Maintenance Phase - Diet Book Deep Dive: Ed McMahon’s “Slimming Down”

Episode Date: April 27, 2021

This week is our first  Diet Book Deep Dive, where we dig into some of the worst and wildest weight loss advice we can find.  First up: Tonight Show sidekick Ed McMahon's pun, alcohol and misogyny-fueled diet plan from the 1970s. Hope you like broiled steak and Sanka!Clips!Ed McMahon & Britney Spears on Star SearchEd McMahon for American Family SweepstakesSupport us: Subscribe on PatreonDonate on PayPalGet Maintenance Phase shirts, stickers and moreThanks to Lynn Barbera for editing assistance and Doctor Dreamchip for our lovely theme song!Support the show

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Yes. So today we're taking a little trip back in time. We are talking about Ed McMahon, but not like in a great deal of depth. We're mostly talking about, we're sort of book clubbing his diet book called Slimming Down. Slimming Down. Slimming Down.

So I'm curious about just for you, what do you sort of know slash remember about Ed McMahon and sort of who he is? So Ed McMahon was the sidekick for Johnny Carson, who was an extremely famous, extremely beloved late night talk show host on the tonight show for decades. He was like a fixture in American life.

Yeah, he's like a proto-and-e-rictor, a proto-like all of the sort of talk show side kicks, quote unquote, that we think about now. Yes. He's sort of an early version of the like TV personality. He's not quite an actor. He's not quite a stand-up. He's just sort of this affable kind of utility player who would do things like host telephones and sort of action the sidekick and that kind of thing. We're going to take a little walk through

Edmick Man's career just to like get a little grounding. Oh yes yes yes. So Edmick Man was born and raised in Massachusetts. He as a teenager acted first as a carnival Barker and then as a bingo collar shut up Which feels about as perfect as you can get So his entire job was just shouting stuff. Yeah, just yelling He started to go to college and then he enlisted in the Marines Oh, and was a pilot who fought in World War two. So he's a veteran By 1957 he started work in TV with his most iconic sort of partner in his career,

which was Johnny Carson. They co-hosted this game show called Who Do You Trust? That started in 1957. By 1962, those two moved over to host the tonight show starring Johnny Carson. Okay. Amongst old school comedians, Carson is widely considered to be one of the sort of

gold standards of the genre, right? Yeah. And it was a show that was like really widely credited with sort of making or breaking careers, right? That's how we got Jay Leno. Is that how we got Jay Leno? Was he on Carson? Yeah, he was on Carson, and then he guest hosted for Carson,

and then he eventually took over the tonight show. It was this thing where if you were a standup comedian and Johnny liked you, he would call you over after your standup set and chat with you. It was like getting the stupid Paul Hollywood handshake. It was like this extra level of kudos. Yeah, he was a big sort of kingmaker. Yeah. So they started doing the tonight show in 1962. Ed McMahon was the sidekick on that show

and Johnny Carson was the host of that show for 30 years. I know. It is bananas to think about the fact that they did it five nights a week for that long. It's truly wild. So he sort of starts doing the tonight show. That really, really launches him as sort of like a household name all of that kind of stuff In 1973 he starts tagging on other projects along the way in 73 He starts co-hosting the Jerry Lewis telephones. Yes in the early 80s. I don't know if you remember this I remember it as publishers clearing house He started hosting the publishers clearing house giveaways. Yeah This was like a huge national sweepstakes

The commercials for it were sort of footage of people learning that they had won Mm-hmm And the way that they would learn that they had won was that Ed McMahon would show up at their house with a camera crew and a BoK full of balloons, right? Oh, yeah It turns out that all of that was the Mandela effect wait Wait, what? He did not work for Publishers Clearinghouse. What?

He worked for American Family Publishers, which was their main competitor. What, this has just been living in my brain falsely for years? I'm telling you, it blew my brains out of my head. What? So I just sent you a clip. Part of the reason that I wanted to watch this clip

is as we're digging into this diet book, I will slip into Ed McMahon voice at time because it really is written in Ed McMahon voice. So it's important to like have his voice in our heads as we move forward. This is one of few clips. I'm looking forward to your Ed McMahon chuckle. I haven't worked on that.

That's bad. That's aggressively bad. Okay, let me know when you're ready. Okay, here we go. Only American family has actually awarded cash millions like this. 1982, the first million dollar prize. I won a million. 1983, the first two million dollar prize. I won two million. 1984, another $2 million prize. We won millions. And now the first $10 million prize ever from American family. The winning entry may be in your mail right now. Watch for this envelope.

It could make you super rich. Oh my God. Whenever you see like a 25 year old clip of somebody winning the lottery, never Google their name. It never Google their name. But it never, it never turns out well. Yeah, it's not, it's not great. That's the kind of stuff that you would hire Ed McMahon to do. Right.

You know, there's sort of big highlight that we're gonna talk about before we dive in on diet book. Ed McMahon was the host of Star Search. What do you remember about Star Search, Mike? I mean, now it really only comes up when we're talking about random celebrities of, you know, Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera, they both got started on star search.

So there's this excruciating footage of them like being very talented as children, but then they have to do this miserable small talk with Ed McMahon where he's like, where are you from, young child or whatever? And it's just so bad. I don't know how people could survive watching these shows live.

But basically, for the youths, it was a show where random people would come on and they would sing or dance or play piano or whatever, and then judges would give them a score, and it was like, you're now going to be catapulted into the top echelons of American star-domin, of course, that never happened for like 99.9% of the people on it. But it was a way, there's like, watch random people do random ass shit on like a Saturday

afternoon. I feel like it was on at like 3 p.m. on a Saturday, like the time when like nothing interesting is going on in human life. That's about right. I mean, so in addition to the folks that you mentioned, yes, 99.9% of people had nothing happen. And then I'm going to list off a bunch of the people from the point 1%. Okay, here we go.

Here we go. It's what's about to happen. So here are people who appeared on Star Search at some point in the late 80s, early 90s. Billy Porter, Alia, a Lannis Morris set. Oh, usher, Pitbull, Sharon Stone. Right. Like the list goes on and on and on and on, Norm McDonnell. Wait, can we watch a clip of Ed McMahon on Star Search? Yeah, of course. Because you know that Britney Spears documentary just came out.

There's the clip there where Ed McMahon's talking to Britney Spears. I noticed last week you had the most adorable, pretty eyes. Do you have a boyfriend? Yes, sir. Why not? The mean. The mean.

Boyfriends? You mean all boys are mean. I'm not mean. How about me? What depends. I get that a lot. Now, you grew up on a farm in Missouri. Tell me about that.

Well, lad, it was real nice. So far, post-zero, youngsters too. Okay. Good luck to both of you. Oh my God, I also forgot, this is so brutal. I forgot that they have people vote, right? It is very American Idol, very American's got talent. And it's so rough to think about a child having that experience, like that level of rejection or approval

on national television feels so gnarly to me. The thing is, I think it would be much better for the kids if we had them do a push-up contest every season at school, where this was done in front of all of their peers, and they were judged according to their physical attractiveness and ability. Make them climb a row. Yeah. Do you find these clips excruciating to watch? I like, I can't watch clips like this without covering my face. It's very, very creepy. I will say the part that I cringe hardest at

is the bizarre compulsory heterosexuality that I think folks who were like, not around in the 80s and 90s may not have an understanding of the degree to which like, that was a thing that adults would just ask you like do you have a boyfriend? Do you have a girlfriend? Oh, you're a real lady killer like this weird sort of like painting children into a picture of like an adult heterosexual life. It's very strange. I mean she's 10 It would be weird if she had a boyfriend

Like I don't know what a boyfriend means at that stage and it's also just such a weird thing to ask a 10 year old girl. Well, to say nothing of like, how about me? I'm not mean. Like, yeah. Boy, Ed McMahon. Not all men, Brittany. So, can we pivot into slimming down with Ed McMahon? Yes, let's.

So this book is the book that started my diet book collection. Oh. It sort of got me into this mode of looking for like, oh my god, old diet books are hilarious and they are a window into the ways in which current diet books are also hilarious and wacky. This is a book that is an era just like trapped in amber. Yeah. It came out in 1973 and boy oh boy, can you tell it came out in 1973 and boy oh boy can you tell it came out in 1973 from a guy who was like

Middle-aged in the 70s. That's right. I'm a Johnny Carson Were these people who were just always old like I don't remember them ever being less than like 50 And then they were just on the air and they always had this sort of late 50s early 60s I can't remember them ever really aging within that bracket. Yeah, that's right. We've talked about on this podcast that most diets break down into one of three categories. There's low fat and low calorie, which tend to go together. There is low carb.

And then there are other specific food group restrictions. So when people go gluten-free, when they cut out quote unquote processed foods, when they cut out nightshades, whatever the things are. Prior to getting this book, I absolutely thought of low carb diets as a wave that was started by Dr. Atkins. Are you about to tell me that it was started by Dr. Ed McMahon?

I don't know that it was started by him, but this was absolutely a low-carb diet book. Fascinating. And it is very fun and very bananas. The basic conceit of his diet is, it's just counting calories from carbohydrates. He recommends about 250 quote unquote, carbocals a day.

He's very excited to report that most hard liquor is zero carbocation. It's like a very like, middle aged man in the 70s. There's one point at which he says, quote, do you realize I could have 65 martinis to equal the carbocation of just one French dinner roll? What? How can he just decide that alcohol calories don't count? I have none idea. Interestingly, his version of low carb

is actually like considerably better in some ways than most low carb diets these days. Yeah. He has a whole explainer in there about how carbohydrates are actually necessary. So you don't want to get down to like zero calories from carbohydrates. He sort of talks about like your body and your brain

need carbohydrates to function, which is true. Part of what I love about this book is that it is sort of steeped in this kind of like 60s, 70s, middle aged masculinity. It is also a hall of like forgotten 1960s and 70s foods. So it's like eat a lot of aspect to get the hot brawds. You're so close. So here are some of the chapter titles from the Table of Contents. Are you ready? Give it to me. Chapter 1, I was overweight at birth.

Chapter 2, the breadstick conspiracy. Chapter 3, the potato plot. Chapter 4, two martinis into Connecticut. Chapter 5, sitting up and taking liquids, which is all about how much you can drink on this diet. Oh my God. He has a chapter called MetraCal, Carbocal, and O-Cal Cutter. Oh, Ed, keep workshopping that.

Let's put a pin in that. Let's see if we can top that. Everything you wanted to know about snacks, but we're afraid to ask. It's just like dad joke central. Yeah, I'm imagining a lot of citations to people with the last name, McGillicuddy. This is what I associate with this era in American life.

Yeah, that's about right. Okay, so are you ready for some sample meal plans? Oh, yeah, tell me. Okay, Monday, breakfast, half a grapefruit with artificial sugar Lunch the glass of tab. Wait wait wait. That's the whole breakfast Just a grapefruit with artificial sugar not a whole grapefruit half a grapefruit with like Splenda on it I'm already hungry and I would eat that and be hungry like 20 minutes later I also feel like you skated right past what all of lunch was, which is a glass of tab. That's your whole lunch is a glass of tab.

And. But the thing is, I've had four martinis by that point. So I'm too buzzed to notice how hungry I am. So by dinner, I am like nauseous with hunger. Yes. Is how I would imagine myself feeling? Yes. So here's what you got when your stomach's feeling a little upset because you're so hungry. By dinner, I am like nauseous with hunger. Yes. Is how I would imagine myself feeling. Yes.

So here's what you got when your stomach's feeling a little upset because you're so hungry. For dinner, you better have a steak and a sparigus with hollandaise sauce. Your body is so just like tanked up at that point that you just fall asleep at 6.45. Yeah, that's right. That's right.

Wednesday's meal plan. Breakfast, two scrambled eggs with parmesan cheese on a cup of Sanka Wait, okay, what is Sanka? Sanka is like a an old school like instant coffee. Oh that shit Yeah, instant coffee is like Satan's dandruff. I don't know how anybody drinks it It's just so bitter and empty. Lunch is two hard boiled eggs, and dinner is a shrimp cocktail with thousand island dressing and a steak. This is also a pretty expensive diet. I mean shrimp and steak every night.

By Friday, your breakfast is a cup of sanka, your lunch is a steak and a tab, and your dinner is just something called shrimp platter. Right? He also has suggested snacks that you're supposed to rank in terms of carbocation, like which is the safest snack. So Mike, I'm going to ask you from this list of snacks that time forgot, which of these do you think is lowest in Carbocals, and which of these do you think is highest in Carbocals? Ooh. Two large apples, three ounce package of frozen strawberries, a cream cheese and jelly sandwich.

That's the spirit. Tuna fish salad with whole tomato, a dish of tapioca, or liver worst on rye. Get rid of that unhealthy stuff in your diet like apples and eat these bowls of meat instead. So what do you think of those snacks? What do you think is the lowest in carbocals and what do you think is the highest? It's gotta be the tuna salad, no?

Yeah, tuna salad in a whole tomato. Yes. And highest is a tie for a cream cheese and jelly sandwich, which is a thing I have never heard of before picking up this book. It's probably good though. And it's a tie with two large apples. And so his point here is sort of like, ha ha, you thought apples were healthy?

No, no, no, carbocals. Get those fucking fruits and vegetables out of here. So the other thing to know about this diet book is that it's reference points are really different than what we think of today So 1973 like not a terribly terribly long time ago sort of in the scheme of history, right? But at this point in 1973 the BMI is not actually the standard for weight recommendations Interesting There is this weird sort of patchwork happening about ideal weights, quote unquote, for people,

and the most prevalent, and the one that he actually reprints in this book is insurance actuarial charts. Oh, right. Because that was like all the information we had at the time was from, I guess, like the life insurance companies, right? Of how much they were charging people based on your chances of death, essentially.

Absolutely. So the thinking here is that like, and sort of the argument he makes in the book is that the data must be good because why else would MetLife in particular stake all of their profits on it? Right. To which I would counter Ed McMahon, they're not staking their profits on it. They're figuring out how to charge people more. Like, yeah. Like, the different thing, right? Like, the interesting thing about these insurance charts, I've looked at these quite a few times in the past. They are divided out by gender. There's a different chart for men than there is for women.

They are divided out by height, so there are different recommendations for your height, but there are also these columns for, if you have a quote-unquote, small, medium, or large frame. Oh, okay. The numbers do sort of track with the BMI, with where the BMI ends up landing, right? But it does sort of divide it out and go. You should actually aim for the higher end of this, for the lower end of this sort of spectrum.

And it's just fascinating to me that like, these insurance charts actually are more flexible than the BMI. Yes, because at least there's some acknowledgement these insurance charts actually are more flexible than the BMI. Yeah, because at least there's some acknowledgement that humans vary in sort of the size they should be. You're able to be like, I'm just a larger person, I'm starting from a different baseline

than Gwyneth Paltrow is. Like that seems like, it's not great, but it's way better than the BMI, which is just like you should be this weight, regardless of all other circumstances. Totally. At one point in this book, Ed McMahon talks about another potential incentive program above and beyond the Hoover Charging for Life Insurance plan. This one is in Denmark. Quote, the business of staying physically fit and not overweight actually became part of a

political platform in Denmark a few years back. The Boston Globe reported that a Danish reform party had, as a plank in its platform, a proposed law that would require citizens to hand over one hour's pay every month for each two pounds that they were overweight. You can imagine the whirlwind of exercising that that would have caused. Oh, great. Finally, fat would have caused. Oh, right. Finally, fat people have an incentive to lose weight. Yeah!

Because the world rewards fat people for being fat right now. Yeah, we gotta stop glorifying obesity and start being meaner and make people forgo their wages. Finally. God damn it. This book is shot through with a couple of things that I find really fascinating. And this is I think sort of the bulk of our conversation today. One is it is shot through with so much goddamn misogyny, Michael.

Shocking. There is a chapter in this book, no joke called, let's leave women's live out of this. Nice. Here's what he says, hold it a second, ladies. Before I try to pass myself off here as a semi-authority on your particular weight problems, let me list some of my qualifications.

Oh no. First of all, I'm married. Oh, here it comes. That's second. I have four children and I'm familiar with all phases of home eating and the trickiness of feeding youngsters. Third, I can and do cook everything from simple stews to complicated repasts requiring hours of preparation. Fourth, well, I'm in favor of women in general and in particular.

I am qualified to speak on women's issues because I like having sex with them. Good one, Ed. Throughout the book, he sort of talks about being tempted by food. And it is always paired with like, it's being offered to you, like food you can't have or food that will make you fat is being offered to you by a beautiful thin woman. What? Yeah, so he talks about being at like industry parties and like having like a beautiful server come by

with like a plate full of canopies to offer you or being on a plane and having a beautiful flight attendant bring you a potato. Nice. He's like, you know how when you get on a plane and you sit down and the flight attendant brings you up potato. He's like, you know how when you get on a plane and you sit down and the flight attendant brings you a potato? I was like, what?

This is some wild 70s nonsense. No, I do not know about that Ed McMahon. This is like Gwyneth Paltrow when she gives fitness advice. And it's like, make sure you have a long meeting with your personal trainer, who trains you in your own home. And it's like, I don't know how generalizable this is Gwyneth. He draws on weirdly misogynist quotes from other sources. There is in fact a cameo in here from Ansel Keys. Friend of the show, Ansel Keys. Friend of the show, Ansel Keys, who says, quote, a fairly common experience for us is the wife who finds her husband staying out more and

more. He may be interested in another woman or just like being with the boys, so she fishes around in the cupboard and hauls out a chocolate cake. It's a matter of boredom and the subconscious feeling that she is entitled to something because she's being deprived of something else. The idea is that I'm supposed to be so terrified of losing my partner that I keep weight off at all times. I'm just like living in terrified of losing my partner that I keep weight off at all times. I'm just like living in terror of losing him so I never eat. 100%. Versus the maladaptive version, which Ansel Keese points out is, you get so

worried that you eat all the time. Right. So emotional eating is bad, but emotional not eating is good. Yeah, that's right. There is quite a bit of explicit sort of statements in the book that women are responsible for the weight of their families because women are expected to do the cooking. Of course, you're the family, right? Yes. At one point, he says, you know, if you really are fed up with your husband, what you could do

is put him in the ground with what you cook. Oh. There's no fingerprints. The cops can't catch you. Just feed him a bunch of like fatty terrible foods. What would these foods be, Ed? Would it be a steak and holiday sauce? Yes.

What, what would she be doing? Martini's Ed? So at one point, he says, new brides should know this as they start their family meal habits, which can lead to obesity. Not only must she keep the family healthy, she must keep them slim and happy.

As famed nutritionist Adele Davis says in Let's Eat Right to Keep Fit, many women bury their husbands early just by overfeeding them. What? What does overfeeding and adult mean? So he's like joking, right? Like this is like, a dad joke territory, but it's like horrific dad joke territory. This idea that sort of the looks, the appearance, the weight of your children are the fault of the mother.

It's like this is a recipe for like extremely bad parenting. A lot of people who have like eating disorders also have mothers with eating disorders who modeled that behavior for them, right? Of like not eating all day or like having only a grapefruit for breakfast. It's also just a recipe for gining up what we've seen for decades prior at this point

we will see for decades into the future, which is ultimately like the weight of the nation is the responsibility of women. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And throughout this book, Ed McMahon leans into that. The first sentence of his whole book, so the first chapter is called, I was overweight at birth, he talks about being a nine pound baby,

which like, okay, Ed McMahon. Okay. The first sentence of his whole book is, it's all my grandmother's fault. And then he goes into talking about how his grandmother cooked for their entire family. The first sense of his whole book is, it's all my grandmother's fault. And then he goes into talking about how his grandmother cooked for their entire family. She cooked all their meals growing up. What he says about his grandmother, I find really sad and troubling and fascinating.

Quote, Naturally, there were potatoes at every meal, a carryover from the harsh times in Ireland brought about by the potato famine. And since potatoes are one of the biggest sources of carbohydrates, the Dieter's worst enemy, you can see I was off to a bad start as far as attaining a tapered figure was concerned. But we ate, and we ate plenty,

and we loved every bit of it. So your grandma was nice, and she's cooking you nice meals, and you're mad because you're not tapered. And she survived a potato famine. And then got to a place where they have potatoes. And she was like, awesome, I'm gonna make potatoes. Also like potatoes are a vegetable, potatoes are fine.

They are root vegetables, they are nutrient dense. Yes. But because they are higher in carbohydrates, we have decided that they are, quote unquote, empty calories, which they categorically are not. Yeah, they seem fine. I mean, like, listen, part of what's happening there with the demonization of carbohydrates

is that we are demonizing the foods that poor people can afford. So potatoes, bread, and rice, the staple foods that people living in poverty around the world, right? The things that you can get in large quantity that you can cook up for your family, right? And we're sort of like reifying the idea that like you need to have disposable

income in order to be thin and healthy, right? Right. The answer can't be that it's okay for you to eat food that the poor's eat. Right. We can't have that. You got to have moon juice and you got to have sex dust and you got to have steak with holland days and you got to have a shrimp platter. Like you have to have all of this stuff that is very well out of reach for a lot of people. I am shocked and disappointed to discover that Ed McMahon does not have an intersectional anti-capitalist analysis of the obesity epidemic. Unbelievably deeply disappointing.

This book is really shot through with misogyny. It is also shot through with anti-fatness in a way that like, of course, it's a diet book, right? But there is like extra gnarly anti-fatness that shows up at one point. He talks about not knowing that he was fat and having friends who were like too nice to tell you, which has not been my fucking experience, Ed McMahon.

I know, but okay. This is one of those, I think probably dude fatness versus lady fatness and 70s fatness, really wanting 20s fatness. There are lots of confounding factors here. I also think, as we discussed on the show so many times, this is also before the panic over the obesity epidemic, because that only started in the 1980s.

And I wonder if there's less of the sort of the fake sense of obligation that we have now around health. Like, look, she really needs to hear from me that this is bad for her health. I wonder if the bullying was like somewhat tamped down. Back then, by the fact that there just wasn't, this wasn't seen as sort of a societal problem.

I feel like the construction of the obesity epidemic just really gives people like a license to treat fat people like shit. Yeah, there is a whole chapter in here on health that is sort of a blueprint of what kind of comes to be in our conversations about health and fatness. He quotes a doctor who says that overweight is America's number one health problem. But the way that it's written is like I'm introducing readers to this idea that being fat is like a big

health problem. It's sort of the vibe that I got from it. Yeah. Yeah. So this is where we get into like boy-o-boy internalized anti-fatness is a real bear. So when he talks about not knowing that he was getting fat He says quote you know the story about Bertha the fat lady who weighs in at 600 pounds telling huge Hannah quote You're just right Hannah weighs 390 now that's heavy, but to big Bertha Hannah's just right. What? Right, the idea is like, your friends are too nice to tell you how fat you're getting. You have fat friends, you absolutely can't trust them. Because they think it's just fine to be fat and because you're less fat than they are,

they won't tell you the hard truth. And you need someone who will really give you the straight dope, his sort of the thinking here. Right. You need every interaction to be vained with people being shitty to you about your work. Yeah, at one point he sort of mocks the idea of like a group of fat people gathering.

He says, quote, I've had daydreams of a bunch of obese carolers standing on a corner singing, we shall overeat. Oh, there's that late night host humor coming through. It's so gross. Yeah, I was getting really frustrated with the amount of anti-fatness in this book and the amount of sort of like internalized anti-fatness that the student is just like spewing all over everything. Again, not surprising. It's a diet book, but it just does go like over the top a couple of times. And then he starts talking about his experience

working on the tonight show. And it's fucking heartbreaking, right? Yeah. He does this whole sort of preamble about like, look, there are bad bosses and there are good bosses. Bad bosses will sort of use their employees to make themselves feel better. There's a bullies, their jibes, all that kind of stuff.

Oh no. He says, he wants to be clear that like, Johnny Carson isn't a bad boss. He's a great guy. But, and here it is. I'm gonna be in trouble. Quote, this is the type of material Johnny will hit me with during one of his monologues.

Oh my God. The airline gives garment bags to the entire staff for our trip to California, even Ed. His is a little unusual. He has the only garment bag roomy enough to sleep six. Oh. Quote, you all know Ed McMahon, the blue bird of flabbiness. That's not even a joke.

That's really nice. That's just mean. Sort of throughout the book, any time he talks about Johnny Carson pretty much, he's like, look, he's a great guy, but I really don't like it when he does this. And then talks about being like publicly ridiculed by this guy. It's really uncomfortable. Yeah, and also, I feel like that also gives other people license to make the same kinds of jokes.

That when people see what like public appearances, like he was probably getting these kinds of jokes from random ass people too. Like, it would just, it would just wear you down. Yes, and sort of reifying this idea that like, listen, fat people have it coming. We know we have it coming. We're not going to resist. We're not going to tell you to do better or treat us like people. I know this is going to keep happening. I know that this is part and parcel of being in the public eye and of being like not a thin man in the public eye. And it still bothers me. Yeah, yeah.

So at the end he says, quote, now I ask you, is that any way to treat a faithful trusted employee who's labored in the vineyards of commercial TV with one man almost 15 years? But it's all in fun. It helps the show and I'm getting used to it. And besides, he is the boss. Oh my fucking god. See, if this was happening now, Ed McMahon would do a YouTube video with all the receipts and like,

sharing the grabs by the DS holy shit. But like, if I think about being Ed McMahon in that scenario, I'm onstage every night. This is seen as a totally fine and very funny thing to do to a guy whose job it is to go along to get along, right? He can't say anything. That brings the show to a grinding halt. He is the boss and this is a time when like folks are like not really critical of work hierarchies, right? Yeah. So he just doesn't push back. And it becomes so profound that like he starts losing weight and he has this little experience. Oh no. Quote, singer Delarice, who occasionally is guest hostess on the tonight show, had been away for several months. She didn't

know I had gone on my new plan. She looked at me, did a double take and said, well, hello Slim, I don't know the rate of exchange on words for dollars, but that remark was worth plenty to me. Ah. Yeah, because you are working every day with a dude who like talks shit about your weight, just someone acknowledged that you're getting thinner and you were like, yes, thank God I'm on my way out of this garbage, right?

Ah. Like of course it meant so much to him. He's in just like such a terrible abusive workplace and he's trying to solve the abusiveness of the workplace by getting rid of the reason that he's being bullied. And like, that's not how bullies work, Ed. It's totally not how bullies work as evidenced by even when he loses weight. Johnny Carson doubles down on these jokes about Ed McMahon being an alcoholic. So much so that like when I asked the boomers in my life, what do you remember about Ed McMahon?

They were like, oh, famous drinker. And in this book, he's like, I don't really drink that much. But like Johnny kept making jokes about it. There's a joke in there where he says, Ed's a light drinker. As soon as it gets light, he starts drinking. Oh. Quote, Ed went for his annual physical today. The doctor found an olive in his bloodstream.

All right, that one's pretty good. Yeah, but it also means. Like, it's like stuff like that where I'm just like, I don't know, man, could you do this without treating your like trusted colleague as like a total punching bag in public? Is this the part of the episode where we get to talk about what a piece of shit Johnny Carson was?

Yes, because I don't know anything about Johnny Carson sort of in particular, outside of this book, where he seems like a real fucking piece of shit, if I'm honest. This is like something that lives rent-free in my head that it was like almost 10 years ago now that I read a book called Johnny Carson by a guy named Henry Bushkin who was Johnny Carson's longtime lawyer and they were extremely good friends for I think

it was like 15 years and then he pissed off Johnny Carson in some way. He's not totally sure what exactly he did. And then Johnny Carson just never talked to him again. And in this book, he describes that like, this was Johnny Carson's MO, that he would have these close relationships in his life, like wives, his fucking children, very close friends, people that he grew up with,

and then they would do something to piss him off, and he would just cut them out and never speak to them again. And this is eventually what happened with Ed McMahon and Johnny Carson. That after Johnny Carson famously leaves the tonight show, he leaves Hollywood completely. And he never speaks to Ed McMahon ever again after he leaves the show. What?

Yes, there's lots of other stuff too. Like, kill fire workers for making one mistake. And then not even do it to their face. Like, guys that have worked for him for like 10 or 15 years. He also treated women terribly. Everyone from women he would meet on these comedy tours, to his four wives. He just treated everyone like shit. He also, this is cold. But when he was on break from the tonight show,

he would go to Vegas to do these comedy shows. And he just did the same comedy act. Like word for word, the same thing for like three decades. It just was like lazy and mean. I sure do wish that we had conversations that also accounted for this experience of celebrities. Do you know what I mean? Like I am not saying by any means

that people's fond memories of watching Carson or McMahon are like out the window and you can't like them anymore. But I am saying like we should be honest about who these people were in their fullness. Yes, comedic genius and yes, also real shitty to workers and real shitty to like people in his life and real shitty to Ed McMahon who then turned around and was pretty shitty throughout this book to other fat people. Never great. I think that there is such a thing as presentism where you sort of view the actions of the past

through 2021 lenses. I think it's fair to put things in the context. I think that these things were within bounds for the social and sexual mores of the time, but also those mores were bad. Like, I think it's also fine to say that sort of given what people expected of celebrities in the 60s and 70s, like Johnny Carson's behavior is pretty much par for the course. But that's a shitty course, and it's good that we have a different course now and a different par.

Yeah, that's right. This is literally what like social progress is. Is we have different rules for behavior now than we used to. Yeah, I mean, the vibe that I get from Ed McMahon in this whole book is that he is navigating a relationship with a dude who's like, Loki abusive. Toxic as fuck. Yeah, totally. Like abusive in a way that is like socially acceptable at the time, and he's sort of figuring out how to negotiate his relationship to this dude, who signs his goddamn paychecks.

Yeah, yeah. He is sort of tied to this dude who's being really publicly awful to him. Yeah. And he's having reactions to that, and his reaction to that is, you know, as is the case with many people who are in sort of like abusive or toxic situations, is he tries to sort of people please his way through it, right? And he's like, if you don't like that, then I'll lose weight. Yeah.

It's just sort of like whatever he can do to sort of maintain his relationship and his standing in this space is what he's, is what he's doing. And part of how he does that is by turning around and talking about huge Hannah and Big Bertha or Bertha the fat lady or whatever it is, right? Yeah. I mean, do you think that part of the reason this is so hurtful to Ed is that he's not able to say to Johnny Carson like, hey, this hurts my feelings. It seems like they didn't really have language for that sort of thing, especially between

men. Yeah, I mean, amongst men at that time that would have been a challenging thing, amongst male comedians at that time. I know. Yeah. That's a rare thing amongst male comedians at that time. I know. That's a rare thing amongst male comedians now. It's just fascinating to have this sort of like little look into mid-century weight loss stuff, particularly through a man's eyes

in a way that is still so clearly pinned to women. Right. It's an interesting portrait because it's a man who's talking about his weight and a man who's talking about his feelings, two things that were not sort of encouraged for men to do at that time. Absolutely. And he does bury all of those feelings in so many jokes, so much weird, like sort of misogyny of the time, racism of the time, all of that kind of stuff, and sort of like shitting on other fat people, which is like part of how anti-fatness works, right? It's also part of the reason that like,

you will hear fat people and fat activists in particular talk about how incredibly painful and difficult it can be to talk to people who used to be fat and lost a lot of weight. Because often those are folks who have bought in, they're like, I earned my privilege, right? And part of the sort of bounty that I get for sort of finally attaining thinness is that I too get to shit on fat people.

This is a sign that I have sort of reached a level of privilege and I really am a thin person. Right. Because I can sort of like, you know, talk down to fat people in this way that I absolutely hated, but thought was justified when I was fat, right? And that's sort of what's happening in this book where you're like, oh my God, why are you being so shitty to fat people? And then there are these little moments

where you see how Johnny Carson is treating him where you see how people treated him, you know, growing up or whatever the things are and you're like, oh, that's why. But it does feel like, again, like a really fascinating look into this whole world. And into this complicated man with a terrible boss. Yeah, that's right. So that's what I got for slimming down with Ed McMahon.

I feel very well educated. I'm just, I'm cracking open a can of tab next to me. Good you're saying, God. I got a steak under the broiler. What? Shrimp in the fridge. I'm ready to finally slim down to my MetLife predicted way. Thank you. you