Little Cats' Feet

The intro is long, but the payoff -- an Andrew W.K. song about "The McLaughlin Group" -- is pretty funny.

We used to watch "McLaughlin" before football in my household and that's how I first developed my taste for punditry.

Comments

With absolute metaphysical certitude, I think Eleanor is Swellanor!

Posted by Josh E. | March 17, 2008 2:56 PM

Bah, isn't that just a lazy tweaking of his hook from "Ready to Die"?

Posted by trevor | March 17, 2008 3:14 PM

Wasn't it the McLaughlin Group which first pioneered the unfortunate modern "buck-raking" model of celebrity journalism/punditry.

Basically, they started being hired as a group to do business conventions, and were (at first) paid a few thousand dollars each, which quickly became the dominant portion of most of some of their individual annual incomes.

Then corporations and interest groups suddenly realized how extremely cheap it was to buy journalists, and the practice quickly spread. Later, cable punditry really took off built around this basic dynamic (i.e. say the "wrong" things on TV and no more lucrative invites).

I think the Washington Monthly did an article about it some years ago, meant to "shock the world", but nobody paid any attention, and the rest is history.

Posted by RKU | March 17, 2008 3:23 PM

That was awesome!

Posted by Anonymous | March 17, 2008 5:12 PM

ISSUE ONE: The strangest thing I've seen all day?

BYE-BYE!

Posted by jared | March 17, 2008 9:04 PM

"We used to watch "McLaughlin" before football in my household and that's how I first developed my taste for punditry."

When you say "football" do you mean the NFL or some foreign soccer league you tapped into with a big satellite dish? I only ask because if you did grow up watching the NFL, why do you post so rarely on it that I don't even know who your favorite team is? Why so much NBA posting instead?

Posted by Fred | March 18, 2008 1:38 AM

That's pretty good. But I really think that the song could use a bridge consisting of a crowd changing "WRONG! WRONG! WRONG! WRONG!" Also, he should have said "bye bye" at the end.

Posted by Angry Sam | March 18, 2008 7:40 AM

When McLaughlin first started in DC as an answer to the more serious "Agronsky and Company", I started watching because the thing was a lot more fun. Little did I know that the clones that followed would destroy American political discourse.

I exaggerate, but not by much.

Of course, McLaughlin is now washed up since all of his originals have pretty much left.

Posted by howie | March 18, 2008 12:55 PM