Posted on 08/22/2016 12:16:26 PM PDT by Kaslin
Issue one!
To understand John McLaughlin, it was helpful to have been a 13-year-old entering an all-boys Jesuit school in the 1950s.
For when John yelled "Wronnng" at me from his center chair of "The McLaughlin Group," it hit with the same familiar finality I had heard, many times, from Jesuits at the front of the class at Gonzaga.
In that era, John was himself a Jesuit teacher at Fairfield Prep, where the black cape he wore and his authoritarian aspect had earned him from his students the nickname -- Father God.
In 1970, Fr. John heard another calling, and, declaring himself a liberal Republican, challenged Sen. John Pastore in his home state of Rhode Island. An unamused Sen. Pastore obliterated John by two-to-one.
It was right after this election, while I was vacationing in the Bahamas, that, one morning, I encountered Father John in his Bermuda shorts at a hotel newsstand on Paradise Island.
John was soon, at poolside, explaining to me why I, as a Catholic and a beneficiary of eight years of Jesuit education, had a moral obligation, a moral duty, to get him a job as a speechwriter in the Nixon White House.
Over some resistance, we succeeded, and John was soon the oracle of the shop, known to younger speechwriters as, "The Rev."
When Watergate broke, Nixon's aide Dick Moore urged John to get out and use his speaking talents to defend the president. John was soon out on the front lawn of the White House preaching to large assemblies of writing press and TV cameras.
Dick Moore told me, "Pat, I think we've created a monster."
But John was a portrait in loyalty to the embattled president.
When transcripts of the Oval Office tapes were released, containing the phrase, "expletive deleted," hundreds of times, and Dr. Billy Graham was publicly scandalized, John was unfazed.
He stepped out on the White House lawn and immortalized himself by calling Richard Nixon, and I quote, "the greatest moral leader in the last third of this century." Now that is loyalty.
When President Ford came in, John, despite his resistance, was the first man out of the White House. To raise his profile, he asked me to contact William F. Buckley Jr., and get him on as a guest on "Firing Line."
I wrote Buckley, and got back a letter that read in its entirety, "Dear Patrick: Intending no disrespect, who is the Rev. John J. McLaughlin, S. J.? Cordially, Bill."
As it would have crushed John, I did not show him the letter, until he became famous. As he soon did.
John achieved a niche in the pantheon of television journalism when, in 1982, he launched "The McLaughlin Group." As one of the initial panelists, I was joined by Bob Novak of the perpetual scowl, known to colleagues as "The Prince of Darkness," Jack Germond and Mort Kondracke.
Soon Eleanor Clift was aboard, and far from being discriminated against as a woman, she was treated every bit as badly as the rest of us.
"The McLaughlin Group" was a media controversy and a sensation from the first of its 34 years. President Reagan was a regular viewer.
It was balanced between left and right. Panelists were told to bring opinions as well as facts. John welcomed disagreement. And rather than confine the issues to the political, he introduced ideological, cultural, social and even moral issues.
John selected the topics and the tape to be used, edited his own copy, and ran the show like a ringmaster at a circus -- to which the Group was sometimes compared.
And he introduced new features. Predictions at the end of each show. Annual awards shows. I loved it. It was great, great fun.
Some journalists sniffed in disparagement, but others like Fred Barnes, Clarence Page, Michael Barone, Tony Blankley, Mort Zuckerman and Tom Rogan became regulars.
And John was loyal. When I took a leave of absence to go into the Reagan White House, then requested three more leaves to pursue private endeavors in the 1990s, which did not pan out, John, after leaving me in the penalty box for a while, always brought me back to the beadle's chair.
At the end, we could see how badly John was failing. But, unlike Maritza, who took wonderful care of him, we did not know how much he was suffering, or the nature of the illness that was taking his life. That he soldiered on in the job he loved for so long is a testament to the courage and character of the man. He persevered.
John and I loved to banter about our favorites poets like T. S. Eliot and recite to each other Latin passages we had learned in school and the Old Church. And in writing this eulogy the words of the poet Catullus, to his brother, came to mind:
Atque in perpetuum, frater, ave atque vale.
And forever, brother, hail and farewell.
This eulogy was delivered Saturday, Aug. 20, in the Basilica at the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C.
“Eleanor Rodham Clift!”
As far as Father God, his students would give me birthday cards on Christmas. The minds of 15 year old wander too much.
Sound????
“John was himself a Jesuit teacher at Fairfield Prep, where the black cape he wore and his authoritarian aspect had earned him from his students the nickname — Father God.
In 1970, Fr. John heard another calling, and, declaring himself a liberal Republican,”
A Jesuit AND a liberal???
Who’d a thunk it???
/sarc
I have always watched The McLaughlin Group, to this day, and have always enjoyed it, in particular with Pat Buchanan on it. It was always intellectually challenging, unlike so many talk shows today that are intellectually vacuous. And I liked John’s dry sense of humor immensely. It was the thinking man’s (or woman’s) talk show. I’ll miss you John, and I hope the show still continues in his name. I would love it if Pat Buchanan would take it over as the show’s host.
Did you go to Fairfield Prep during his time there?
Can they get rid of that old leftist hag Eleanor Clift and Obama-slobbering Clarence Page?
They’re both so delusional it truly tries the soul.
I can’t stand listening to the insane apologies, misdirection, lies, spin, and insanity that spew from each of them.
They’re like doped-up cult followers.
Yes, Fairfield sits on Long Island Sound
Yes, I went to the Prep 1959 to 1963.
After many years, I stopped watching the program in 2015 because I could not tolerate Clift. Wish I had toughened it out now
They’re both so delusional it truly tries the soul."
It would be a mistake to kick them off.
The show contrasted their delusional thinking with ideas and thinking
that was rational. Everyone could see and hear how crazy
liberals were! Let them stay on. They will only make themselves look bad and there would be nobody to laugh at.
I really do think that's why John McLaughlin had them on!
I pretty much stopped for the same reason.
If it exposed them for being kooky; yes, you’re correct, they do show their insanity. You can see that old bag Eleanor get all frowny-faced when presented with truth. She seethes; she hates it.
And then there’s Tom Rogan, who at best is an Establishment conservative.
Pat is usually the one who clears the air. When he’s good, he’s really good.
“A Jesuit AND a liberal???”
So is Gov. Jerry (The Fairy) Brown of California. But the story goes Jerry was too lazy to be a Jesuit, so he left and went into politics.
Great show
Another good one that Pat did was Crossfire
Jesuit AND liberal
is like
peanut butter AND jelly.
You can’t separate them.
Like Papa Franky - THE big time liberal Jesuit.
He also had an extreme problem with recreational alcohol, indulged after school hours. The Jebbies refused to allow him to drive their cars because of a substantial track record of DWI collisions. So he demanded the use of student cars. He totaled seven of those in my time, including a pristine 1957 2-seater Thunderbird whose owner later became a judge.
Three other stories of note. When I attended Prep, Fr. God was in his mid to late 30s and an incredibly strong weight lifter. The university and the prep school shared a well equipped weight room. One afternoon while tudents were generally in class and no one else was in the gym, he attempted to bench press 450 pounds, yes, 450 pounds! The barbell slipped from his hands and broke a LOT of his ribs. No one arrived for about an hour during which the barbell stayed on his rib cage. We were amazed that he survived. It became part of his legend.
He then (not later) had a strong puritanical streak. He arranged to give three very well and increasingly heavily attended lectures at Yale Law School Auditorium to tell the Yalies that they would be a lot less amused when they met their Maker and had to explain the common habit of those dead days by which students obeyed a university rule requiring dorm rooms to be open the "width of a book" when two people male and female were present in the room. The Yalies would lock the dorm room doors with a book of matches between door and jamb. Fr. God, Apostle to the Elis.
Finally, a disordered student who was not happy with him for whatever reason, lay in wait for him in bushes next to a paved path in the winter, sprung from the bushes with a seven inch kitchen knife and repeatedly (but amateurishly) plunged the knife into his muscular chest, waylaid by the heavy cape. He seemed to have received no permanent injuries. As students, we heard that much and no more.
About six years after I graduated, he took off his collar and moved to (?) DC to serve as a White House side to Nixon and in 1972 ran for US Senate in Rhode Island against John Pastore.
You were a senior when I was a junior.
During Fr. McLaughlin’s time in the Jesuit order at Fairfield Prep, verrrry few of them there were even vaguely moderate much less liberal
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