More or less by accident, I tuned in on The McLaughlin Group this morning. I didn’t know that Mr. McLaughlin was still on TV. I remember watching his show in the mid-80s, back in the Ronald Reagan era. It always turned my stomach. John McLaughlin was born with a true talent, the talent of confrontation. He couldn’t issue a sentence from his mouth without making you want to either pop him in the mouth or run for cover (unless you happened to agree with his view point). Fight or flight. There was no middle ground with John McLaughlin. Everything with him was a big crisis, a huge boondoggle — just one more example of how liberal thought and values were corrupting our civilization. The man was walking pepper spray, a major irritant.

I’m not sure who came first, John McLaughlin or Rush Limbaugh. But as it turned out, talk radio and not Sunday TV became the fertile soil for the rise of popular conservatism. And so today we think of Mr. Limbaugh as the man leading the charge for the conservative cause. But hey, McLaughlin was a pioneer in my book. He helped shape the mold for all those angry, aggressive conservative commentators out there today on the Fox network and on the radio talk shows. McLaughlin led the stalking horses who cleared the way for the rise of the nice-guy troglodytes, e.g. Ronald Reagan and GWB. Their nastiness let “Dutch” Reagan be “Dutch” Reagan, jellybeans and all (don’t forget the monkey bread). Sure, before McLaughlin and Limbaugh there were George Will and William F. Buckley, but those guys wore bowties. McLaughlin threw the bowties away and started raising his voice. And the heart of America started listening.

But watching McLaughlin today was a little bit sad. He still went thru all the gruff, angry motions, but you can see that’s he’s softening around the edges. Ah, the price of old age; wisdom makes you realize that things aren’t so simple after all. But in order to stay on TV and share the spotlight with cavemen like Irving Kristol, John McLaughlin keeps on scowling, despite the fact that his heart really isn’t in it anymore (for example, he’s quite ambivalent about the war in Iraq). Ideology is a young man’s game. Today we have Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity and other smart, nasty guys out there on the bleeding edge. Maybe it’s time for McLaughlin to hang it up.

Or maybe not. I’d like to think that old people have a role to play in society, despite all the resources they use (e.g., health care) that could otherwise benefit young families. I’d like to think that young people benefit by interacting with old people. (Especially since I now qualify for AARP membership). Old folk are living proof that nothing lasts forever, that everything is subject to decay and demise . . . . including the nasty strain of conservatism that McLaughlin and his imitators helped to infect our nation with back in the 1970s and 80s.