What's happened to John McLaughlin?

Cafe Society
1

On last night’s show Pat Buchanan led off with something like…“For the first time in …this chair is not occupied by John McLaughlin”. Later, some topics were introduced by recordings of John’s voice, sounding like he’d suffered a stroke. The show ended with Tom Rogan looking teary and saying “We wish John the best”.

For the comments to be recorded I’m guessing that whatever happened was at least 24 hours before the Friday night show to allow for medical stabilization and the recording session. But not a peep have I found on web searches… :confused:

2

Sorry, no clue - hope other Dopers can help. I just thought you were referring to the guitarist, not the pundit. You may wanna ask the mods to add that to the thread title.

Freaked me out there a bit. :wink: the guitar player is 74.

3

That’s a good idea. Maybe’s “PBS’s John McLaughlin”? He’s 89 and recent week’s appearances seemed to indicate deteriorating health.

4

I started typing “John McLaughlin” into Google and it autocompleted as “John McLaughlin stroke”, so evidently there are plenty of others out there besides the OP who are wondering about this.

I personally don’t think I’ve ever watched his show aside from this John Oliver supercut and the time an actor playing him cameoed in Watchmen asking his panel what they thought about Dr. Manhattan.

5

I came in here thinking it wasthis John McLaughlin.

6

That’s where I went as well.

7

I guess I’m an old fogey, because I immediately thought of* The McLaughlin Group*. Watched it a few weeks ago and thought: Holy shit, these guys are old!!! I used to be a regular watcher back in the day before cable and when this was one of the good left-right debate shows on TV (PBS).

8

Personally, I remember the SNL parody of his show more than the actual show itself.

9

WRONG! My first thought was the SNL version of McLaughlin of McLaughlin mentioned by Dewey Finn.

10

*Point-Counterpoint *was even better! Jane, you ignorant slut…

11

Aye, ditto for me.

12

Same here.

13

Sounds like this thread should just be changed over to a John MacLaughlin guitarist thread, despite the fact it’s a different JM in the OP.

so yeah…“Birds of Fire” is awesome.

14

Me too.

15

I don’t know what it says about me, but I still watch it regularly. My wife refers to it as “The Yelling People”.

So, I thought of the correct McLaughlin, and know he’s been looking weaker each show for last few months. But I don’t know what finally resulted in his not being able to head his show this week.

16

I thought of the PBS McLaughlin, and didn’t know there was another.
I might not have known of either until I got married. When we lived out of town and would visit the in-laws for weekends, his show was their idea of Saturday night fun. The family sat around watching mom and dad watch politics on TV for an hour, and nobody was allowed to mock the conservative pundits.
I know he is old, but I hope everything is ok.

17

I can’t help wondering if there’s some connection with the column Buchanan published on Thursday, in which he basically called for an armed uprising if Trump doesn’t win the election, ending his piece with this:

Could McLaughlin have read the piece?

In any case, I hope that he may recover. I certainly don’t agree with many of his views, but he’s undeniably a serious-minded person who’s made a contribution to public discourse.

18

Don’t forget the earlier skit SNL did, called The Sinatra Group, with Phil Harman as a Sinatra-channeling-McLaughlin, Sting, and cast. That was some funny stuff! :smiley:

19

I think one very funny bit from SNL was in Halloween when the real John McLaughlin showed up in the skit about the group.

20

I remember the Sinatra group where Frank said “I’ve got parts of people like you in my stool”