Maybe we're past the point when that alone is a big deal.
But it is strange.
John McLaughlin, a former Jesuit priest, speechwriter for President
Richard Nixon and conservative provocateur whose pugnacious style as a
host of a political chat show helped usher in the era of impolite
punditry, died Aug. 16 at his home in Washington. He was 89.
There was a time, though, (in the very distant past) when McLaughlin's terrible little show was essential viewing in our house. Looking back at it now, the Group was really just a circle of mainstream press hacks shouting superficial conventional wisdom at each other. It was also an early manifestation of the "Fair and Balanced" trope in medial really being a hard tug to the right.
Paul Glastris wrote this about it earlier this week. (link and key graph
via Atrios)
The show had been on for only a couple of years when I first arrived in
Washington, and among the young liberals I knew it was widely loathed,
though universally watched. The lineup of regular panelists–Pat
Buchanan, Robert Novak, Jack Germond, plus Mort Kondracke or Eleanor
Clift—was supposedly balanced. But in fact it pitting three hard right
ideologues (including McLaughlin himself) against two center-left
journalists, so the left side of the panel always seemed defensive and
outmatched—which is exactly how it felt to be on the left in Washington
during the Reagan years. Roger Ailes, the Fox News president recently
ousted on charges of sexual harassment, is widely credited as a genius
for creating the “fair and balanced” cable network, but it was
McLaughlin who first figured out the winning formula.
And it was loud and without much substance. And it was only half and hour. After it was over, you couldn't easily go read and learn more or strike up a discussion about it online. This crap was the last word of the week. But today everyone says it's the internet that ruined the discourse.
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