Bye Bye

(Additional accolades for Monty)

 

Issue #1, my funeral. RIP John McLaughlin.

(Kudos to Peter)

John McLaughlin, for decades the angriest man on PBS, has died of prostate cancer at the age of 89, long past the point where anyone was aware he was still alive, let alone still on the air. Ordained as a Jesuit priest, he ran for a Rhode Island Senate seat and lost, then served as a speechwriter for Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, the kind of spotty career you’d expected from a Boston College education. Those who can’t do, teach, and those who can’t teach, talk, so McLaughlin set his sights on the media. He started writing for The National Review, then created The McLaughlin Group, a panel discussion usually comprising 2 conservatives and 2 liberals driven by McLaughlin’s loud, aggressive barking, which was brilliantly parodied by Dana Carvey on Saturday Night Live. He appeared as himself in ALF, Murphy Brown, Dave, Mission Impossible and Independence Day and hosted the Celebration of Cheers’ 200th episode.