Ed McMahon dead at 86

Ed McMahon with Johnny Carson on the set of "The Tonight Show."


This has to be from the early 1960s.





More Photos >






Ed McMahon became the most famous sidekick in television history working alongside Johnny Carson on 'The Tonight Show.'

















The headline of the NY Times obit for him says it well: Ed McMahon, America’s Top Second Banana, Dies



The NY Daily News gets it well in the subtitle of its obit: Ed McMahon became the most famous sidekick in television history working alongside Johnny Carson on 'The Tonight Show.' The first line of the obit, though, misses the point: Ed McMahon, the former sidekick of Johnny Carson on "Tonight Show" turned commercial pitchman, has died. He was always a pitchman.

it was in the role of the faithful Tonto to Carson’s wry Lone Ranger that Mr. McMahon made his sideman’s mark. After he rolled out his introduction like a red carpet for the boss, and after Carson delivered his nightly monologue, Mr. McMahon, in jacket and tie, would take his seat on the couch beside the host’s desk, chat and banter with Carson a bit before the guests came on and almost invariably guffaw at his jokes, even when he was the butt of them. When the guests did arrive, he would slide over to make room and rarely interrupt.

The work paid handsomely — some reports said $5 million a year — and it made Mr. McMahon a familiar face, and voice, in millions of households. “The Tonight Show” became the country’s most popular late-night television diversion, and the “Heeeere’s Johnny” introduction became a national catchphrase.

I loved the show, and watched it religiously for a good number of years.

Don't Read His Lips – You Might Be Offended

When a U2 song won a Golden Globe award in 2003, Bono, on a live broadcast, blurted out, "This is really, really f-ing brilliant!" The Federal Communications Commission declared his remark "shocking and gratuitous," a threat to "the well-being of the nation's children," because it employed "one of the most vulgar, graphic and explicit" words "in the English language."

It amazes me that the FCC is so hung up on one word, used spontaneously in that case, while so much explicit sexuality is rife on the screen.

Reversing a decades-old policy in which isolated or fleeting expletives generally went unpunished, the FCC started a crackdown on vulgar language in 2004. Under the Bono rule, the commission found programs violated indecency rules, including the ABC detective series "NYPD Blue," the CBS News "Early Show" and a PBS documentary on blues musicians. The rule applies only to broadcasts – neither the Internet, cable nor satellite channels are subject to FCC content regulation.

A, this is supposed to make sense: only broadcast television is censored; cable television isn't. Ridiculous.

View Slideshow

To justify the Bono rule, the commissioners found that the F-word describes "sexual or excretory" functions and is "patently offensive" to "contemporary community standards." Courts should defer to the FCC, the administration's brief says, because the commissioners "studied" the "connotations of language" before determining that the word "invariably invokes a coarse sexual image." The FCC says, however, that it conducted no formal study beyond the opinion it published announcing the expletive rule.

Which is it? The Administration says the commissioners "studied" the "connotations of language"and the FCC says they didn't.

Blair on Daily Show

Short snippet.

Of course, no guest comes on a chat show these days without something to plug, and Mr Blair was no exception. He is about to begin teaching a course at Yale University on "faith and globalisation".

Thai Leader Ordered to Resign Over TV Show

You can't make this stuff up; it'd sound absurd (which it is) and incredible (which it isn't: it's true).

BANGKOK — A Thai court ordered Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej to resign Tuesday after finding that he had violated the country’s Constitution by accepting payment for appearing on two cooking shows while in office.

His People Power Party said that it would name Mr. Samak to succeed himself in the job, a move that seemed to defy the spirit of the court ruling and to ensure that Thailand’s political crisis would continue.