Talk Shows On TV Tell It Like It Is

Teachers who date their students.

Men-turned-transsexuals-turned-lesbians.

Artists against censorship, showing their resolve by appearing - as "Donahue" publicists so redundantly put it - "totally nude."

Amidst this circus midway - all were recent topics on daytime TV talk shows - a tent devoted to the rights and responsibilities of mothers-to-be looks downright restrained. Even when the discussion devolves into a cacophony of near-shouting.

So it is with tomorrow's "The Oprah Winfrey Show" (Channel 5, 4 p.m.), which features the key players in the pair of recent Seattle-area busts by the "pregnancy police" - people who are concerned that pregnant women may be putting the health of their unborn children at risk.

"Oprah" - the most popular syndicated TV talk show in the U.S. - brings together two waiters, two health-club employees and the two pregnant women they offended. The waiters pointed out a warning against drinking alcohol to a pregnant customer; the health-club employees challenged a pregnant woman who was hot-tubbing, because the heat may be a danger to the fetus.

"Oprah" lets them all talk. At once. Loudly.

"You start talking about a fetus, it's going to create an emotional response," KING radio host Mike Siegel noted after his appearance on "Oprah." Siegel has addressed the topic on his radio talk show; he appeared on "Oprah" as a firm believer that waiters and other do-gooders should butt out.

"That's a cheap shot!" Siegel cries after he is branded a mouthpiece for restaurant management by G.R. Heryford, the waiter who asked a mother-to-be if she wanted her strawberry daiquiri rum-free.

"So was your comment," retorts Heryford, referring to Sie-gel's earlier observation that Heryford was romantically involved with the waitress who took a health-warning label to the woman's table.

Where's a Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling referee when you need one?

Another comment on "Oprah" draws a flurry of applause for the fired waiters. Moments later a woman in the audience is scolding them: "I thought this was America, you know, where you have the right to do what you want!" The woman notes she kept smoking cigarettes during her pregnancy.

Since being fired in March from the Southcenter Red Robin, Heryford and the waitress, Danita Fitch, have become media experts of a sort. They have appeared in local newspapers, Newsweek, an upcoming issue of Glamour magazine. Their broadcast exposure includes radio programs from California to Florida, and telecasts from today's local "Town Meeting" on KOMO-TV (Channel 4, 6 p.m.) to the national CBS and NBC morning news shows.

"Producers will tell you anything to get you on," concluded Heryford. "All they're really looking for is ratings. What gets ratings is controversy."

The pregnancy-police argument springs from one of the most emotionally charged ethical issues of the moment: Where does the concern of a stranger stop, and the right to privacy of a pregnant woman begin?

Newspaper and magazine accounts of the debate lack the vigor of "Oprah," which lets the principal actors in the drama duke it out.

"Town Meeting" does better at following the rules most of us learned in kindergarten: Don't call people names; don't interrupt. Host Ken Schram plows through the partly disputed particulars quickly. This allows more than twice as many audience members to have their say as Winfrey does.

One woman in the KOMO studio bleachers wonders if the next step will be strangers questioning her right to sprinkle salt on chicken.

Appearing on the "Oprah" show, Mary Dunn, the Metro bus driver whose dip in a local health-club hot tub left her steamed, pitches her voice in a way that microphones capture, but is hard to describe. Anguished? Preachy? She elaborates to Winfrey the plight of the pregnant: ". . . people touching us, people massaging us . . . putting their ears up to our belly . . ."

Dunn's story surfaced in the press last month, making a smaller splash than the Red Robin incident. Dunn was soaking in a whirlpool at a LivingWell Lady health club when an employee asked if she had a doctor's written permission. Dunn says she was ordered out of the tub; LivingWell Lady says Dunn was asked only to bring the permission next time.

"It's hard to let emotions show through in a newspaper," Dunn said in an interview last week. "Someone else is writing it. It's not coming out of your own mouth."

Why, you may wonder, would anyone run this electronic gauntlet? Probably not for fortune: The "Oprah" guests received a free trip to Chicago, where the show was taped last month, but no other compensation. "Town Meeting" provided only coffee and Pepperidge Farm cookies in the show's hospitality room.

Fitch and Heryford both say they made the appearances to present their side of the story as fully as possible.

"We wanted to set the record straight," said Fitch, who winced as print and broadcast accounts muddled everything from the flavor of the daiquiri to the statement - incorrect, she said - that the pregnant patron was refused service.

"Oprah" gives the waiters and their patron - who chimes in by telephone from Seattle - a high-profile rostrum. The show reaches between 10 million and 14 million viewers each day.

"In a TV news interview they'd do an hour of taping and give you two minutes," Heryford added. "Newspapers, too. On a talk show they show everything you say."