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

00:00:00.000 all right do you want to hear my excellent tagline i can't wait here's maintenance phase

00:00:17.700 this is my best work this is the best thing i've ever done i love that so much but also i think i

00:00:27.600 maybe hate it it's a big swing i'll give you that i am michael hobbs i'm a reporter for the

00:00:33.900 huffington post i'm aubrey gordon i'm conflicted about how i feel we are on patreon at patreon.com

00:00:41.600 slash maintenance phase and if you want t-shirts or stickers or tote bags we have those on t public

00:00:45.860 you can find all of that and more at maintenance phase.com yes so today we're taking a little trip

00:00:52.280 back in time we are talking about ed mcmahon but not like in a great deal of depth we're mostly

00:00:58.340 talking about we're sort of book clubbing his diet book called slimming down slimming down so i'm

00:01:06.020 curious about just for you what do you sort of know slash remember about ed mcmahon and sort of

00:01:12.040 who he is so ed mcmahon was the sidekick for johnny carson who was an extremely famous extremely

00:01:20.320 beloved late night talk show host on the tonight show for decades he was like a fixture in american

00:01:27.440 life yeah he's like a proto andy richter a proto like all of the sort of talk show sidekicks quote

00:01:33.860 unquote that we think about now yes he's sort of an early version of the like tv personality he's

00:01:39.480 not quite an actor he's not quite a stand-up he's just sort of this right affable kind of utility

00:01:45.140 player who would do things like host telethons and sort of act as a sidekick and that kind of

00:01:50.480 thing. We're going to take a little walk through Ed McMahon's career just to like get a little

00:01:54.800 grounding. Oh, yes, yes, yes. So Ed McMahon was born and raised in Massachusetts. He as a teenager

00:02:01.460 acted first as a carnival barker and then as a bingo caller. Shut up. Which feels about as 1.00

00:02:08.760 perfect as you can get. So his entire job was just shouting stuff? Yeah, just yelling. He started to

00:02:14.320 go to college. And then he enlisted in the Marines and was a pilot who fought in World War II. So

00:02:20.080 he's a veteran. By 1957, he started work in TV with his most iconic sort of partner in his career,

00:02:27.920 which was Johnny Carson. They co-hosted this game show called Who Do You Trust?

00:02:33.480 That started in 1957. By 1962, those two moved over to host The Tonight Show starring Johnny

00:02:39.860 Carson. Okay. Amongst old school comedians, Carson is widely considered to be one of the

00:02:46.720 sort of gold standards of the genre, right? Yeah. And it was a show that was like really

00:02:51.800 widely credited with sort of making or breaking careers, right? That's how we got Jay Leno.

00:02:56.560 Is that how we got Jay Leno? Was he on Carson? Yeah, he was on Carson. And then he guest hosted

00:03:00.980 for Carson. And then he eventually took over The Tonight Show. It was this thing where if you were

00:03:06.540 stand-up comedian and johnny liked you he would call you over after your stand-up set and chat 0.99

00:03:12.100 with you it was like getting the stupid paul hollywood handshake it was like this extra level 0.94

00:03:16.920 of kudos yeah he was a big sort of king maker yeah so they started doing the tonight show 0.99

00:03:23.940 in 1962 ed mcmahon was the sidekick on that show and johnny carson was the host of that show for

00:03:30.380 30 years. I know. It is bananas to think about the fact that they did it five nights a week for

00:03:37.140 that long. It's truly wild. So he sort of starts doing The Tonight Show. That really, really

00:03:42.940 launches him as sort of like a household name, all of that kind of stuff. In 1973, he starts tagging

00:03:49.040 on other projects along the way. In 73, he starts co-hosting the Jerry Lewis telethon. Yes. In the

00:03:55.900 early 80s. I don't know if you remember this. I remembered it as Publishers Clearinghouse. He

00:04:00.420 started hosting the Publishers Clearinghouse giveaways. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This was like a

00:04:04.100 huge national sweepstakes. The commercials for it were sort of footage of people learning that they

00:04:10.160 had won. And the way that they would learn that they had won was that Ed McMahon would show up

00:04:15.640 at their house with a camera crew and a bouquet full of balloons, right? Oh yeah. It turns out

00:04:21.100 that all of that was the Mandela effect.

00:04:24.540 Wait, what?

00:04:25.020 He did not work for Publishers Clearinghouse.

00:04:27.780 What?

00:04:28.120 He worked for American Family Publishers,

00:04:30.920 which was their main competitor.

00:04:32.820 What?

00:04:33.060 This has just been living in my brain falsely for years?

00:04:36.280 I'm telling you, it blew my brains out of my head.

00:04:39.040 What?

00:04:39.660 So I just sent you a clip.

00:04:41.320 Part of the reason that I wanted to watch this clip

00:04:42.840 is as we're digging into this diet book,

00:04:45.360 I will slip into Ed McMahon voice at times

00:04:48.380 because it really is written in ed mcmahon voice so it feels important to like have his voice in

00:04:55.620 our heads as we move forward this is one of few clips i'm looking forward to your ed mcmahon

00:04:59.960 chuckle i haven't worked on that's bad that's aggressively bad okay let me know when you're

00:05:06.120 okay here we go only american family has actually awarded cash millions like this

00:05:11.940 1982 the first million dollar prize i won a million 1983 the first two million dollar prize

00:05:18.760 i won two million 1984 another two million dollar prize we won millions and now the first

00:05:26.040 10 million dollar prize ever from american family the winning entry may be in your mail right now

00:05:32.200 watch for this envelope it could make you super rich oh my god whenever you see like a 25 year

00:05:41.300 old clip of somebody winning the lottery, never Google their name. Like it never, it never turns

00:05:47.280 out well. Yeah. It's not, it's not great. That's the kind of stuff that you would hire Ed McMahon

00:05:52.140 to do. Right. The other sort of big highlight that we're going to talk about before we dive

00:05:56.020 in on Dietbook, Ed McMahon was the host of Star Search. What do you remember about Star Search,

00:06:02.080 Mike? I mean, now it really only comes up when we're talking about random celebrities of,

00:06:06.820 you know, Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera. They both got started on Star Search.

00:06:10.880 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?

00:06:21.380 And it's just so bad.

00:06:23.120 I don't know how people could survive watching these shows live.

00:06:26.440 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.

00:06:33.260 And then judges would give them a score.

00:06:35.340 And it was like, you're now going to be catapulted into the top echelons of American

00:06:39.540 stardom.

00:06:39.940 And of course, that never happened for like 99.9% of the people on it. 0.99

00:06:42.860 But it was a way to just like watch random people do random ass shit on like a Saturday 0.99

00:06:47.060 afternoon. 0.99

00:06:47.860 I feel like it was on at like 3pm on a Saturday, like the time when like nothing interesting

00:06:53.020 is going on in human life.

00:06:54.680 That's about right.

00:06:55.380 I mean, so in addition to the folks that you mentioned, yes, 99.9% of people had nothing

00:07:00.120 happened.

00:07:00.660 And then I'm going to list off a bunch of the people from the 0.1%.

00:07:03.640 Okay, here we go. 0.58

00:07:04.500 Here we go.

00:07:05.040 It's what's about to happen.

00:07:06.700 So here are people who appeared on Star Search at some point in the late 80s or early 90s.

00:07:12.060 Billy Porter, Aaliyah, Alanis Morissette, Usher, Pitbull, Sharon Stone.

00:07:20.060 Right?

00:07:20.400 Like the list goes on and on and on and on and on.

00:07:22.320 Norm MacDonald.

00:07:23.400 Wait, can we watch a clip of Ed McMahon on Star Search?

00:07:25.480 Yeah, of course.

00:07:26.520 Because, you know, that Britney Spears documentary just came out.

00:07:29.400 There's a clip there where Ed McMahon's talking to Britney Spears.

00:07:32.880 I noticed last week you had the most adorable, pretty eyes.

00:07:37.540 Do you have a boyfriend?

00:07:38.460 No, sir.

00:07:39.560 Why not?

00:07:40.580 They're mean.

00:07:43.660 Boyfriends? You mean all boys are mean?

00:07:45.420 I'm not mean. How about me?

00:07:47.540 Well, it depends.

00:07:49.920 I get that a lot.

00:07:52.100 Now, you grew up on a farm in Missouri.

00:07:54.580 Tell me about that.

00:07:55.900 Well, Ed, it was real nice.

00:08:00.260 So far, host zero?

00:08:02.880 Youngsters too. Okay. Good luck to both of you. 0.92

00:08:06.320 Oh my God. I also forgot, this is so brutal. I forgot that they have people vote, right? It is

00:08:13.680 very American Idol, very America's Got Talent. And it's so rough to think about a child having

00:08:20.320 that experience, like that level of like rejection or approval on national television feels so gnarly

00:08:26.340 to me. The thing is, I think it'd be much better for the kids if we had them do a pushup contest

00:08:31.000 every single year at school where this was done in front of all of their peers and they were judged

00:08:35.580 according to their physical attractiveness and ability. Make them climb a road. Yeah.

00:08:41.680 Do you find these clips excruciating to watch? I like, I can't watch clips like this without

00:08:45.920 covering my face. It's very, very creepy. I will say the part that I cringe hardest at

00:08:50.260 is the bizarre compulsory heterosexuality that I think folks who were like,

00:08:55.140 not around in the 80s and 90s may not have an understanding of the degree to which like

00:09:01.760 that was a thing that adults would just ask you. Like, do you have a boyfriend? Do you have a

00:09:06.560 girlfriend? Oh, you're a real lady killer. Like this weird sort of like painting children into 1.00

00:09:12.500 a picture of like an adult heterosexual life. It's very strange. I mean, she's 10. It would

00:09:19.160 be weird if she had a boyfriend. Like, I don't know what a boyfriend means at that stage. And

00:09:23.580 it's also just such a weird thing to ask a 10 year old girl well to say nothing of like how about me

00:09:28.440 i'm not mean like what are you doing ed mcmahon not all men britney so can we pivot into slimming

00:09:36.740 down with ed mcmahon yes let's so this book is the book that started my diet book collection

00:09:43.820 oh it sort of got me into this mode of looking for like oh my god old diet books are hilarious

00:09:50.960 And they are a window into the ways in which current diet books are also hilarious and

00:09:55.360 wacky.

00:09:56.000 This is a book that is an era just like trapped in amber.

00:10:01.160 It came out in 1973.

00:10:03.740 And boy, oh boy, can you tell it came out in 1973 from a guy who was like middle-aged

00:10:10.180 in the 70s.

00:10:11.540 That's the thing.

00:10:12.080 Him and Johnny Carson were these people who were just always old.

00:10:15.760 Like, I don't remember them ever being less than like 50.

00:10:19.000 and then they were just on the air and they always had this sort of late 50s early 60s i can't

00:10:24.180 remember them ever really aging within that bracket yeah that's right we've talked about

00:10:28.240 on this podcast that like sort of most diets break down into one of three categories there's like

00:10:33.080 low fat and low calorie which tend to sort of go together there is low carb and then there are sort

00:10:39.900 of like other specific food group restrictions so when people go gluten-free when they cut out

00:10:45.540 quote-unquote processed foods, when they cut out nightshades, whatever the things are.

00:10:49.940 Prior to getting this book, I absolutely thought of low-carb diets as a wave that was started by

00:10:55.560 Dr. Atkins. Are you about to tell me that it was started by Dr. Ed McMahon?

00:11:00.420 I don't know that it was started by him, but this was absolutely a low-carb diet book.

00:11:05.340 Fascinating. And it is very fun and very bananas. The basic conceit of his diet is

00:11:12.280 it's just counting calories from carbohydrates oh he recommends about 250 quote unquote carbocals a

00:11:20.600 day he's very excited to report that most hard liquor is zero carbocals it's like a very like

00:11:28.200 middle-aged man in the 70s there's one point at which he says quote do you realize i could have

00:11:33.600 65 martinis to equal the carbocals of just one french dinner roll what how could he just decide

00:11:41.140 that alcohol calories don't count. I have none idea. Interestingly, his version of low carb is

00:11:47.360 actually like considerably better in some ways than most low carb diets these days. Yeah. He has

00:11:53.560 a whole explainer in there about how carbohydrates are actually necessary. So you don't want to get

00:11:58.200 down to like zero calories from carbohydrates. He sort of talks about like, your body and your

00:12:04.020 brain need carbohydrates to function, which is true. Part of what I love about this book is that

00:12:09.580 it is sort of steeped in this kind of like 60s, 70s, middle-aged masculinity. It is also a haul

00:12:16.640 of like forgotten 1960s and 70s foods. So it's like, eat a lot of aspic to get the hot broads.

00:12:24.080 You're so close. So here are some of the chapter titles from the table of contents. Are you ready? 1.00

00:12:30.200 Ooh, give it to me. Chapter one, I was overweight at birth. Chapter two,

00:12:33.880 the breadstick conspiracy. Chapter three, the potato plot. Chapter four, two martinis into

00:12:40.640 Connecticut. Chapter five, sitting up and taking liquids, which is all about how much you can drink

00:12:47.620 on this diet. Oh my God. He has a chapter called Metro Cal, Carbo Cal and O Cal Cutter. Oh, Ed,

00:12:56.180 keep workshopping that. Let's put a pin in that. Let's see if we can top that. Everything you 0.97

00:13:00.580 wanted to know about snacks, but were afraid to ask. It's just like dad joke central. Yeah. I'm

00:13:04.820 imagining a lot of citations to people with the last name McGillicuddy. This is what I associate

00:13:11.080 with this era in American life. Yeah, that's about right. Okay. So are you ready for some

00:13:15.640 sample meal plans? Oh yeah. Tell me. Okay. Monday. Breakfast. Half a grapefruit with

00:13:22.660 artificial sugar. Lunch. A glass of tab. Wait, wait, wait. That's the whole breakfast?

00:13:29.880 Just a grapefruit with artificial sugar?

00:13:32.060 Not a whole grapefruit, half a grapefruit.

00:13:34.020 Half a grapefruit.

00:13:34.620 With like Splenda on it.

00:13:36.680 I'm already hungry, Ed.

00:13:38.200 I would eat that and be hungry like 20 minutes later.

00:13:40.480 I also feel like you skated right past what all of lunch was, which is a glass of tab.

00:13:47.400 That's your whole lunch is a glass of tab.

00:13:51.640 Ed.

00:13:52.280 But the thing is, I've had four martinis by that point.

00:13:55.240 So I'm too buzzed to notice how hungry I am.

00:13:59.360 So by dinner, I am like nauseous with hunger is how I would imagine myself feeling.

00:14:04.480 Yes.

00:14:04.900 So here's what you got when your stomach's feeling a little upset because you're so hungry.

00:14:08.260 For dinner, you better have a steak and asparagus with hollandaise sauce.

00:14:14.060 Your body is so just like tanked up at that point that you just fall asleep at 645.

00:14:18.820 Yeah, that's right.

00:14:21.200 Wednesday's meal plan.

00:14:22.720 Breakfast, two scrambled eggs with Parmesan cheese and a cup of Sanka.

00:14:26.900 Wait, OK, what is Sanka?

00:14:28.040 Sanka is like an old school, like, instant coffee. 1.00

00:14:33.420 Oh, that shit? 1.00

00:14:34.620 Yeah. 1.00

00:14:35.180 Instant coffee is like Satan's dandruff.

00:14:38.520 I don't know how anybody drinks it.

00:14:40.320 It's just so bitter and empty.

00:14:42.820 Lunch is two hard-boiled eggs.

00:14:45.440 And dinner is a shrimp cocktail with Thousand Island dressing and a steak.

00:14:53.420 This is also a pretty expensive diet.

00:14:56.260 I'm eating shrimp and steak every night.

00:14:58.120 By Friday, your breakfast is a cup of Sanka.

00:15:01.800 Your lunch is a steak and a tab.

00:15:04.260 And your dinner is just something called shrimp platter.

00:15:07.860 He also has suggested snacks that you're supposed to rank in terms of Carbo Cals,

00:15:14.100 like which is the safest snack.

00:15:16.320 So, Mike, I'm going to ask you from this list of snacks that time forgot,

00:15:20.920 which of these do you think is lowest in Carbo Cals?

00:15:23.580 And which of these do you think is highest in Carbocals?

00:15:26.540 Two large apples, a three-ounce package of frozen strawberries, a cream cheese and jelly sandwich.

00:15:34.980 That's the spirit.

00:15:35.680 Tuna fish salad with whole tomato, a dish of tapioca, or liverwurst on rye.

00:15:43.620 Get rid of that unhealthy stuff in your diet like apples and eat these bowls of meat instead.

00:15:48.700 it. So what do you think of those snacks? What do you think is the lowest in carbocals? And what

00:15:54.980 do you think is the highest? It's got to be the tuna salad, no? Yeah, tuna salad and a whole

00:15:59.300 tomato. Yes. And highest is a tie for a cream cheese and jelly sandwich, which is a thing I

00:16:05.880 have never heard of before picking up this book. That's probably good, though. And it's a tie with

00:16:10.440 two large apples. Yes. And so his point here is sort of like, ha ha, you thought apples were

00:16:15.000 healthy. No, no, no. Carbo-cals. Get those fucking fruits and vegetables out of here.

00:16:20.300 So the other thing to know about this diet book is that its reference points 0.99

00:16:24.120 are really different than what we think of today. So 1973, like not a terribly,

00:16:29.240 terribly long time ago, sort of in the scheme of history, right? But at this point in 1973,

00:16:35.600 the BMI is not actually the standard for weight recommendations.

00:16:39.700 There is this weird sort of patchwork happening about ideal weights, quote unquote,

00:16:45.000 people. And the most prevalent and the one that he actually reprints in this book is insurance

00:16:52.360 actuarial charts. Oh, right. Because that was like all the information we had at the time

00:16:57.860 was from, I guess, like the life insurance companies, right? Of how much they were charging

00:17:01.460 people based on your chances of death, essentially. Absolutely. So the thinking here is that like,

00:17:08.120 and sort of the argument he makes in the book is that the data must be good because why else would

00:17:12.960 MetLife in particular, stake all of their profits on it. To which I would counter Ed McMahon,

00:17:18.740 they're not staking their profits on it. They're figuring out how to charge people more.

00:17:23.140 That's a different thing, right? The interesting thing about these insurance charts, I've looked

00:17:28.060 at these quite a few times in the past. They are divided out by gender. There's a different chart

00:17:32.680 for men than there is for women. They are divided out by height. So there are different recommendations 0.95

00:17:37.140 for your height. But there are also these columns for if you have a quote unquote, small, medium,

00:17:42.240 or large frame. Oh, okay. The numbers do sort of track with the BMI with where the BMI ends up

00:17:48.860 landing, right? But it does sort of divide it out and go, you should actually aim for the

00:17:53.820 higher end of this or the lower end of this sort of spectrum. And it's just fascinating to me that

00:17:59.380 like these insurance charts actually are more flexible than the BMI. Yeah, because at least

00:18:05.960 there's some acknowledgement that humans vary in sort of the size they should be you're able to be

00:18:12.940 like i'm just a larger person i'm starting from a different baseline than gwyneth paltrow is like

00:18:17.440 that seems like it's not great but it's way better than the bmi which is just like you should be this

00:18:22.540 weight regardless of all other circumstances totally at one point in this book ed mcmahon

00:18:27.700 talks about another potential incentive program above and beyond the overcharging for life

00:18:33.160 insurance plan. This one is in Denmark. Quote, the business of staying physically fit and not

00:18:39.600 overweight actually became part of a political platform in Denmark a few years back. The Boston

00:18:45.620 Globe reported that a Danish reform party had, as a plank in its platform, a proposed law that

00:18:51.540 would require citizens to hand over one hour's pay every month for each two pounds that they

00:18:58.480 were overweight oh you can imagine the whirlwind of exercising that that would have caused uh

00:19:04.440 right finally fat people will have an incentive to lose weight finally because the world rewards

00:19:09.300 fat people for being fat right now yeah we gotta we gotta stop glorifying obesity and start being 0.94

00:19:14.040 meaner and yeah make people forego their wages finally god damn it this book is shot through 0.96

00:19:23.820 with a couple of things that I find really fascinating. And this is, I think, sort of

00:19:28.720 the bulk of our conversation today. One is it is shot through with so much goddamn misogyny, 0.99

00:19:35.400 Michael Hawks. Shocking. There is a chapter in this book, no joke, called Let's Leave Women's 1.00

00:19:42.440 Lib Out of This. Nice. Here's what he says. Hold it a second, ladies. Before I try to pass myself 1.00

00:19:49.840 off here as a semi-authority on your particular weight problems let me list some of my qualifications

00:19:55.320 oh no first of all i'm married oh here it comes second i have four children and i'm familiar with

00:20:03.380 all phases of home eating and the trickiness of feeding youngsters third i can and do cook

00:20:10.720 everything from simple stews to complicated repasts requiring hours of preparation fourth 1.00

00:20:16.540 Well, I'm in favor of women in general and in particular. 1.00

00:20:23.380 I am qualified to speak on women's issues because I like having sex with them. 1.00

00:20:29.460 Good one, Ed. 1.00

00:20:30.900 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.

00:20:43.280 is being offered to you by a beautiful thin woman what yeah so he talks about being at like industry

00:20:49.840 parties and like having like a beautiful server come by with like a plate full of canapes to

00:20:55.980 offer you or being on a plane and having a beautiful flight attendant bring you a potato

00:21:02.060 nice he's like you know how when you get on a plane and you sit down and the flight attendant

00:21:05.780 brings you a potato i was like this is some wild 70s nonsense no i do not know about that ed mcmahon

00:21:12.440 This is like Gwyneth Paltrow when she gives fitness advice and it's like, make sure you

00:21:17.920 have a long meeting with your personal trainer who trains you in your own home.

00:21:22.820 And it's like, I don't know how generalizable this is, Gwyneth.

00:21:25.080 He draws on weirdly misogynist quotes from other sources.

00:21:29.820 There is, in fact, a cameo in here from Ansel Keys.

00:21:33.240 Friend of the show, Ansel Keys.

00:21:35.360 Friend of the show, Ansel Keys, who says, quote,

00:21:38.540 A fairly common experience for us is the wife who finds her husband staying out more and more.

00:21:44.460 He may be interested in another woman or just like being with the boys.

00:21:47.980 So she fishes around in the cupboard and hauls out a chocolate cake. 0.52

00:21:52.320 It's a matter of boredom and the subconscious feeling that she is entitled

00:21:55.800 to something because she's being deprived of something else.

00:21:59.300 The idea is that I'm supposed to be so terrified of losing my partner

00:22:03.140 that I keep weight off at all times.

00:22:05.520 I'm just like living in terror of losing him.

00:22:08.120 So I never eat 100% versus the maladaptive version, which Ansel Keys points out is you

00:22:15.200 get so worried that you eat all the time.

00:22:17.200 Right.

00:22:17.500 So emotional eating is bad, but emotional not eating is good.

00:22:22.180 Yeah, that's right. 0.95

00:22:23.080 There is quite a bit of explicit sort of statements in the book that women are responsible for

00:22:30.120 the weight of their families because women are expected to do the cooking. 1.00

00:22:33.980 Of course. 1.00

00:22:34.340 for the family right yes at one point he says you know if you really are fed up with your husband

00:22:39.960 what you could do is put him in the ground with what you cook oh there's no fingerprints the cops

00:22:44.680 can't catch you just feed him a bunch of like fatty terrible foods what would these foods be

00:22:49.680 ed would it be a steak and hollandaise sauce what what would she be doing martinis ed 0.77

00:22:57.000 um so at one point he says new brides should know this as they start their family meal habits which 0.96

00:23:05.920 can lead to obesity not only must she keep the family healthy she must keep them slim and happy 0.94

00:23:11.800 as famed nutritionist adele davis says in let's eat right to keep fit many women bury their

00:23:19.000 husbands early just by overfeeding them what what is overfeeding an adult mean so he's like joking

00:23:25.860 right like this is like dad joke territory but it's like horrific dad joke territory this idea

00:23:32.180 that sort of the looks the appearance the weight of your children are the fault of the mother it's

00:23:37.640 like this is a recipe for like extremely bad parenting a lot of people who have like eating

00:23:42.800 disorders also have mothers with eating disorders who modeled that behavior for them right of like

00:23:47.640 not eating all day or like having only a grapefruit for breakfast it's also just a recipe

00:23:53.440 for ginning up what we've seen for decades prior at this point we will see for decades into the 0.99

00:23:59.140 future which is ultimately like the weight of the nation is the responsibility of women yeah yeah

00:24:05.100 absolutely and throughout this book ed mcmahon leans into that the first sentence of his whole

00:24:12.160 book so the first chapter is called i was overweight at birth he talks about being a nine

00:24:16.140 pound baby which like okay ed mcmahon okay the first sentence of his whole book is it's all my

00:24:23.080 grandmother's fault. And then he goes into talking about how his grandmother cooked for their entire

00:24:28.200 family. She cooked all their meals growing up. What he says about his grandmother, I find really

00:24:34.680 sad and troubling and fascinating. Quote, naturally, there were potatoes at every meal,

00:24:39.820 a carryover from the harsh times in Ireland brought about by the potato famine. And since

00:24:44.380 potatoes are one of the biggest sources of carbohydrates, the dieter's worst enemy,

00:24:49.140 You can see I was off to a bad start as far as attaining a tapered figure was concerned.

00:24:54.240 But we ate, and we ate plenty, and we loved every bit of it.

00:24:57.980 So your grandma was nice, and she's cooking you nice meals, and you're mad because you're not tapered.

00:25:02.880 And she survived a potato famine, and then got to a place where they have potatoes,

00:25:09.300 and she was like, awesome, I'm going to make potatoes.

00:25:12.780 Also, like, potatoes are a vegetable. Potatoes are fine.

00:25:16.160 They are root vegetables. They are nutrient dense. Yes. But because they are higher in

00:25:21.020 carbohydrates, we have decided that they are, quote unquote, empty calories, which they

00:25:24.600 categorically are not. Yeah, they seem fine. I mean, like, listen, part of what's happening

00:25:28.980 there with the demonization of carbohydrates is that we are demonizing the foods that poor

00:25:34.060 people can afford. Yeah. So potatoes, bread and rice. Yeah. The staple foods of people living in

00:25:38.940 poverty around the world. Right. The things that you can get in large quantity that you can cook

00:25:42.720 up for your family. Right. And we're sort of like reifying the idea that like you need to

00:25:47.940 have disposable income in order to be thin and healthy. Right. Right. The answer can't be that

00:25:54.620 it's OK for you to eat food that the poors eat. Right. We can't have that. You got to have moon 1.00

00:26:00.460 juice and you got to have sex dust and you got to have steak with hollandaise and you got to have 0.78

00:26:04.840 a shrimp platter. Right. Like you have to have all of this stuff that is very well out of reach

00:26:09.960 for a lot of people. I am shocked and disappointed to discover that Ed McMahon does not have an

00:26:15.160 intersectional anti-capitalist analysis of the obesity epidemic. Unbelievable. Deeply disappointing.

00:26:21.380 This book is really shot through with misogyny. It is also shot through with anti-fatness in a

00:26:28.480 way that like, of course, it's a diet book, right? But there is like extra gnarly anti-fatness that

00:26:35.380 shows up at one point he talks about not knowing that he was fat and having friends who were like 0.94

00:26:41.260 too nice to tell you okay which has not been my fucking experience ed mcmahon i know but okay 0.97

00:26:47.900 this is one of those like i think probably dude fatness versus lady fatness and 70s fatness 0.96

00:26:53.580 yeah no kidding 20s fatness right like there are like lots of confounding factors here i also think

00:26:58.760 as we've discussed on the show so many times this is also before the panic over the obesity epidemic

00:27:03.800 because that only started in the 1980s.

00:27:05.800 And I wonder if there's less of the sort of the fake sense of obligation

00:27:10.200 that we have now around health.

00:27:12.420 Like, look, she really needs to hear from me that this is bad for her health.

00:27:16.140 I wonder if the bullying was like somewhat tamped down back then

00:27:20.360 by the fact that there just wasn't – this wasn't seen as sort of a societal problem.

00:27:24.920 I feel like the construction of the obesity epidemic 1.00

00:27:27.660 just really gives people like a license to treat fat people like shit. 0.99

00:27:31.660 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. 0.99

00:27:55.500 Yeah. Yeah. So this is where we get into like, boy, oh, boy, internalized anti-fatness is a real bear.

00:28:02.120 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.

00:28:17.280 Hannah weighs three ninety. Now that's heavy. But to big Bertha, Hannah's just right.

00:28:22.380 what right the idea is like your friends are too nice to tell you how fat you're getting right you

00:28:28.560 have fat friends you absolutely can't trust them because they think it's just fine to be fat and

00:28:34.440 because you're less fat than they are they won't tell you the hard truth and you need someone who

00:28:39.420 will really you know give you the straight dope is sort of the thinking here right you need every

00:28:44.660 interaction to be veined with people being shitty to you about your weight yeah at one point he sort

00:28:52.240 of mocks the the idea of like a group of fat people gathering he says quote i've had daydreams 0.85

00:28:58.960 of a bunch of obese carolers standing on a corner singing we shall overeat oh there's that late 0.56

00:29:06.640 night host humor coming through it's so gross yeah i was getting really frustrated with the

00:29:12.900 amount of anti-fatness in this book and the amount of sort of like internalized anti-fatness that

00:29:17.440 this dude is just like spewing all over everything again not surprising it's a diet book but it just

00:29:21.960 does go like over the top a couple of times and then he starts talking about his experience 0.95

00:29:28.520 working on the tonight show oh no and it's fucking heartbreaking mike yeah he does this 0.76

00:29:33.900 whole sort of preamble about like look there are bad bosses and there are good bosses bad 0.96

00:29:38.980 bosses will sort of use their employees to make themselves feel better they're sort of bullies

00:29:43.740 their jibes all that kind of stuff oh no he says he wants to be clear like johnny carson isn't a

00:29:48.800 bad boss he's a great guy but and here it is quote this is the type of material johnny will

00:29:57.320 hit me with during one of his monologues oh my god the airline gives garment bags to the entire

00:30:02.840 staff for our trip to california even ed his is a little unusual he has the only garment bag roomy

00:30:09.940 enough to sleep six oh quote you all know ed mcmahon the blue bird of flabbiness that's not

00:30:17.680 even a joke it's really not like that's just mean sort of throughout the book anytime he talks about

00:30:23.280 johnny carson pretty much he's like look he's a great guy but i really don't like it when he does

00:30:27.400 this and then talks about being like publicly ridiculed by this guy it's really uncomfortable

00:30:33.260 yeah and also i feel like that also gives other people license to make the same kinds of jokes

00:30:39.220 that when people see you at like public appearances like he was probably getting these kinds of jokes

00:30:43.340 some random ass people too. Like it would just, it would just wear you down. Yes. And sort of

00:30:48.260 reifying this idea that like, listen, fat people have it coming. We know we have it coming. We're

00:30:53.100 not going to resist. We're not going to tell you to do better or treat us like people. I know this

00:30:58.560 is going to keep happening. I know that this is part and parcel of being in the public eye

00:31:01.980 and of being like not a thin man in the public eye. Yeah. And it still bothers me. Yeah. Yeah.

00:31:09.380 so at the end he says quote now i ask you is that any way to treat a faithful trusted employee who's

00:31:15.020 labored in the vineyards of commercial tv with one man almost 15 years but it's all in fun it 0.98

00:31:20.920 helps the show and i'm getting used to it and besides he is the boss oh my fucking god see if 0.80

00:31:27.100 this was happening now ed mcmahon would do a youtube video with all the receipts and like 0.92

00:31:32.440 screen grabs of all the dms holy shit but like if i think about being ed mcmahon in that scenario

00:31:40.400 i'm on stage every night this is seen as a totally fine and very funny thing to do to a guy whose job 0.69

00:31:48.740 it is to go along to get along right he can't say anything that brings the show to a grinding halt

00:31:55.080 he is the boss and this is a time when like folks are like not really critical of work hierarchies

00:32:02.120 yeah yeah so he just doesn't push back and it becomes so profound that like he starts losing

00:32:08.020 weight and he has this little experience oh no quote singer della reese who occasionally is

00:32:14.640 guest hostess on the tonight show had been away for several months she didn't know i had gone on

00:32:20.040 my new plan she looked at me did a double take and said well hello slim i don't know the rate

00:32:26.040 exchange on words for dollars but that remark was worth plenty to me yeah because you are working 0.98

00:32:33.020 every day with a dude who like talks shit about your weight yeah just someone acknowledged that 0.98

00:32:39.540 you're getting thinner and you were like yes thank god i'm on my way out of this garbage right 0.99

00:32:44.280 like of course it meant so much to him he's in just like such a terrible abusive workplace and

00:32:51.640 he's trying to solve the abusiveness of the workplace by getting rid of the reason that

00:32:57.260 he's being bullied and like that's not how bullies work ed it's totally not how bullies work as

00:33:02.100 evidenced by even when he loses weight johnny garson doubles down on these jokes about ed

00:33:07.140 mcmahon being an alcoholic so much so like when i asked the boomers in my life what do you remember

00:33:12.600 about ed mcmahon they were like oh famous drinker and in this book he's like i don't really drink

00:33:16.840 that much but like johnny kept making jokes about it there's a joke in there where he says ed's a

00:33:22.940 light drinker as soon as it gets light he starts drinking oh quote ed went for his annual physical

00:33:28.520 today the doctor found an olive in his bloodstream all right that one's pretty good yeah but also

00:33:33.180 mean like it's like stuff like that where i'm just like i don't know man could you do this without

00:33:37.780 treating your like trusted colleague as like a total punching bag in public is this the part 0.98

00:33:44.000 of the episode where we get to talk about what a piece of shit johnny carson was yes because i 0.97

00:33:48.820 don't know anything about johnny carson sort of in particular outside of this book where he seems 0.99

00:33:54.460 like a real fucking piece of shit if i'm honest this is like something that lives rent free in 0.97

00:33:58.440 my head that it was like almost 10 years ago now that i read a book called johnny carson 1.00

00:34:03.900 by a guy named henry bushkin who was johnny carson's longtime lawyer and they were extremely

00:34:10.740 good friends for i think it was like 15 years and then he pissed off johnny carson in some way he's

00:34:16.600 not totally sure what exactly he did and then johnny carson just never talked to him again

00:34:21.340 and in this book he describes that like this was johnny carson's mo that he would have these close 0.94

00:34:29.120 relationships in his life like wives his fucking children very close friends people that he grew 0.98

00:34:35.140 up with and then they would do something to piss him off and he would just cut them out and never 0.99

00:34:40.320 speak to them again and this is eventually what happened with ed mcmahon and johnny carson that

00:34:46.600 after johnny carson famously leaves the tonight show he like leaves hollywood completely and he

00:34:50.920 never speaks to ed mcmahon ever again after he leaves the show what yes there's lots of other

00:34:55.460 stuff too like kill fire workers for making one mistake and then like not even do it to their face

00:35:01.920 like guys that have worked for him for like 10 or 15 years he also like treated women terribly 1.00

00:35:06.640 Everyone from, you know, women he would meet on these comedy tours to his four wives, he just treated everyone like shit. 0.97

00:35:14.220 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. 0.99

00:35:20.020 And he just did the same comedy act, like word for word, the same thing for like three decades. 0.74

00:35:26.800 He just was like lazy and mean.

00:35:29.320 I sure do wish that we had conversations that also accounted for this experience of celebrities.

00:35:35.080 Do you know what I mean?

00:35:35.540 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 him anymore.

00:35:44.180 But I am saying like, we should be honest about who these people were in their fullness.

00:35:49.480 Yes, comedic genius. 0.96

00:35:50.840 And yes, also, you know, 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. 0.98

00:36:03.700 Never great. 0.94

00:36:04.000 I think that there is such a thing as presentism, where you sort of view the actions of the past

00:36:09.140 through 2021 lenses.

00:36:11.660 I think it's fair to put things in the context.

00:36:14.520 I think that these things were within bounds for the social and sexual mores of the time.

00:36:20.000 But also, those mores were bad.

00:36:22.800 Like, I think it's also fine to say that sort of given what people expected of celebrities

00:36:28.820 in the 60s and 70s, like Johnny Carson's behavior is pretty much par for the course.

00:36:32.980 but that's a shitty course and it's good that we have a different course now and a different par

00:36:37.200 yeah that's right this is this is literally what like social progress is is we have different

00:36:41.420 rules for behavior now than we used to yeah i mean the vibe that i get from ed mcmahon in this

00:36:46.600 whole book is that he is navigating a relationship with a dude who's like low-key abusive toxic as 0.54

00:36:54.520 fuck yeah totally like abusive in a way that is like socially acceptable at the time and he's 0.99

00:37:00.340 sort of figuring out how to negotiate his relationship to this dude who signs his goddamn 1.00

00:37:04.660 paychecks yeah yeah he is sort of tied to this dude who's being really publicly awful to him 0.94

00:37:11.440 yeah and he's having reactions to that and his reaction to that is you know as is the case with

00:37:17.420 many people who are in sort of like abusive or toxic situations is he tries to sort of people

00:37:21.940 please his way through it right and he's like if you don't like that then i'll lose weight

00:37:25.200 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?

00:37:41.940 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.

00:37:55.000 Yeah, I mean, amongst men at that time, that would have been a challenging thing.

00:37:59.660 Amongst male comedians at that time, that's a rare thing amongst male comedians now. 0.70

00:38:06.360 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. 0.55

00:38:16.640 Right.

00:38:17.200 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.

00:38:22.980 to things that were not sort of encouraged for men to do at that time absolutely and he does

00:38:29.340 bury all of those feelings in so many jokes so much weird like sort of misogyny of the time 0.99

00:38:36.320 racism of the time all of that kind of stuff and sort of like shitting on other fat people which 0.97

00:38:41.660 is like part of how anti-fatness works right it's also part of the reason that like you will hear 0.93

00:38:47.480 fat people and fat activists in particular talk about how incredibly painful and difficult it can

00:38:53.700 be to talk to people who used to be fat and lost a lot of weight because often those are folks who

00:38:59.980 have bought in they're like i earned my privilege right and part of the sort of bounty that i get 0.98

00:39:07.140 for sort of finally attaining thinness is that i too get to shit on fat people this is a sign that 0.81

00:39:13.080 i have sort of reached a level of privilege and i really am a thin person right because i can sort 0.94

00:39:19.080 of like you know talk down to fat people in this way that i absolutely hated but thought was

00:39:24.160 justified when i was fat right yeah and that's sort of what's happening in this book where you're

00:39:28.880 like oh my god why are you being so shitty to fat people and then there are these little moments

00:39:33.420 where you see how johnny carson is treating him or you see how people treated him you know growing 0.97

00:39:38.460 up or whatever the things are and you're like oh that's why but it does feel like uh again like a

00:39:44.560 really fascinating look into this into this whole world and into this complicated man with a terrible

00:39:50.100 boss that's right so that's what i got for ed slimming down with ed mcmahon i feel very well

00:39:57.120 educated i'm just i'm cracking open a can of tab next to me get your saying i've got a steak under

00:40:02.780 the broiler shrimp in the fridge ready to finally slim down to my met life predicted weight

00:40:32.780 Thank you.

Maintenance Phase - April 27, 2021

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

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