories about me for money,” it could’ve been a lot worse for Mr. Bey.
“He could be jeopardizing himself,” she said, still speaking in the present tense as if the 1996 election season were still happening for her. “He could disappear or die by mysterious circumstances,” she said, alluding to the long-standing, but little proven, whispers about the Clintons and their so-called Dixie Mafia.
“I still have that concern,” she said.
It’s taken more than a decade, but Mr. Bey has put his time on air in perspective. “You’re not Mick Jagger and you’re not Bob Dylan. And you’re not Picasso,” he said of hosting a show.
“It’s not great art. Some people can do it. I can do it. Whatever it is, it’s not the greatest artistic skill in the world. Listen, I went to Yale Drama School with Meryl Streep: It isn’t a matter of trying harder. I will never be the genius that Meryl Streep is. A talk show is ephemeral. … Meryl Streep has created characters, especially on film, that will live forever. Her stage performances will be legendary. People will see them and remember them all their lives. Somebody will see The Richard Bey Show and they may remember it, but it’s not a transformative experience.”
He had high hopes for another career in radio, but he lost a gig on New York’s ABC affiliate for speaking out against the war in Iraq. His own father told him, “You’re gonna get fired from your job! Can’t you be for this war a little bit?”
“Probably the thing I’m most proud of in my career is speaking out against Iraq,” he said.
“I didn’t have to do the Gennifer Flowers show, but I did have to tell the truth about the war.”
It was almost time to leave. Mr. Bey had a dinner date with his ex’s son. The boy had called several times during the day, and Mr. Bey promised him they’d get together tonight. Really, it seemed like the kid just wanted to hear the sound of Mr. Bey’s voice on the other end of the phone. Mr. Bey, who used to entertain millions of people, even beating Oprah some days, sounded pleased performing for a key demographic of one.
He was asked one more time about his view. Doesn’t he wish he could see the park?
“I’m happy with this,” he said gesturing uptown. “I can see the reservoir. I’m happy to live like this. I’m satisfied. I don’t need ten million dollars. What they say you need to be happy in your life is someone to love, and work that you love. I have a 10-year-old boy right now that I love, but I don’t have a relationship and a steady job.
“I’d like to get those things, but I’m not sitting here going, ‘Woe is me.’”
mhaber@observer.com
