Axelrod David - Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right: American life incolumns

CLOWNS TO THE LEFT OF ME, JOKERS TO THE RIGHT

ALSO BY MICHAEL A. SMERCONISH

Flying Blind: How Political Correctness Continues to Compromise Airline Safety Post 9/11 (2004)

Muzzled: From T-ball to TerrorismTrue Stories
That Should Be Fiction (2007)

Murdered by Mumia: A Life Sentence of Loss, Pain, and Injustice, co-authored with Maureen Faulkner (2007)

Instinct: The Man Who Stopped the 20th Hijacker, with Kurt A. Schreyer (2009)

Morning Drive: Things I Wish I Knew before
I Started Talking (2009)

Talk: A Novel (2014)

CLOWNS

TO THE LEFT OF ME,

JOKERS

TO THE RIGHT

AMERICAN LIFE IN COLUMNS

TEMPLE UNIVERSITY PRESS

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19122

www.temple.edu/tempress

Copyright 2018 by Michael A. Smerconish

All rights reserved

Published 2018

Text design by Kate Nichols

Jacket front and back-flap/title-page photographs: Philadelphia Daily News, Jessica Griffin, staff photographer

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Smerconish, Michael A., author. | Axelrod, David, 1955 writer of foreword.

Title: Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right : American life in columns / Michael A. Smerconish ; with a foreword by David Axelrod.

Description: Philadelphia : Temple University Press, 2018. | Collection of the authors columns from the Philadelphia Daily News and Sunday Philadelphia Inquirer, 20022016.

Identifiers: LCCN 2017051755 | LCCN 2018013014 (ebook) | ISBN 9781439916377 (E-book) | ISBN 9781439916353

Classification: LCC PN4874.S54 (ebook) | LCC PN4874.S54 A25 2018 (print) | DDC 070.4/4dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017051755

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THE CHILDRENS CRISIS
TREATMENT CENTER

O NE HUNDRED PERCENT of the authors proceeds from the sale of this book will benefit the Childrens Crisis Treatment Center (CCTC), a private, nonprofit agency that provides behavioral health services to children and their families. In 1971, CCTC began at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia as a small but pioneering federally funded program focused on addressing the needs of young children who had experienced trauma. Since then, CCTC has increasingly diversified and expanded its programs and services targeting the needs of our most vulnerable youth. For over 40 years, CCTC has developed and implemented innovative ways of helping children as young as 18 months old and their families cope with obstacles that interfere with their emotional, social, and cognitive growth. CCTC offers a wide array of services and programs that are provided at the center as well as in the home, community, and schools. Most recently, CCTC expanded its services into Montgomery County, Pennsylvania. CCTCs approach is based on the belief that despite tremendous challenges, children heal from psychological injuries. Through partnerships with families, schools, and communities, CCTC creates the contexts in which this healing may occur.

CCTC serves more than 3,000 children and their families annually. CCTCs success and reputation for excellence have gained the center recognition for expertise in the areas of trauma, school-based services, and early childhood treatment and reflect CCTCs leadership role in the childrens mental health services community. Consider James, a 6-year-old boy from North Philadelphia who came to CCTC when he was 3 years old after being expelled from preschool. James, who was witnessing domestic violence at home, was admitted into CCTCs Therapeutic Nursery and Trauma Services programs, where staff worked with him and his parents, who are now separated. Today James is attending second grade at his local elementary school, where his teachers report that he is thriving both academically and socially. Jamess mother is also actively engaged in CCTCs parenting programs.

The authors wife, Lavinia, serves on CCTCs Board of Trustees.

You can learn more at www.cctckids.org.

CONTENTS

FOREWORD

I N AN ERA OF GRINDING DISCORD and withering partisanship, Michael Smerconish offers blessed relief. As the varied works in this collection reveal, Michael can be counted on for consistently informed, insightful commentary and compelling storytelling, whether the topic is politics, personalities, or the ups and downs of sports teams in his beloved Philadelphia.

He plays no favorites and spares little in his contempt for hypocrisy or flouting of facts, for the trampling of people or the fundamental tenets that underpin our democracy. His is the voice of the grizzled idealist, knowledgeable of the real world but unwilling to relinquish the essential belief that we can do better.

For much of 2016, I sat beside Michael on a CNN panel of analysts as we chewed over what was perhaps the most extraordinaryand disturbingcampaign of our times. What I learned is that Michael always resists the knee-jerk reactions so common to instant analysis. Instead, he reaches for the deeper meaning of events, offering observations that defy partisanship and the vapid whos up and whos down obsession that too often has gripped the coverage of our elections and government. As a panelist, rather than purveying conventional wisdom, Michael often invoked the experiences of his neighbors in Pennsylvania to help illuminate the tectonic shifts in our politics. When he spoke, I sat up in my chair and listened.

Like Teddy Roosevelt, I admire those men (and women) who have actually been in the arena. Michael came to journalism from politics, his passion having been fired by Ronald Reagan in the early 1980s. He has run for office and run campaigns, including mayors races in the City of Brotherly Love (an ironic phrase to anyone who has experienced the brawling politics of Philadelphia). Michael also has served in government, an appointee of the first President Bush. He understands how it works for the people it is meant to serveand when and why it doesnt. So while he writes in these pages about the journeys of others, Michaels rich and thoughtful insights derive from his own. Whether chatting with Fidel Castro, a family farmer in rural Pennsylvania, or a Philadelphia ward leader, he tells their stories with an equal measure of wit and wisdom. He is a champion to those unsung heroes who deserve one, and he hesitates not one whit to take the haughty down a peg.

This collection of columns from the Philadelphia Daily News and Sunday Philadelphia Inquirerwith the new Afterwords he has pennedreflects all of that. Here you will find a rich sampling of more than a decade and a half of pieces in which he tackled big stories in a refreshing way and brought obscure but important stories to light.

As millions who have read his work and listened to his daily commentary on radio and TV know, Michael Smerconish always has something worthwhile to say.

Knowing Michael and his investment in his community, I was not surprised to learn that any and all of his proceeds from this book will go to the Childrens Crisis Treatment Center in Philadelphia, which passionately serves the emotional needs of children and families at risk beginning in early childhood and where his wife, Lavinia, is a board member. Congratulations to them both for their important work.

DAVID AXELROD