Aside from his “McLaughlin Group” hosting and producing duties, he was an editor for the National Review, writing a column called “From Washington Straight”. On Tuesday, the host of the weekly round-table discussion passed away at the age of 89.
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John McLaughlin, the longtime host of “The McLaughlin Group”, has died at age 89, a statement on the show’s Facebook page says.
His former office manager, Linda Dean, filed a $4 million lawsuit against McLaughlin in 1988, claiming she was sacked after protesting his unwanted sexual advances.
In his 2000 book, Sound and Fury: The Making of the Punditocracy, Eric Alterman snarked that The McLaughlin Group panelists “always seemed to have just gotten off the phone with the guy in charge”.
According to the post Tuesday, information regarding McLaughlin’s memorial service will be released via his show’s Facebook page.
John McLaughlin was missed by his talk show, The McLaughlin Group, for the first time last Sunday in more than 34 years.
But as media modernized to include more diverse faces and less orthodox formats, McLaughlin’s talk show increasingly came to be viewed as an endearing, if out of touch, throwback to a different era of television commentary.
McLaughlin also hosted an interview show, John McLaughlin’s One on One, that aired on PBS between 1984 and 2013.
He remembered the dog in a year end episode of “The McLaughlin Group” two years ago saying, “Person of the year: Pope Francis, especially now that he’s told that animals can go to heaven”.
Following the defeat, he worked as a speechwriter for President Richard Nixon until his resignation. “My spirit is strong and my dedication to this show remains absolute”, the note read. He was ordained in 1947, earned master’s degrees in philosophy and English from Boston College and taught at a Jesuit prep school.
McLaughlin and his boisterous New England-tinged voice had many people both love and loathe him, and Dana Carvey famously mimicked his program on Saturday Night Live in the early ’90s.
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Fans of his show, which debuted in 1982, will remember how the conservative McLaughlin scowled at his hand-picked panel of Washington insiders who professed expertise on everything from USA policy in Central America to predictions on how long President Bill Clinton might survive the Monica Lewinsky scandal.
