A Forgettable Debut

I don’t think The Philadelphia Inquirer could have found a way to try and drum up more excitement for the paper’s two new Sunday opinion columnists short of having them parade naked down Broad Street.

Everywhere in this newspaper over the last week or so, ads appeared touting that Mark Bowden was returning to the Inquirer with his column “The Point,” and Michael Smerconish was going to join the paper with his column “Head Wrong” (oh, sorry – that’s “Head Strong”…see, Smerconish is either bald, shaves his head, or both, and the Inquirer thinks that’s a big enough deal to use it as part of the promotion, though Smerky does try to justify this name for the column in his first submission to this newspaper).

Bowden’s return piece was excellent, interviewing former U.S. Ambassador Bruce Laingen, now retired, who, as Bowden notes, was top diplomat in Tehran when he and the entire American mission - nearly 70 U.S. Embassy staffers - were kidnapped by Iranian “students” (my quotes) in November 1979. Bowden asked Laingen and John Limbert, another retired American diplomat, for their reactions to the hypocritical outrage expressed by Iran when one of its diplomats was recently kidnapped in Iraq. Even though everyone agreed that it was more or less a case of “the chickens coming home to roost” with Iran, all agreed that we can never turn our back on international diplomacy even if we are dealing with pariah nation.

This column is all the more timely given the fact that Bushco, particularly new Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, is trying to concoct a case once more for military action, this time against Iran, which should automatically initiate impeachment proceedings in the House as far as I’m concerned – enough is enough with this bunch; actually, we passed the “enough is enough” point with these thugs long ago.

Update: And when it comes to Iranian weapons inside Iraq, o the tangled web they weave...

Would that the Inquirer had left well enough alone at this point, but of course, they didn’t.

No, to continue their ideological rightward lurch, they published this piece of refuse from Smerconish (I’m linking to Smerky’s HuffPo post instead of the Inky since no registration is required; it’s the same column).

Also, before I tear into what Smerky said, I have a question for the person responsible for the layout of the first page of the Currents section. Was it your intention to try and frighten young children yesterday by presenting Smerky’s skin-headed dome and glazed-over look in his eyes behind thick glasses across the entire top fold of the front page?

I suppose I’ll never get an answer to that question. Oh well, here is what Smerky wrote:

'You're headstrong," began a recent e-mail to me. I hoped it meant that I comment with conviction. Or that I'm intelligent.

Actually, I hope that it meant that you’re an intolerant, propagandistic shill for the hopelessly failed neocon agenda. But I could be wrong of course.

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.

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.

As you can see, Smerky is so specific when he’s “painting with a broad brush” like this.

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.

Smerky will totally debunk that laughable statement later, and I’m sure it was quite inadvertent on his part.

In 26 years of uninterrupted voting, I've never pulled a straight party lever, and I'm not about to start.

There goes Smerky being “specific” again (I guess voting exclusively for Repugs for every office except county clerk or dog catcher counts for him here, since that technically isn’t pulling a straight party lever either).

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.

Even the words of a deity require interpretation, Smerky, and you are hardly that (and that statement of yours isn’t genuine or accurate either, as you’ll soon see – but of course, Smerky wants us to lap up everything he says without question, though to be fair, he actually does say some things here that make sense).

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.

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.

Well, donating the proceeds to charity was good, but Smerky should read Tim Wise’s fine rebuttal to the profiling argument here. Among Wise’s good points:

- The 9/11 hijackers were clean shaven and dressed in Western garb, effectively blending in (and accused shoe-bomber Richard Reid is black and al Qaeda sympathizer John Walker Lindh is white, so they wouldn’t fit the profile either).

- Concentrating on profiling detracts us from investigating other likely terrorist suspects as thoroughly as we should.

- Concentrating on profiling discourages law-abiding Muslims or Arabs from helping us.

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.

Oh, please (and how big a shill is Smerky anyway to plug two books as soon as he could in his column?).

“Political correctness…threatens our survival?” I would say that an illegal war in Iraq and the imminent prospect of military action against Iran based on doctored intelligence, along with global warming and our vanishing middle class, threatens our survival more than political correctness (in all of its occasional stupidity) ever could.

And how again does political correctness “sap rugged individualism”? Oh, sorry, I forgot – I’m supposed to buy Smerky’s book so I can read it and find out, I guess.

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.

If I were a man or woman serving in our military in that area or friends and/or family of same, I would be outraged by that observation. If that is true, it is yet another failure of our political leadership, not our military (and, as you’ll note, Dubya gets a total pass from Smerky here since our red-state president’s failures have nothing whatsoever to do with receiving a blow job from a White House intern).

And by the way, on that topic, Clinton was acquitted of impeachment charges eight years ago today.

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?

How clever Smerky is to avoid the manner of extraordinary rendition here, which is really the issue (Smerky uses his legal skills in this column to avoid other issues also, putting together two disparate facts or circumstances to create sort of a phony equivalency).

Actually, I have a question for Smerky on this (or, more precisely, Maher Arar does – this New Yorker article by Jane Mayer explains who he is): "Why, if (the U.S. government has) suspicions, don’t they question people within the boundary of the law?”

Or here’s another question; after you’ve “water boarded” Khalid Sheik Mohammed for the one hundred and fiftieth time, what exactly is it that you DON’T think he’ll say to make it stop?

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.

I’ll give Smerky the benefit of the doubt on this one – I don’t have time to go back and research what he’s said about this to determine whether or not this is correct.

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.

Smerky “rarely parrots” GOP talking points, huh? If “closing the borders” isn’t an idiotic notion originating directly from the RNC, then I don’t know what is (I was just joking about building an electronic force field around Canada a few days ago, but I guess Smerky is serious).

How about enforcement to make sure employers in this country do their due diligence when bringing foreign labor into this country and increasing fines and penalties for noncompliance? Oh, but your Repug handlers wouldn’t like to hear that, would they Smerky?

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.

So happy to hear that you’ve joined us here in the 21st century, Smerky.

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.

That last sentence is totally bizarre to me; I have no evidence of what Smerky’s talking about concerning politicians “determining my end-of-life plan.” Is he worried about a scenario such as the one depicted in Monty Python’s “The Meaning Of Life” where they come for a liver donation from a man who’s still using it at the time?

And actually, there is a political party such as the one Smerky refers to. It’s called the Democratic Party (see Casey, Robert Jr.). And over-the-counter sale of Plan B to women 18 or older (with prescription required for 18 or younger) was approved last August (duuuhh!).

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.

What exactly would you propose to do with the excess embryos then, Smerky? However, I should point out that this is one of the few issues where I agree with him.

Speaking of life, I am willing to pull the switch personally on Mumia.

No argument here (this is another one).

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.

I can live with this, though we’ve seen pols on both sides bail on this promise (such as Jim Greenwood and Pancake Joe Pitts, though at least Greenwood did eventually leave – I can’t recall a Democrat guilty of not honoring a past pledge on this, though I’m sure it’s happened.)

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.

Nice in a way to see Smerky returning to his old self here, channeling the now-happily-departed Rick Santorum on this issue.

Define “immediate disclosure,” Smerky. How is a voter supposed to know where a candidate may have received a gazillion dollars for a last-mute ad buy claiming that that person’s opponent (a decorated war veteran who left limbs on the battlefield, for example) is really an al Qaeda sympathizer (and I wish that were a hypothetical, but it isn’t).

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.

In the best freeper tradition, Smerky looks for an enemy first before he presents a reasoned analysis of the issue at hand.

So the AARP is the bad guy, huh Smerky? Well, guess who proposed means testing for Social Security in the U.S. House race in New York between Repug Tom Reynolds and Dem Jack Davis (noted here, near the bottom of the page)? It was Davis (and AARP sides with the Democrats often).

And I’ll say yet again; get rid of the $90,000 cap on earnings subject to Social Security withholding! That will go a long way towards ensuring the program’s solvency (and establish a Baker/Hamilton commission or something like it to look at both Social Security and Medicare, though that should happen after 1/20/09 because I don’t trust Dubya and the Repugs on this or any other issue).

And one more thing: assuming I can remain employable and not disqualify myself somehow from working by virtue of acquiring “too much experience” or staying too long at a given employer, I plan to be in the workforce for the rest of my life for a variety of financial reasons, and I know quite a few people in the same boat. The whole “raise the retirement age to 70” argument is ridiculous since workforce conditions in this day and age have made that an utterly irrelevant argument.

Balanced budget should not be two dirty words.

Sooo funny that Smerky ignores the Clinton surplus as well as the woeful fiscal mismanagement of Dubya and the Repugs.

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.

There goes Smerky “rarely parrot(ing)” GOP talking points…

The so-called “death tax” is one of the biggest ones they have (and by the way, I want to see the Frank Luntz-inspired phrase “death tax” removed from our lexicon forever.” It’s called the “estate tax” and ONLY that!).

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.

Yawn…

I believe guns are a symptom, not a cause of our problems. Single-parent households pose more of a threat to safety than firearms.

As of this moment, that is officially the Stupidest Quote Of The Year as far as I’m concerned.

So this is how you dodge the issue of common-sense gun laws, Smerky? This is how you feel you can let yourself off the hook by not supporting House Bill 871, as described here?

So what, am I now supposed to go off on some long segue about the reasons for single-parent families to try and counter your laughable propaganda (this is what I meant earlier about putting together disparate facts or circumstances to create a phony equivalency).

More to come. Label me at your peril. For now, I'll stick with headstrong.

Oh, and by the way, I have a message for the person who approved this nonsense (who I guess would be Chris Satullo, who I believe is the editor of the Currents section; Satullo made a big deal of welcoming Bowden and Smerconish).

“What I believe” columns are BOOR-RING, to say nothing of serving as a reflection of the author’s vanity and/or egotism. And yes, I know my own opinions come through big time on this site, but at least I try to frame them in the context of an issue or a story out of respect to the audience.

The column written by Mark Bowden was interesting and informative because it was about something. Bowden used his formidable skills as a legitimate journalist to inform and educate for a greater good. I won’t agree with Bowden every week either, but at least he knows what he’s talking about.

As for Smerconish, the Inquirer can call his Sunday feature “Head Strong,” “Bullet-Headed Opinions,” “The Chrome Dome Chronicles” or anything else they want in a childish attempt to try and publicize Smerconish’s appearance.

I’ll just call it a joke.