As we reported last week, Michael Smerconish is now a regular fixture of the Inquirer’s Sunday Op-Ed page. Bully for him, we’re all for equal time and open debate. But as we have said before, it’s because of guys like Smerconish — Machiavellian media climbers that will say ANYTHING to ensure their butt space in the game of musical chairs that is the talking head puditocracy — that people don’t even expect to hear the truth anymore, let along demand it. Mr. Smerconish is a cunning fellow who likes to pass himself off as too guileless to have an agenda. It’s a little cat & mouse game he likes to play with the reader. Which is why we are launching the MICHAEL SMERCONISH EXPLAINER, wherein we will attempt to explain, line by line and in bold, why Michael Smerconish is wrong to, well, Michael Smerconish. We begin the begin with yesterday’s column, to wit:
‘You’re headstrong,” began a recent e-mail to me. I hoped it meant that I comment with conviction. Or that I’m intelligent.
No, Michael, that’s a nice word for ‘doo-doo head,’ which is a nice word for…
Perhaps it was a statement about my shaved head. More likely, I suspect it had something to do with my ego. Soon, you can decide for yourself.
No, that’s not what was meant, we already went over this, please see above.
I’m one of the new guys around here. A frequent critic of the very page I have now been asked to join. “Too predictably liberal too often” has been my chief complaint.
It’s a BLUE city, Michael. That’s like walking into to a gay bar and saying it’s “Too predictably homosexual in here.” Maybe you’re in the wrong place, my friend.
This is not to say The Inquirer has brought aboard a Kool-Aid drinker. I may get the daily GOP talking points, but I rarely parrot them. In 26 years of uninterrupted voting, I’ve never pulled a straight party lever, and I’m not about to start.
Just ‘cuz you shuffle the deck or deal from the bottom instead of the top doesn’t improve the hand you’ve been dealt. A bad hand is a bad hand. Trust us, Michael, you’ve got nothing.
Let me spare you some Googling. I’m about to offer you a primer on the world according to me. I call it my Suburban Manifesto. You’ll quickly see that my words require no interpretation. I’ve never had the gift of entertaining and educating while leaving readers in suspense. With me it’s down and dirty. So let’s get started.
Explain to us again why people who left the suburbs for the city to get away from people like you would give a goddamn about something called a ‘suburban manifesto.’
I believe so strongly in the need to profile Islamic terrorists that I wrote a book on the subject and donated the proceeds to charity.
This is probably the stupidest sentence you have ever written. Which charity was that Michael? Was it The Rodney King Fund for black men beaten senseless for the crime of DWB? Or was is the Amadou Diallo Fund for the racially profiled who get killed by the cops?
I hate political correctness and think that it saps the rugged individualism that has been the hallmark of our nation. P.C. represents a cancer that has now metastasized into the war on terror, where it threatens our very survival. I have written a book about that, too.
We already discussed this, Michael. Please go HERE to refresh your memory.
I recently traveled to Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, and elsewhere within the embrace of Cent-Com – and I came home concerned that our military has given up the intense manhunt for Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri for fear of ruffling feathers in Pakistan.
Ditto this, please click HERE to refresh your memory. It’s a post called I Just Got Back From CENTCOM And Boy Are My Frequent Flyer Miles Tired Or What I Learned On My Guided Tour Of The Military Industrial Complex
I’m for torturing terrorists who possess information. To those who say, “Torture doesn’t work,” I ask: Then why do our best interrogators continually seek to use it as a technique?
Whoops, we spoke too soon. THIS is the stupidest sentence you have ever written, Michael. Need we remind you that a lot of people said genocide wouldn’t work but the best Nazis kept asking to use it as a technique.
For two years, I’ve called for a timetable for exiting Iraq so as to light a fire under the asses of those (i.e., the Iraqis) who need to determine their own fates. I’m offended by the expression cut and run and think that if anything is unpatriotic, it’s not affording our soldiers an explanation of how their mission will end.
OK, now you sound like a grown-up for a change. Also, points for getting “asses” into the paper, you cheeky monkey.
I think our borders are porous and need to be closed. Only when they are sealed should we make decisions as to what to do with the millions who are already here illegally.
Need we remind you, they built a wall around Berlin, too. If you were serious about immigration, you would be calling for the U.S. to stop sinking bazillions on some phantom War On Terror and instead sink that money and manpower into stabilizing Mexico instead of treating it as a nation-sized sweat shop. In the end, water finds its own level. If there was even the passing resemblance of economic parity between the U.S. and Mexico your suburban fear and distrust of The Other would be largely needless. But then, you are not really serious about immigration, are you?
I have a wife and four children, but do not believe that homosexuals threaten my union. Heterosexual marriages have their own troubles, having nothing to do with whether we let same-sex couples formalize their relationships.
Here again, you sound like a grown-up. Really, Michael, it’s amazing the things you can say when you take Karl Rove’s thumb out of your mouth.
I wish there were a political party with room in its tent for pro-life and pro-choice views. I think the contraceptive drug Plan B should be sold over the counter to individuals 18 and older. And I surely don’t want politicians determining my end-of-life plan. I’m for embryonic stem-cell research. I don’t equate a group of cells in a Petri dish with a viable fetus, and I wonder why, if folks are so concerned about the destruction of such “life,” they don’t seek to ban the discarding of excess embryos at fertility clinics.
See above Re: Why You Should Stop Sucking Karl Rove’s Thumb Like He’s Robert DeNiro And You Are In Cape Fear
Speaking of life, I am willing to pull the switch personally on Mumia.
Aw, and things were going so well. Michael, you are a father. Your children should never be able to read about their father offering to kill another man in a family newspaper. Never.
I question whether many of our professional politicians could earn a living on the outside – and I’d like to find out. Two terms in the Senate and six in the House should be the max.
Term limits is another meaningless talk radio meme. If you were serious about corrupt politicians you would support the Dem-sponsored ethics legislation your GOP cohorts gutted and killed. But you are not serious.
Campaign-finance reform is a contradiction in terms. I say we let anyone spend whatever they can raise to affect the outcome of a race, as long as there is full and immediate disclosure, and voters can react accordingly.
As we said, obviously you are not serious about corruption, abuse and criminality in the political process. Also, we believe you meant “oxymoron” — you know, like ‘jumbo shrimp’ or ‘military intelligence’ — not “contradiction in terms.”
I fear that entitlements will economically cripple my kids. Social Security, Medicare and other entitlements make up more than half of our federal spending, and the number of people receiving them is growing. Time to confront AARP: The retirement age in this country needs to be raised to 70.
The Bush tax cuts will cripple your kids, not old people, Michael. Deep down, you know this.
Balanced budget should not be two dirty words.
See above, and also HERE.
Death taxes are un-American. Why, when we check out, should Uncle Sam be standing there with his hand out to tax our earnings for the second time? The estate tax must end.
Frankly we are tired of hearing poor little rich boys whine about this. We would be happy to put it to a national referendum as long as A) you drop the misleading Frank Luntz-penned euphemisms and call it what it is (Dead Rich People Tax) and B) level with the American people and make clear that this tax only effects the richest 2% of Americans.
I think the planet is getting warmer. I don’t know how much of that is due to humans, or what we can do about it, but given the stakes, I think we should err on the side of taking precautions.
You are right about the weather, and your ability to admit the obvious goes a long way towards assuring the reader that you are not on the payroll of Exxon/Mobil. Most of your Fox News brethren? Well, we’re really beginning to have our doubts. Since you seem curious, you can learn about how it is caused by humans and what we humans can do about it HERE. After all, the dinosaurs probably went back to eating muck out of the swamps, blissfully unware, when the first asteroids hit. They’re no longer around.
I believe guns are a symptom, not a cause of our problems. Single-parent households pose more of a threat to safety than firearms.
True, guns are a symptom, but setting aside the metaphor, they also do most of the killing and maiming around here — and in fact they do a LOT MORE killing and maiming ever since your beloved GOP became the NRA’s bitch. Not sure why you would compare gun mayhem to “single-parent households” — or was that a code word for “black people”? That would be unfortunate.
More to come. Label me at your peril. For now, I’ll stick with headstrong.
Ahem. Good one, Michael.