20 Questions: David Horowitz

Consumer advocate David Horowitz' nine Emmys, nationally syndicated show, "Fight Back! With David Horowitz," best-selling book, "Fight Back! And Don't Get Ripped Off," and plentiful honors from consumer, civic and religious groups make him an imposing combatant in an interview. But Contributing Editor David Rensin found him unpretentious, though fervent; witty and inexhaustible. Said Rensin later, "I'm going to give him a call before I make any major purchases."

1.

[Q] Playboy: Who gets ripped off the most?

[A] Horowitz: Senior citizens. They fall for every scam you can possibly think of, because their education did not teach them basic consumerism. My mother is 82 years old, but she's very aware, because she learned on the streets. She still lives in New York; she still fights with the grocer and the fruit merchant and the butcher. When I say fights, I mean she's out there asking questions. People in their 30s, 40s don't ask questions. Kids today are very concerned about television commercials: They want to know why the pictures on the outside of the boxes don't look like the products inside. They ask why we should buy these things. There's a whole new generation growing up.

2.

[Q] Playboy: Can you imagine a world in which you wouldn't have a job such as yours?

[A] Horowitz: No. When I started, about 15 years ago, management said to me, "Do you think you can do this on a regular basis without repeating yourself? How can you get all these different complaints?" And I said, "If you had five people doing this and you solicited for mail, you would never, ever run out of ideas." There is an endless amount of material that hasn't ever been touched. It's like a vast warehouse of some unexplored natural resource. As long as people are on this earth, there's going to be a new consumer problem every day: a product that doesn't work, a new kind of scam or a new investment scheme.

3.

[Q] Playboy: Why does American business want to rip off the consumer?

[A] Horowitz: It doesn't. Business is in business to stay in business and not give people the business; otherwise, it's out of business. In fact, I think corporate America is starting to wake up a little bit. Consumerism is now becoming a priority of major corporations. But that has nothing to do with hyping to sell a product. Salesmen will do anything they possibly can, within the legitimate guidelines that are placed on them by the Government and by their own voluntary standards, to make a sale.

4.

[Q] Playboy: What's your gut feeling--was Coke forced to bring back the original formula or was it all planned beforehand?

[A] Horowitz: As a guy who was brought up on the streets of New York, a Bronx kid, I'm very suspicious about this whole thing. I feel that somewhere in the bowels of Madison Avenue, some guys got together in a little dark room with a green lamp shade, sat around the table and one said, "I've got a great idea to make Coke a word that will be on the lips of everyone in the world for months and years and to increase our sales and our marketing in a way that we never thought possible. We'll announce that we're going to change the formula. Now, think about that. If people love the new taste, they'll go crazy. If people love the original formula, they'll go nuts. Then what we'll do is bring back the old Coke, which we'll call something like Classic Coke, and we will now have more shelf space at the supermarket."

5.

[Q] Playboy: Defend "new and improved."

[A] Horowitz: It's another one of these Madison Avenue hype terms that are just jokes. And people fall for it. The Federal Government says that in order to label a product new and improved, you can only call it that for a limited period of time and that something must actually have been done to change the product. But if a product is new and improved, what was the old stuff--crap? What does new and improved mean? Does it mean that they put in a new ingredient that's going to get your wash a little whiter? Who's going to tell the difference? Does it mean that they put a scent in the soap powder that's going to make your wash smell a little better?

We are psyched out by the advertising industry. There are surveys in which you're actually wired up and they determine how a television commercial you're watching translates into what you buy at the supermarket. We're conditioned more than Pavlov's dogs. They can condition us to buy anything, to respond to words. Organic is one. People buy organic shampoo. They buy organic food. You know what the word organic means? Legally, absolutely zip. Hypoallergenic is another one. I wear more make-up than most women, and I happen to be allergic to mascara. I'm still trying to find out which ingredient I'm allergic to, because even though I use hypoallergenic mascara, my eyes puff up. So I don't use mascara. I use eyebrow pencil--and my eyes still puff up.

I can go with this list forever. Vitamin enriched is another. Healthful. And the clincher, natural goodness. The only way we can reverse this trend is through awareness and information. That's the kind of advocacy that I'm really behind.

6.

[Q] Playboy: Who does the shopping in your family?

[A] Horowitz: It's split. Because of time constraints, I cannot buy everything for the house. My wife has to buy the meat and the fish and the poultry and some of the fruits and vegetables. But I buy all the other stuff--the canned goods, the soap powder, all the hardware and stuff like that. When I go into a market, the people who are shopping there love me. The people who are running the market are suspicious and scared. They want to know what the hell I'm doing there. What I've done in the past year or so, to make sure that our produce is really fresh, is have my own garden.

7.

[Q] Playboy: When you and your wife fight, who wins?

[A] Horowitz: We don't win in fights. My wife and I have a really nifty relationship in terms of getting into disagreements or spats. She will tell me exactly how she feels. I will tell her exactly how I feel. This could be with raised voices, or it could be calmly. We do not throw things at each other. We sit down across a table or stand up eye to eye and just have it out. At the end of that minute and a half or two minutes or three minutes, it's over. And we walk away from it.

8.

[Q] Playboy: What do you know about yourself that the rest of us still have to find out?

[A] Horowitz: That's a tough one to answer. People think I'm a suit-and-tie man. I like to dress like that, but the real me is torn jeans and a T-shirt and sneakers with no socks, or (continued on page 156) David Horowitz (continued from page 111) cowboy boots. I'm a cowboy. Not an urban cowboy but a real cowboy with a real horse. The thing that I enjoy doing most, aside from being with my family and stuff like that, is spending time alone with Caesar, the kissing horse. I like to get on Caesar's back. I have a communication with that animal that is phenomenal. We really have good times together. I love my horse. I mean, I love my wife and kids, but I really love to spend time alone with my horse.

9.

[Q] Playboy: With your high media profile, why don't you run for office?

[A] Horowitz: I wouldn't be as effective as a politician, because I'd have to be out there raising money, taking it from lobbies. Any politician who says to me, "I don't take money from any special-interest groups" is full of it. They all do. I sat next to a guy once, someone for whom I have absolute respect, and I asked him how he felt on an issue. And he said, "I don't feel any way on this issue." And suddenly he was handed an envelope across the table. He opened it in front of me, and there was a check for $5000, made out to his campaign. And I said, "How do you feel about the issue now?" He said, "I'm in favor of it."

10.

[Q] Playboy: Will you ever do commercials?

[A] Horowitz: If I accept, I'm through. However, I'm asked to speak before business groups, and they pay me. That's different. They don't place any restraints on me. And they love it. It's as though they're a bunch of masochists. But they also expect me to give them some consultative information about how they can improve.

11.

[Q] Playboy: Have you ever been asked to investigate the claims made by sex-aid manufacturers?

[A] Horowitz: I have had problems on sex aids. A guy told me that he had ordered a blow-up doll that was anatomically correct. It had a vibrator in the right area, it had breasts that moved, it was heated and so on and so forth. He wanted the passive model, the blow-up doll with the hands at the side. Instead, he got the S/M model, with the arms and legs stretched out that you can tie down to the bed. And the guy was very upset. He went to the company and asked for either his money back or a passive-model doll. It was one of these outfits that were operating out of a P.O. box somewhere, and the guy got no response. We tracked down the operator of that company through the P.O. box number, went to the individual concerned and said, "This guy is entitled to get his passive-model doll or his money back." He got the passive model.

12.

[Q] Playboy: Is the area of sex aids one that really could do with some sort of quality control?

[A] Horowitz: The Direct Marketing Association, in New York, represents all the legitimate mail-order companies in the country that want to belong. If you ever have a problem with a mail-order outfit, whether or not it's legitimate, complain to the company first, then go to the D.M.A. If you request it, the association will also try to get your name off mailing lists. [Write to Mail Order Action Line, D.M.A., 6 East 43rd Street, New York, New York 10017.] The D.M.A. now represents some of these sexually oriented--product companies. If you don't get your vibrator or your blow-up doll or your Story of O video cassette or your restraints or whatever you're ordering, you complain to the D.M.A. Of course, I don't know who would--most people would be embarrassed to say, "Hey, you know, I ordered restraints," or "I ordered the knock-down dungeon for my closet, and the thing didn't arrive. And I really would like to either get my money back or get the product." We also handle problems with exaggerated claims for love potions or for the French ticklers that will give you 400 percent more satisfaction than you're getting now. We do these things, but we don't make a point of doing them as a way to bring in viewers. It's a legitimate concern, because the marketing of sexual products is a megamillion-dollar business, and there are legitimate companies doing it. So you can't turn your back on it. It's relevant. People use this stuff.

13.

[Q] Playboy: If you get a dud audience for your show, what do you do to get it going?

[A] Horowitz: I have dud audiences all the time. People come to my show after they've waited on line in 95-degree heat to see The Tonight Show. They've been wrung out. Sometimes, you know, Johnny has a fantastic show. They laugh themselves sick, and when they come to my show at eight o'clock at night, they're wiped out. I have people who love my show and still sit there sound asleep. So my producer, Lloyd Thaxton, and I warm the audience up with our Las Vegas lounge act based on consumerism. I mean, we tell jokes. We comment on the day's consumer news. I ask the audience for questions. They ask, "Why do you look different made up from the way you look normally? You look so much better without make-up on." And I say, "Well, the reason for that is our make-up guy," and I bring him out and introduce him. "Our make-up guy works on this show only on Thursday nights." "Where is he the rest of the week?" "Over at Forest Lawn."

14.

[Q] Playboy: What recent product would make your all-time joke list?

[A] Horowitz: The diaper bell that detects wetness in a baby's diaper. Can you imagine a kid growing up with this? This is Pavlov again. Every time the kid pees as an infant, the alarm goes off. So now he grows up and doesn't hear the alarm. He absolutely freaks out; he thinks there's something wrong with him. He has to have a bell in his pants in order to go to the john. I mean, it's ridiculous. And yet people buy this crap. Stuff like this is sent to me all the time.

15.

[Q] Playboy: What would you like to have told P. T. Barnum?

[A] Horowitz: That he was underestimating mankind when he said, "There's a sucker born every minute." You can break the minute down into infinitesimal measurements, and in each little measurement there's a sucker born. People who get ripped off have given a little of their self-respect away. It's almost like losing at dice or roulette. When you lose, you feel like a sucker. The real basis of consumer reporting is trying to keep people's self-respect intact. The reasons viewers like to watch shows such as 60 Minutes or 20/20 or Nightline is that they love to see how people get taken and how much of their self-respect is lost--and they like to see the heroes, the reporters, come back and restore it and punish the guilty.

16.

[Q] Playboy: Tell us about a memorable sales tactic that really drove you up the wall.

[A] Horowitz: We tested a floor detergent, and it flunked. So the guy from the manufacturing company got on the phone to me, and he was really pissed. I mean, he was pissed! He said, "You so-and-so, want to know something? You didn't use the right formula for dirt." And I said, "You're putting me on. The right formula for dirt? What is dirt?" He said, "Our formula for dirt is what you would find behind a refrigerator that hasn't been moved for five years. You know, we use a little salad oil, some hair, some dust. That's our formula for dirt." So I said to the guy, "You mean to say that America should have a formula for dirt? That your product will work if everyone has the same formula for dirt?" Well, the guy got huffy, hung up the phone, didn't talk to me for five years and went around bad-mouthing me in the advertising industry.

17.

[Q] Playboy: DO you ever fear for your safety?

[A] Horowitz: Not really. I don't draw kooks or nuts, though some corporation may say, "Hey, let's take care of this guy; let's set him up." When we did an exposé a while back, one of the insiders in that company, who was our Deep Throat, called our office and said that the head of his company was going to get two private detectives "to shadow you to try to dig up some dirt on you." I said, "What kind of dirt do they want to dig up?" "Well, to find out whether you're a homosexual." I said, "Oh, well, there are a lot of homosexuals out there. That doesn't make it bad." "Or to find out whether you're screwing around with another woman, cheating on your wife. Or to find out if you're into drugs or if you steal or if you're on the take--to discredit you." I said, "Hey, go to it. I'll even give them my tax returns, which are audited every year. You can have anything you want." That was it.

18.

[Q] Playboy: DO you have any advice for Ralph Nader?

[A] Horowitz: Aside from getting a different colored suit and tie? I respect Nader. He was my hero when he wrote Unsafe at Any Speed. Some of his groups now, such as Public Citizen, and his health-research group in Washington, are doing a fantastic job. But Nader has been undercut by all those Washington political animals. Now he's a consumer advocate in search of a cause. And I wish he would loosen up a little bit and go back to being the Ralph Nader and do the kind of stuff that he did as a muckraker 15 years ago. He's become like a grasshopper, jumping from issue to issue to issue rather than really getting into something and fighting for it.

19.

[Q] Playboy: You were a Vietnam correspondent. Did we get ripped off in Vietnam?

[A] Horowitz: Yes. I went over to Vietnam at the age of 26, wanting to see what war was like. I was a student of history and of all the great reporters who came out of war scenes. I went over there as a hawk and came back as the quintessential dove, because I saw the lies. I saw us violating the 1954 Geneva Accords. I saw military advisors actually fighting. I arrived there shortly after Diem was assassinated, and I saw the beginning of the end. I saw a country that really needed a military dictatorship in order to survive; that needed what the North Vietnamese were doing in North Vietnam. After Diem was assassinated, it was kind of like Sodom and Gomorrah. There was nothing on which to center the culture. There was no government, there was no morality, just a hodgepodge of people all trying to survive. And Saigon was an isolated island compared with the rest of Vietnam. I'm not saying this on the side of the Viet Cong, because the Viet Cong were not fun people to deal with. That was the other side of it. But what I saw over there was a part of history that we should not have been involved in.

20.

[Q] Playboy: If you could be a Disney character for a day, which one would you be?

[A] Horowitz: I really like Donald Duck. Donald has a personality. I mean, he gets emotional [quacks a little], he gets upset. Donald Duck is basically a real honest guy, a sweet guy, a very trusting guy who falls into all these problems because he's trying to do something positive. Some of the other Disney characters, such as Pluto, have the personality of a schlub. But Donald's a mensch.

"Marketing sexual products is a megamillion-dollar business. So you can't turn your back on it."