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Rest in Peace Bob Barker, A Man With a Remarkable, Flawed, and Lasting Legacy. [1]
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Date: 2023-08-28
This is hard for me to write. If you are of a certain age of Generation X, your life consisted of two routines, especially in the summertime. If it was sunny, you would go outside and play until dark. But if it was raining hard, you would sit in front of the TV, and for millions of kids, me being one of them, The Price is Right was appointment viewing. That meant we developed a bond with Bob Barker.
Bob has been, like me, a ferocious supporter of animal rights, and a man that publicly carried himself in a dignified and respectful manner. But he was no stranger to the regressive gender role standards of his era, and in fact, embroiled in some controversy himself, he was like all of us, a sum of the light and the dark within him, imperfect, and leaves behind his legacy for history to assess.
In doing so, we look at the most controversial of the claims against him.
In 1994, the widowed Barker was sued for sexual harassment by Dian Parkinson, a "Price is Right" model for 18 years. Barker admitted engaging in "hanky panky" with Parkinson from 1989-91 but said she initiated the relationship. Parkinson dropped the lawsuit in 1995, saying it was hurting her health. Barker became embroiled in a dispute with another former "Price Is Right" model, Holly Hallstrom, who claimed she was fired in 1995 because the show's producers believed she was fat. Barker denied the allegations.
Some of the most troubling details read like this:
Barker, who retired from the show in 2007 after 35 years as its host, has had several lawsuits filed against him. The first and most high-profile case came from model Dian Parkinson, who sued the host and the show in 1994 for $8 million, claiming that she had been forced to have sex with Barker in order to keep her job before she was wrongfully fired. At first Barker denied the charge but then amended his statement, admitting to having a consensual sexual relationship with Parkinson for a year and a half. (Barker’s wife died in 1981.) A judge eventually dismissed the wrongful termination part of the suit, and though he let the sexual harassment charge stand, Parkinson later dropped the lawsuit citing medical distress and insufficient funds to pay for legal fees.
The statements I found floating around are secondhand from “a friend” and not directly from Ms. Parkinson.
This is not to say that Ms. Parkinson did not state them, this is only to say I did not find a direct quote.
Hallstrom would later settle and it must be noted, as the prevailing party. So do we look at Barker as a workplace predator, or a lonely widower who engaged in a very problematic method of seeking female companionship.
The opinion lies within each and every one of us, and I won’t attempt to influence that.
But in any case he was like all of us, a flawed human.
I can only present the facts. Those facts, and Ms. Parkinson’s and Ms. Hallstrom’s grievances are not buried alongside Bob. They exist to be examined, to be debated, and for the public to make their own judgments.
I know that losing his wife and the love of his life Dorothy at age 57, he never remarried and focused even harder on the cause of his life, animal rights, which were his passion.
Over the course of his “The Price is Right” career, he taped more than 5,000 shows, and met countless thousands of everyday Americans, including more than a few celebrities, the most famous likely being a fellow game show legend, Vanna White of Wheel of Fortune.
In the above paragraph, it is the “everyday Americans” part that stands out, as it would have taken a certain kind of personality to make the show work. The host of such a show had to be the ideal of a presenter, with presence and charm, but lacking condescension and detachment.
He had to connect but refrain from overwhelming. He had to blend into your living room without filling it. He had to be a friend, teacher, storyteller, and economist.
He had to be Bob Barker.
Barker also spent 20 years as host of the Miss USA Pageant and the Miss Universe Pageant. A longtime animal rights activist who daily urged his viewers to "have your pets spayed or neutered" and successfully lobbied to ban fur coats as prizes on "The Price Is Right," he quit the Miss USA Pageant in 1987 in protest over the presentation of fur coats to the winners. Among his activities on behalf of animals was a $250,000 donation to Save the Chimps, the Fort Pierce, Florida-based organization said in an emailed statement Saturday. “Bob Barker’s kind spirit lives on at Save the Chimps, where we walk every day on the road named for him after his game-changing contribution,” said Save the Chimps’ CEO Ana Paula Tavares. At the time of the donation, Barker said that he hoped chimpanzees tortured “physically and mentally” for years when being used for research experiments would find “the first peace, contentment and love they have ever known at Save the Chimps.”
99 years is a lot of life. His experiences could have filled a thousand. A WWII Naval Aviator, a radio host, a game show emcee, a friend, a patriot, a husband but sadly to some, not a dad in the familial sense. Perhaps through choice, perhaps because of extenuating circumstances, Bob never had kids. In retrospect, it seems fitting, as he was amongst other things, a TV dad to millions.
Bob was very good at what he did. He was a professional performer. As such, we can never truly know the authenticity of his private persona, aside from the anecdotes of those that knew him, most of which, were positive.
Returning to the power dynamic that led to the above controversies, America as a whole needs to come to grips with the fact that he was young and powerful in an era where men in business suits gleefully toked on cigars while flight attendants were encouraged to sit on there laps.
Bob was probably a man of his era, with all of the flaws accompanying that. But I can’t help but wonder, how much of the reaction is a sort of fear, a lurking nagging sensation in the back of one’s mind that if Bob was like this, so too was likely, “Grandpa.” Or “Dad.” Is it possible? Could “Dad” have manipulated his secretary? Could Dr. “Grandpa” have slept with a nurse and cheated on Grandma?
It is not only possible, it is likely. Which means that the men we loved, and respected, had their own stains on their legacies, borne of lust, or power, and misogyny. Does that mean they never loved us? Does that mean we shouldn’t love them? I don’t believe so. Like any of us, myself included, Bob’s legacy will have those that lay flowers, and those that expel spittle. We are all humans, and as such, are at times flawed, selfish, angry, and malevolent. We can also be loving, generous, thoughtful, and welcoming.
What I do know is that what I intend to be tomorrow is a better human than today. And then the day after that. What I started as, like with most of us, is dramatically different than how I will leave this world.
And so it falls upon all of us to look at nearly 100 years of life, fairly, the good, the bad, the salacious, the honorable, and ask ourselves if the positive of what Bob leaves behind outweighs the negative.
The opinion on that too, lies in each and every one of us and I won’t attempt to influence that.
But while the 46 year-old man looks at everything objectively, the 10 year-old inside of me still weeps for his “TV Dad.”
Somewhere in the middle is a truth, of what is real vs. what I want to believe.
And those words could be written about anybody.
-ROC
[END]
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