Like most shallow, self centered knuckleheads in show business, I place an inordinate importance on talent. I love talent! It’s the one thing I wish dearly I had more of (and, on many nights, comedy club audiences throughout the tri-state area have wished the same…)

I’m a great audience member. I laugh easily, I applaud heartily. I’m always impressed with performers who can do things I can’t (which is why I’m impressed with most performers). Show me the hackiest ventriloquist act in the business, and I’m just amazed they can talk with their mouth closed. I once sang and danced in a Broadway musical (I played Vince Fontaine, the libidinous deejay, in the 90’s revival of Grease – ramma lamma lamma ka dingidy ding da dong…). I can’t sing or dance. I love people who can, even those who can’t do it very well.

So, I was always amazed by Michael Jackson. Pound for pound, who had more sheer talent? If you could quantify talent, give it a numerical metric, Jackson’s number was probably in the high three hundreds (to give you an idea of how high that is on my imaginary scale, my talent number is 17, Charo’s is 32, okay?. No one was even close. Not even the very versatile Tony Danza.

Of course, sadly, the following is also intrinsic to the story of the most talented man on Earth: 

• 1) Michael Jackson was pushed into show business. Kids shouldn’t be in show business, show business ruins kids. All child roles in theater, TV and movies should be cast with adult midgets dressed as children.
• 2) Michael’s dad beat him up.
• 3) Kids who are knocked around often grow up to mistreat other children.
• 4) Michael was accused of mistreating children.
• 5) There is no excuse for abusing children. 

So, even though my inordinate admiration for talent made me the last rational person in America to defend him (“No, you don’t understand, it’s because he had no childhood that blah blah blahbity blah…”), somewhere in the mid nineties even I gave up the ghost. I came to believe that poor, sad, incredibly talented Michael Jackson was probably succumbing to forbidden urges at his imaginary- sleep- away- camp- slash- lair.

So, when I heard the news last night on the radio (driving to a gig with the terrific comic Cory Kahaney – loads of talent!) I was…a little sad. Relieved? Less interested than I thought I would be?

What can you say? He can’t hurt himself or anyone else anymore. That’s about it.

I react differently to celebrity deaths these days. There was a time when the death of a beloved celebrity would be my own personal melodrama. When I was a young man, and John Lennon was shot, I was in the mass of mourners outside the Dakota honoring the memory of the slain Beatle by drunkenly wailing, sobbing and – with a few other loaded mourners – publicly urinating in the alley a few feet from where he was shot. (This was…um…my personal homage to…uh…Lennon’s lost weekend in L.A. days…)

Now, at the mature age of, ahem, 39ish, I’ve been through a few losses that actual were mine. Unlike Farrah Fawcett, or Ed McMahon, or Michael Jackson, these were people I’d actually met: my father, my mother, my father in law, a couple of very close friends (one died of AIDS, the other diabetes, both ridiculously young), people very close to my wife:  a close childhood friend who was in Windows on the World on 9/11, friends, relatives…

This is life. People die, families grieve, babies are born, the Phillies drop nine of their last ten so the Mets, even with all their injuries, are just a game out of first…

In the end, God sorts it all out, so I don’t. He’s better at it than me, anyway. After all, when it comes to talent, God’s number is off the charts.

Psychologists say that a parent’s grief over the death of a child is “the most difficult loss to endure and surely among the most difficult to integrate into one’s life” because our children are an enormous part of our legacy, and “in their deaths, a large part of our own future dies.”  The natural order of our lives has been turned upside down, bringing on an emotional chaos.

For the parents of military men and women who have died after volunteering to serve their country and walking into the face of death in the 21^st century’s war on terror, this grief and chaos has been exponentially multiplied by liberal Hollywood.  But one has to actually walk this path to understand it.  The anti-war sentiment and films that have spewed from liberal actors, producers, and directors have burdened our hearts unspeakably as they have served only to aide the greatest enemy our country has ever faced and to deface and demoralize the greatest ambassadors our country has: the men and women who wear the uniforms of the United States military.

Two years following the death in Iraq of our son, Sergeant Patrick Tainsh, age 33, my husband’s only child and namesake, Dave and I walked through the Smithsonian’s history section.  On the walls hung reminders for the reason America fights wars.  One such display read:  “The Axis Powers”:  “Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and Imperial Japan pursued territory and power. Underlying Axis ambition were strong beliefs in racial and ethnic superiority that were used to justify wanton slaughter.  When allies joined forces to defeat Germany, Italy, and Japan they did so with the resolve that the war could never end in a truce.  The battle required unconditional surrender and replacement of enemy governments.”

As I continued reading the history of that time, I came to the section regarding Hollywood and its great contributions to support the war effort, show American pride and a call for no less than victory.  One display read: “In early 1942, Hollywood released its first patriotism by building morale-boosting movies produced in close collaboration with the U.S. office of war information.  The films pitted heroic Americans against villainous Nazis and fanatical Japanese, depicting a home front united for victory.  Top Hollywood directors made motivational pictures for troops.”

With this reminder of all that had been great about Hollywood, tears of betrayal and anger flowed down my face.  Where was that Hollywood?  Where were the new true Hollywood heroes who could follow their great and brave predecessors like Jimmy Stewart, Lee Marvin, Tyrone Power, Steve McQueen, Hugh O’Brien, Sterling Hayden, Gene Hackman, Ed McMahon, Charles Durning, and others who served in the United States Marine Corps? Where were those heroes of support like Ronald Regan, Betty Grable, Jimmy Dorsey and the great Bob Hope?

Why does the 21^st century Hollywood not work to help our troops win our new wars on radical terrorism instead of dividing our nation divided and providing encouragement for the enemy to kill more allied troops and innocent Iraqis?  Instead, top producers and directors turn their backs on the very military men, women, and families that were and still are willing to voluntarily sacrifice to the death to defeat an enemy who would as soon set a bomb to their ostentatious homes or behead their loved ones.  Along with news media, liberal Hollywood has helped paint a false picture for America’s public who continually hears negative information instead of the positive strides that our military has made and continues to make.

While channel surfing one evening I caught a glimpse of Stephen King, whose books have become major Hollywood films. In speaking to a college student audience, King stated that, to write, one must be a voracious reader. He went on to add that he encouraged reading and education so the students wouldn’t end up in places like Iraq.

Again, I was devastated and angry.  King’s words reflected his ignorance regarding the many college diplomas and “through the roof” IQs of soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines, Special Forces, and Navy Seals who are responsible for providing him and those students the very freedoms they would never want to relinquish to radical terrorists.

Our son left behind a letter whenhe died in Iraq.  He said:

I came to help people who couldn’t help their situation.  Maybe someday they will enjoy freedom as we do.  As for me, it was an honor to experience that freedom.  It was an honor to fight and die with an American flag on my shoulder.  Honor.  That’s a big word and some people don’t know what it means.  It’s not something that happens right away, it’s something that builds up inside your soul.

What would Sergeant Patrick Tainsh now say about Hollywood?  Probably this:  “They just don’t know what true honor and freedom is.  That’s why those like me and my comrades exist, because we do know, and it’s our job to try and protect even the ignorant who just don’t ‘get it.’”

Yes, the pain experienced with the death of a child is indescribable, and to have our own country’s greatest powers aide the enemy instead of supporting our troops and families adds to the greatest burden we will ever carry. But as for my family, along with our grief, we are comforted through the memory of having a true hero come from our home to serve our great country – even with its flaws. A memory we can always live with and smile about.  But the memory and pain of the betrayal by a power such as Hollywood in the 21^st century’s fight against worldwide terror is a memory that will forever remain a dark place in our hearts and in history. And maybe this history should be written on the walls of the Smithsonian to remind all how Hollywood has changed from a power to help bring pride and victory for America to a power that is helping to aide the enemy and kill our own.

Deborah Tainsh, mother of Sergeant Patrick Tainsh, February 11, 2004 Iraq

As announcer and second banana to host Johnny Carson during the NBC Tonight Show’s years of greatest prominence and cultural influence, McMahon exemplified what was then a relatively new phenomenon: the ability to become famous, wealthy, and admired without having any particular talent.

That’s not to say there was anything dishonorable about his career or something wrong with McMahon’s public persona. Quite the contrary. He was quite likable, pleasant, well-mannered (an underrated virtue these days), and overall a boon companion both for Carson and the audiences in the studio and at home.

However, he was liked for what he was, not what he could do. He couldn’t sing, dance, tell a joke, or even read the news. His turns as straight man to Carson’s various comical characters were most notable for their, well, charming ineptitude.

McMahon’s most memorable characteristic, in fact, was his continual failure to refrain from laughing at even the worst jokes purveyed by his boss, Carson, and even though his laughter was often obviously forced and insincere, he kept at it to fill the silences when Carson’s jokes bombed, which they often did.

Even that seeming foible, however, was quite charming, and it indicated what was best about McMahon: he was a good sport. He displayed admirable humility in always playing along and refusing to upstage Carson–and that showed good sense as well, as he surely would have been fired had he done so, for Carson was clearly a very insecure man.

McMahon demonstrated the same humility and essentially benevolent nature in his other work as well, such as his duties as host of Star Search. Those characteristics were a good lesson for his audiences, without ever becoming a boring sermon.

McMahon quite evidently enjoyed life and wanted others to do so as well. Having no great talent at anything, he employed his most appealing personal characteristic–his affability–to demonstrate some of the cardinal virtues and make the world a slightly more pleasant place than it otherwise would be.

For that accomplishment he’s is well remembered and will be missed.

—S. T. Karnick is editor of The American Culture.

In a November 2007 radio interview I did on The Andrea Shea King Show with McMahon to talk about his then newly published book “When Television Was Young, Live, Spontaneous and in Living Black and White,” we talked about his life, and what it was like to share the NBC “Tonight Show” set with The King of Late Night.

McMahon was dealing with a bout of layrngitis, but it didn’t stop him from opening the interview with the famous words that announced to American viewers it was time for their eagerly anticipated nightly entertainment — “Heeere’s Johnny!”

Their Friendship

McMahon told of how he and Carson met.

“The first day I ever worked, I did a show with him called “Who Do You Trust” on ABC.  It was a quiz show, a game show in the afternoon, it was live, and he hosted it. He had another announcer, a fellow named Bill Nimmo who got his own show and he had to leave.   I came up and auditioned for the show and I got the job. Which was a wonderful, lucky happenstance for me.

“What happened was, on the very first show here I am a little nervous, you can imagine.  I’m doing the first show, and I’m replacing somebody.  I want to do a good job, and I’ve got a script in front of me and on this script it’s got these six responses of the day: “Swansdown Cake Mixes, the cake mixes you can trust.”  I have to read this.  Now, the audience at home doesn’t see me of course, but the audience in the theater does.  Johnny Carson comes over and sets fire to my script.  That’s the very first day I ever worked with him!

“Talk about buddies!  That kind of sealed us forever.  For at least thirty-seven years anyway.  And forty-seven years of friendship. But that sealed it. When he set fire to my script, I knew we were off and running, this is gonna be different than any other show I was on.  And then of course, when he got the Tonight Show he took me with him, which was another happenstance for me.  And we had thirty years of wonderful times on the Tonight Show.”

There never was a disagreement between them.  “We’d have dinner once a week or a couple of times a week.  We just became buddies.  We were like two kids kicking a can down the street, we just enjoyed each other, we liked to be with each other.”

The Funniest Bit

McMahon recalled the funniest moment on the show, the one that to this day holds the record for the longest sustained audience applause.

“Ed Ames had been a singer with his brothers, the Ames Brothers, then he went out on his own.  And then he went into acting. He got a job on a frontier show as an Indian.  And he was trying to show Johnny how you threw a tomahawk.  He was gonna throw a tomahawk at a cut-out we had.  We’d taken a piece of plywood and we’d drawn a cowboy outline on there in black chalk, full size.  You know, with the guns and the holsters and the vest and the badge, the ten-gallon hat and the boots.  Ed Ames was supposed to throw this hatchet, or tomahawk, at the target.  Now, he threw it and it struck the cowboy where no cowboy should be struck.  Especially if he plans on having a family.

“Johnny had three of the greatest lines ever — ad libs.  And to give you an idea of how sharp he was, Ed Ames of course is embarrassed and wants to go and retrieve the tomahawk.  There it is with the handle sticking out.  You can imagine what that looked like.  Anyway, Johnny grabbed him.  He knew that he had gold.  And when the laughter subsided a little bit, he said, ‘I didn’t even know you were Jewish’.

“More laughter.  And then when that subsided, he said, ‘Welcome to the Frontier Bris’.

“And it’s not over yet. Wait a minute. Because Ed Ames was so nervous he said, ‘Do you want to try it Johnny?’  Johnny looked at Ed Ames, he looked at the poor cowboy with the hatchet sticking out and he said, ‘Well, I couldn’t hurt him anymore than you did.’

“That was like in the third year, so that kind of gave us a definition of where we were headed on the “Tonight Show.” I think that exemplified to the audience what was going to happen for the future, so twenty-seven years later, they didn’t want him to say goodbye.  They didn’t want us to leave.  They wanted us to stay right there.”

May 22, 1992 – The Goodbye

“There were really two closing nights.  The next to the last show was really the last show.  That was where Bette Midler sang to him and Robin Williams was his crazy, wonderful self.  But that last show was like a compilation of all of the bits that had happened over the years, and we saw some of the people on the screen that had left us, who are no longer around.  And we saw a lot of the good stuff that had happened, and it was just like a big basketful of goodies.

“But the night before is the one people think as the last show, and that’s where Bette Midler sang that wonderful song — a parody of  ‘One for my Baby, one more for the Road.’   And at one point she said — and I think this exemplifies the thirty years of the Tonight Show — she said, ‘And all the class that you showed.’  And boy, did he have class when he did that show!

“They called him the King of Late Night, and as far as I’m concerned, he’s still the King of Late Night.

Carson’s Foil

“I loved being the second banana.  You know, it’s quite a challenging role.  The whole idea is that you have to be in when you’re needed, and out of the way when you’re not needed.  And that’s kind of like a tightrope walker, that’s a balancing act to try to do it right.  And hopefully I did it right all those years because he didn’t say, ‘Let’s get another guy.’   He kept me.

“We knew each other, we saw each other, we had fun together, and it translated itself onto the screen.  I think people knew that.  In fact, on that next to the last show, he commented about that.  He said, ‘You know, a lot of couplings on television aren’t really good friends.’  You know what happened with Martin and Lewis.  I’m told that the Marx Brothers didn’t hang out together.  Abbott and Costello apparently were not good friends.  I don’t know.  But he said, ‘We are good friends.  We go out to dinner, we have fun together, we enjoy each other.’  And it’s true.  We just had a good time together.”

The Brigadier General

Not many people know that McMahon flew 85 combat missions in two wars.

“Well, the very first show I was on was a play I was in.  I was going to Catholic University in Washington right after World War II.  I was a Marine fighter pilot in World War Two and a test pilot.  I taught carrier landings and so forth.  But anyway, the war was over, and I wanted to continue my education.  I had been in Boston College for a year and a half and I got an OK to go to Catholic University and I studied drama and speech.  I was in a play that was broadcast from Washington, through Philadelphia to New York, in 1947.  That’s how far back I go. And it was the first use of the coaxial cable which took programming through a city, which never happened before.

“Then in 1949, Sept. 12th, a Monday, I started in Philadelphia on a show called “Take Ten”, that was the call letters, you know, the number of the station — WCAU in Philly — and there I was, host of a three-hour daily live variety show… I was the producer, I was the make-up man, I swept up the studio, whatever you had to do.  I was on the air from 12 to 3, and I was the happiest man in North America.

“I had thirteen different shows — on the air thirteen different shows a week.  Unbelievable!

“I was called back for the Korean war and off I went for a year and a half, but when I got back I went right into the same station.

“The California Air National Guard named me a Bigadier General, an honorary position, but in the Marine Corps, I got to be a full bird, what they call a full bird, a colonel.  And I’m very proud of that, and I’m very proud of my career in the Marines.  I had six years, two wars, 85 combat missions, so I’m very proud of that.”

Hollywood Then

“It’s not the same, no it’s not.  It’s unfortunate.You know, in World War Two, even in Korea, everyone was kind of involved.  They called Korea the ‘forgotten war’ but still, everybody had someone, a cousin or somebody that was in the war, and in World War Two, everybody was in the war — the Gold Star mothers, you know, everybody was involved.  We had certain restrictions and rules we had to abide by and it was a different situation.

“Unfortunately now, it’s tumbled into a thing almost like Vietnam again where these boys coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan — they should be honored as well and it disappoints me that they’re not.”

Fade to black

We went on to talk briefly about his book and with that, his faltering voice faded and he said goodnight.

McMahon was gold, and to Carson’s credit, he recognized it and kept him close by.  Sadly, we’ll never see the likes of the late night duo again.  Ed’s passing marks the end of a sparkling era in late night TV.

Goodnight, Ed McMahon.  Thank you for everything.