McLaughlin arranged—I never knew how—for some of us to be in movies with him. We appeared in brief snatches in DaveIndependence Day, and a movie with Wesley Snipes, the name of which I forget. Best of all, Eleanor Clift and I did an episode on the popular Murphy Brown sitcom.
McLaughlin was such a character and the show so unique that spoofs on Saturday Night Live were inevitable. Dana Carvey played McLaughlin brilliantly. And McLaughlin loved it. I still hear from people about those SNL takeoffs.
The way to think about John McLaughlin is a man who created something out of nothing. Zero to one, as Peter Thiel would put it. He had a vision of how to present political opinions on TV that no one else had thought of. It was new and different and exciting. I'm grateful to McLaughlin for having been part of it.