Shout-Fest or Serious Talk?

There are a number of questions you want to ask John McLaughlin, not least among them if he has ever strained his throat yelling “Wrong!” at a shellshocked panelist on “The McLaughlin Group,” the Washington, D.C.-based discussion show he produces and hosts, which will reach its 20th anniversary in April.

In a conversation with McLaughlin, the responses come easily; it’s getting a word in edgewise that’s hard.

McLaughlin was in Los Angeles last week, schmoozing donors for local PBS station KCET, which began carrying his nationally distributed weekly program (having already aired McLaughlin’s interview show, “One on One”) in January.

“The McLaughlin Group” played for years in Southern California on KNBC before NBC launched its ill-fated XFL football league, at which time the station preempted the series for 12 weeks. That set the ball rolling for the move, although KNBC and McLaughlin offer somewhat different versions of why it happened.

There is more than a little irony, or maybe poetic justice, in the fact that McLaughlin found himself victimized by the XFL, the league NBC founded in conjunction with the World Wrestling Federation. After all, many feel McLaughlin flourished by taking the trappings of wrestling and applying them to talk, the body-slamming here being of the verbal variety.

“McLaughlin” has been criticized on other fronts as well. The emphasis on making predictions, for example, has spurred some critics--among them former panelist Michael Kinsley--to suggest such an approach depresses the level of political discourse and journalism.

In addition, journalists now face the temptation of pandering to the talk-show appetite, recognizing such forums as a springboard to cash in on the lecture and book circuit. Each guest in the fluctuating roster usually receives about $1,000 per appearance (the host, of course, owns the franchise), but McLaughlin is quick to note that panelists fill their pockets in other ways.

Just being on the show “is very lucrative,” he said. “It leads to white-collar crime, which is lecturing. They know that, and that helps keep their appetite for a piece of me at a lower level. I say, ‘What about this? I see you’ve been out on the road.’”

My goal was to get McLaughlin’s thoughts on the talking-head culture he has helped popularize, with sons of “McLaughlin”--including Fox News Channel’s “The Beltway Boys,” featuring former regulars Morton Kondracke and Fred Barnes--popping up all across the dial.

McLaughlin took me to lunch at the ritzy Water Grill in downtown L.A., and despite his clipped tones, no one would accuse this former Jesuit priest of being short-winded. Indeed, based on his lunchtime patter, I began to fear inquiring about his tie would prompt a dissertation on the history of haberdasheries in America. After asking how his show wound up on KCET, I found myself listening to a long story about his testimony to Congress before the birth of PBS in the 1960s. When he paused to take a bite of his scallops and the next sentence began, “The show started in April of ’82 on WRC in Washington,” I briefly contemplated how much iced tea it would take, swallowed quickly, to kill a man my size.

Still, there’s no question that McLaughlin, who is 74 but doesn’t like to discuss it, knows his audience and truly seems to believe his show inspires debate that is “therapeutic for the public.”

To McLaughlin, TV talk has supplanted the street cafe or barber shop as a center for public discourse, providing an outlet for people “too harried and hurried” to engage in such vigorous dialogue on their own.

“It’s as simple as that,” he said. “It’s an appetite that’s developed, to have a meeting place, a talking place, a forum, for the exchange of ideas”--abetted, he added, by his show’s taped introductions, which “pull apart the polarities of the issue so they’re very clearly set forth.”

Of course, anyone who has watched “McLaughlin” or any other TV talk show comes away with the impression that the most knowledgeable person in the world won’t be invited back if unable to present arguments in an entertaining fashion, hence the emphasis on predictions, posturing and other show-business trappings.

“Civilized discourse does not have to be dull. That’s No. 1,” McLaughlin countered. “Secondly, it’s not a shout-fest. Individuals gather with passionate beliefs about public policy issues, and I hire them because they are so passionate as well as informed.”

Although he served as a special assistant during the Nixon and Ford administrations, McLaughlin describes himself as a registered independent (labeled conservative, he quipped, because of his “tyrannical and dictatorial manner”) and the ideological “swing vote” on his program, which now offers an extra four minutes of content previously excised to make room for commercials on KNBC.

Addressing charges of liberal bias within the media in general and PBS in particular, McLaughlin, a staunch supporter of public broadcasting, sees some merit in those claims but proposes the larger pitfall at PBS is a tendency toward elitism.

As for explaining his longevity in this perceived tree-hugging environment, I could have sworn I asked but later realized my point somehow got lost amid another McLaughlin monologue.

McLaughlin did express scant concern about the proliferation of daily talk on cable undercutting his weekly showcase, and shrugged off media coverage of the tussle between CNN and Fox News as gossip feasted upon by media folk--and pretty much them alone.

“I think it’s mostly an inside sport for journalists,” he said. “I just hope it doesn’t take up too much of anybody’s time.”

By the time we stood up from the table, I realized McLaughlin had steered the entire interview the way he controls one of his programs and began to appreciate how he has made a living all these years, even if I might yell “Wrong!” in response to his definition of what constitutes a shout-fest.

“Journalists tend to meet without joy, live together without conviviality, and leave each other without sorrow,” he noted at one point.

True enough. And every once in awhile, they’re reminded that ultimately, there’s no such thing as a free lunch.

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“The McLaughlin Group” airs Saturdays at 6:30 p.m. on KCET.

Brian Lowry’s column appears Wednesdays. He can be reached at brian.lowry@latimes.com.