Noon on a Sunday means The McLaughlin Group on Detroit Public TV, and watching it with a cup of coffee has become part of my weekend ritual. Five minutes in, and Pat Buchanan is already almost red-faced with excitement as the moderator, John McLaughlin, needles him relentlessly, probably as only someone can when they’ve known Pat Buchanan for thirty years. Later on in the show, they seem to be jabbing back and forth at each other about which one of them is a better Catholic, and all the other panelists on the show, all accomplished and respected journalists and editors from the Chicago Tribune and Newsweek to the Financial Times, are chiming in on who they think follows the pope. And to think that this is one of the tamer episodes! It is these frankly bizarre exchanges that make The McLaughlin Group so entertaining. On the surface, the show seems much like Meet the Press or any of the other Sunday morning news roundtables. However, after watching it for a few minutes, one starts to notice the program’s insane quirks that hide under the surface. John McLaughlin is at the heart of this phenomenon. The man is an eighty-year-old 600-pound gorilla, metaphorically speaking. At any given moment on the show he will routinely go off topic and make absurd proclamations and even more often, ask off the wall, or completely unrelated follow-up questions, to which his confused guest commentators will try to answer in a serious manner. His regular panelists usually fare better; they know what his crazy game is. The show goes on in this manner, and over the course of each thirty-minute episode, the amount of mirth or annoyance (as dictated by John McLaughlin and his mood at the time) builds and builds until the end, when John asks his guest to make predictions. However far in to the future they’d like to predict is up to them. He then closes with his own usual outlandish prediction and cries out authoritatively, “bye-bye!”
What makes this strange formula work so well is that it’s not a gimmick or a put on. While intelligent and often pertinent, John McLaughlin is also impulsive with what he says and is quite simply put, randomly goofy. Most of the other panelists have been on his show for so long that they’ve long built up a repore with each other for the most part, and are able to play off each other. The one exception to this was the rift between panelists Eleanor Clift (contributor to Newsweek) and Tony Blankley (former speechwriter to Newt Gingrich and editor at the Washington Times). They were at opposite ends of the political spectrum, but Tony Blankley often had a very combatative and hostile style, and presented himself as the type of person that always had to be right. It was apparent that there was significant personal animosity between Clift and Blankley, and as a result the level of discourse (and hilarity) suffered. Monica Crowley recently replaced Blankley as the “mainstream conservative” panelist, and her more collegial style has significantly improved the mood and flow of the show. When the panelists aren’t playing off what McLaughlin is throwing at them, they are usually just responding to him as though what he just asked wasn’t completely crazy. The willing denial of John’s insanity can sometimes be half the show’s entertainment value.
I think the show’s style is in part due to the fact that it’s been on PBS for so many years (26 in fact). It’s my suspicion that had it been on commercial television, ratings-conscious producers would have tweaked the show into mediocrity. PBS has a commitment to enrich the media sphere, and doesn’t defer to just ratings when deciding what programs to feature. Because of this, John McLaughlin and company have had a chance to evolve a zany yet informative style that is unique on television, even though it’s not for anyone. Personally, I think they are just too real for most people. To borrow a phrase from the show, that John McLaughlin actually borrowed from Dana Carvey when he was spoofing him on Saturday Night Live, on a scale from zero to ten, zero meaning no value and ten equaling complete metaphysical television contentment, McLaughlin Group gets a solid eight. For putting up with such a wild show for my benefit, Detroit Public Television gets a ten.
By Robert Primeau, Sunday April 13, 2008, while watching The McLaughlin Group
