My most surprising find during this compilation process was a column I have no memory of having written. It was published as a Guest Opinion in the Daily News in 1985, when I was 23 years old and a first-year law student at the University of Pennsylvania, 16 years before I joined the newspaper as a columnist. I thought it appropriate to offer the column as the first in this collection; it’s a good baseline to show where I started and where I am now.
— MICHAEL SMERCONISH
June 10, 2017
GUEST OPINION
AMERICA OFFERS OPPORTUNITY
TO THOSE WHO WORK
Philadelphia Daily News, Friday, August 9, 1985
THE UNITED STATES is still the land of opportunity.
What brought a flood of immigrants to this nation at the turn of the century continues to bring them today: the dream of a better life not only for oneself, but also for one’s children.
Speak to those who have endured this process, and you will find they are believers in America, in free enterprise, and in an honest wage. They are believers in a system that allows its citizens to enjoy the fruits of their labors. They realize that families of zero wealth built our country, and that these “bootstrappers” should be our role models. Unfortunately, they are not.
Horatio Algers are still the economic backbone of America. They are the easily identifiable men and women willing to work harder than those around them in order to better their lifestyles. In every neighborhood we see these entrepreneurs in every profession. They are restaurateurs, carpenters, and video arcade owners. They are computer salesmen, real estate brokers, fitness experts, and produce merchants. They did not fall for the negative doctrines that emanated from a vocal minority in the 1960s, and they are the economic lifeblood of the United States.
The process our forefathers once endured continues today. Thousands arrive at our shores annually, both penniless and homeless, yet they succeed in large part due to optimistic attitudes. Their outlooks are the same that our ancestors once held; only the names of the homelands have changed. Instead of coming from Irish, Jewish, Polish, or Italian descent, these new upstarts come here from Cuba, Mexico, Vietnam, and other Third World nations.
Few can legitimately argue that they have not had an equitable chance to better themselves in the United States. Surely, a middle-class man who is well educated and was reared in suburbia is going to have advantages in the job market over an uneducated ghetto dweller who is a member of a minority. There is no reason, however, why the ghetto dwellers’ children, or at least their grandchildren, cannot one day compete for the same job. This has been the pattern of life since our nation was founded: Success sometimes takes generations.
The formula for success today remains unchanged. Simply stated, it is hard work and perseverance that gets results. Moving up the economic ladder is not easy, but it is easier for one’s children, provided the parents have at least attempted to reach the next rung. By settling in America, they have.
I recall my favorite professor at Lehigh University, David Amidon, once telling me it is time for disenchanted Americans to stop envying what the rich have, and time for them to work to get it for themselves. I agree. In taking a critical approach to our system, people only delay their descendants’ prosperity.
It is time to reassess our attitudes toward our homeland, for no other nation in the world provides a setting more conducive to success. After all, we never hear of overcrowded, dirty, unsafe boats setting sail in an effort to escape from the United States.
AFTERWORD
As noted in the Introduction, this essay was not part of my weekly Daily News/ Inquirer column; it was a Special Opinion printed in the Daily News in 1985, when I was a first-year student at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. Three decades later, would I still write this? Yes, but with important caveats. I had a tendency to see things in black and white back then, but in the years since, through my writing, I have explored more shades of gray. After discovering this guest column in the newspaper archives while compiling this book, I thought it appropriate to reference it and reconsider its sentiments in my July 3, 2016, Sunday Inquirer column, where I wrote:
Today I don’t see desire as an absolute. To be sure, as an adult, I’ve watched many work hard and become financially successful. But now I’m equally aware of those working hard just to remain in place or, worse, falling behind. I suspect that, as I wrote those words back in 1985, the seeds of income inequality were being sewn with technological advances, the start of globalization, the weakening of labor unions, and financial deregulation. Imperceptive to those factors, I instead drew confidence from watching my parents exceed the socioeconomic achievement of my coal-cracker grandparents and was certain in my ability to continue the climb up the ladder of opportunity. Now, with four children of my own, I worry about their futures, regardless of both the education they have been afforded by my wife and me, and their individual abilities.
2002–2007
HIGH FIDEL-ITY: DAILY NEWS COLUMNIST
GETS UP CLOSE AND PERSONAL WITH CASTRO
Philadelphia Daily News, Monday, January 7, 2002
I’LL BET THAT every conceivable question has been put to Fidel Castro in his 43 years of power.
Except mine.
“Mr. President,” I said to him, in the wee hours of last Friday, “there was a mayor in Philadelphia in the 1970s named Frank Rizzo who once said something that was perhaps inappropriate.
“Mayor Rizzo said that his police force could invade Cuba, and win. I am wondering, Mr. President, whether you were aware that such a claim had been made by Mayor Rizzo?”
Castro paused, stared me in the eye and with a straight face said, “No, I never heard that. But I can tell you that while the first part may be true, the second half is definitely false.” His laugh then broke up the room, and the conversation returned to more serious matters.
That was just one of many such exchanges during a six-hour-and-20-minute dinner and conversation with the Cuban president last week in Havana. I was in Cuba at the invitation of U.S. senator Arlen Specter. The setting was Castro’s Palacio de la Revolución.
The conversation was spellbinding.
“Mr. President, next week I will write for the Daily News and I will tell our readers about our meeting,” I told him. “I would like to report that within my earshot, you condemned Osama bin Laden for his role in the attacks on America. Will you do that, sir?”
Castro took the bait and began a 10-minute discourse about the September 11 attacks. Before it ended, he would condemn terrorism and propose that the United States and Cuba enter a bilateral agreement to fight terrorism. But he would not condemn bin Laden.
Later, when asked how close we came to nuclear war during the Cuban missile crisis in 1962, he responded, through an interpreter. “Very close,” he said and added, “I can’t go into details.”
In June 1999, Senator Specter met with Castro and wrote about it in his book Passion for Truth. Specter (R., Pa.), reported that the two had a lively exchange. I was enthralled with the thought of the author of the “single-bullet conclusion” sparring with a man many think played a role in JFK’s demise. I told Specter that if he returned, I wanted to go with him. To my delight, he obliged.
Engaged in debate with President Fidel Castro in Havana, Cuba, on January 4, 2002. Photo by Shanin Specter.
In fact, three Philly trial lawyers were on this trip: Shanin Specter, Senator Specter’s son; his law partner, Tom Kline; and I. For the record, we each paid our own way and entered the country legally—in my case, as a journalist. We each had the unbelievable opportunity to cross-examine the 76-year-old Cuban leader.
When Castro said that he did not believe in using nuclear weapons on civilians, Shanin Specter pointedly asked him why, then, he had authorized the use of nukes against the United States during the missile crisis.
“We were not in a position to use them,” was the reply.
Castro was vibrant, animated, courteous, fully engage
d, and unflinching in his views. He had an agenda and a message to deliver to us. But no subject was off-limits. He was the opposite of today’s sound-bite, blow-dried politicians.
Needless to say, this was a unique opportunity for any American.
“Cuba made the first statement against terrorism after September 11,” he told me. “We offered Cuban airports for the landing of any aircraft that needed to get on the ground. We offered blood. We offered nurses.” He said that America never acknowledged his offers.
Castro said the only difference he has with the Americans on terrorism is the best way to eradicate the problem, adding that it is important to “attack it from a moral and ethical point of view, not the bombing of innocent civilians.”
I asked whether he had seen the videotape in which bin Laden acknowledged his role. He had but was in no position to “authenticate” the tape.
“I can’t judge a person based upon a video,” he said.
Tom Kline brought Castro a gift—one of the New York Fire Department hats that are so popular now in the States. Kline told Castro that the hat was a symbol of America’s solidarity against terrorism and a testament to the men and women who lost their lives trying to save others.
Kline asked Castro to put the hat on. Castro obliged, and in front of cameras for the world to see, Castro for at least one moment looked no different from Rudy Giuliani.
The exchanges were priceless. The “D.A. vs. the Dictator” I scratched on a notepad as I listened to Specter and Castro mix it up.
“How long do you have before your next election,” Specter asked early in the evening. “I mean against an opponent.”
“You would have to tell me what type of election,” Castro coyly responded.
Specter told him the kind in which he had run for district attorney. An election where competent candidates campaign and people can vote for whomever they choose. “That’s the sort you should have run,” he told Castro.
Castro didn’t miss a beat. “You mean like you had in Florida?” he said in reference to the 2000 presidential race.
He expounded on everything—the missile crisis, the Cuban elections, the embargo, the Internet, the fall of the Soviet Union, bin Laden, and his recollection of a visit to Philadelphia in 1955.
On democracy: “The presidential system has been a disaster for many Latin American nations. Perhaps if you had more information on our constitution, you would realize that we are more democratic than many that are democratic.”
On human rights: “How do you define human rights? Is there any proof of torture in Cuba? We don’t have much money, but we will give you all that we have if you can prove anyone has been tortured here in the past 43 years. There are no missing people in Cuba.”
On nuclear weapons: Castro said there is no justification for the use of nuclear weapons today, even the self-defense of a country. He stated that the use of a nuclear weapon in World War II would have been more “just” if the targets were two Japanese military bases instead of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
On the collapse of the Soviet Union: “Today I feel like I should erect a monument to the collapse of the Soviet Union because it made us stronger and made us free. The ideas we sustained are much more noble than the ideas developed over there.”
On the imprisonment of captured al Qaeda terrorists at Guantanamo Bay: “We are willing to cooperate with the Americans on relevant measures.” It was the one time during the meeting he pulled out a carefully worded, previously released Cuban government statement and read it verbatim.
There was a great debate about free speech. Specter asked Castro whether people could criticize him. Castro responded that Cubans are perhaps the “world’s most opinionated people” and said that he knew the mood of the country.
“In general they are praiseful,” Castro said. “Yes, people criticize me and the government.
“Can they attack the Cuban revolution in the media? No.”
What an admission. It provided a jolt of reality, and something I went to bed thinking about in room 646 of the Golden Tulip Central Park Hotel.
Tom Kline was in room 346. Shanin Specter was in 746. Was it a coincidence that in a hotel with nine stories and 200 rooms, each of us was in a room that was located in the same stack?
Or was it because listening devices were installed in those rooms? My mind raced. Before I nodded off, I wrote a reminder to ask Senator Specter his room number.
AFTERWORD
When I met Castro and wrote this column, I was a full-time trial attorney also doing some work as a television contributor at the NBC network affiliate in Philadelphia, NBC10. The night of the Castro meeting and dinner, I hoped to obtain some video footage for use on television and confided my desire in advance to Senator Specter. So as soon as we arrived at Palacio de la Revolución, at my urging, Specter asked Castro whether an American camera crew that I had on call nearby could film our meeting for my use on American television. Much to our surprise, Castro readily agreed. Then, just as the formal meeting portion of the evening was about to get under way, two of his aides asked me to step into a hallway, where they proposed an alternative plan: the Cubans would film the discussions and hand me a VHS tape to take away at the end of the night. I was hesitant and objected on the grounds that Castro himself had just given permission for me to summon an NBC film crew. A debate ensued, and every minute that I stood in the hallway with my new Cuban friends, I was missing the dialogue between Specter and Castro. So I relented, went back into the meeting, where I was comforted by the arrival of a Cuban cameraman, who remained present throughout the evening. At the end of the night, one of Castro’s aides handed me a VHS tape. Mission accomplished, right? My Havana hotel room had no playback capability, but the next day, when I landed in Miami, I went to my mother’s apartment and put the tape in her VCR. From an evening that lasted more than six hours, there was no more than two minutes of recording on the tape!
In August 2016, I returned to Cuba with my family and a swashbuckling travel expert and author named Christopher P. Baker. My wife and I were eager for our four children to see the island while Fidel Castro was alive and before things change in the aftermath of more normalized relations with the United States, begun under President Barack Obama. We had a terrific, week-long trip, and upon my return, I wrote a lengthy essay for the Sunday Inquirer about what I’d seen, which the Inquirer editor Bill Marimow promoted on the front page. I said that I’d found “a nation of great disappointment and contradiction.”
Friendly people live amid spectacular scenery but are nevertheless trapped in a socialist system that never delivered on the promises of the revolution. So often, on the same residential block, I was transfixed by both natural and architectural beauty, while distressed by the sight of squalor and blight. And yet, amid the decay, there are unmistakable signs of initiative and optimism, people who represent hope and the prospect of freedom to come.
Three months later, Fidel Castro died.
A POLITICALLY INCORRECT
EXTRAVAGANZA
Philadelphia Daily News, Thursday, January 24, 2002
THE MOST ANTICIPATED SPORTING EVENT in the recent history of the city needs little hype from me. It’s already on everybody’s mind. And why not? It’s got all the elements.
You could say the appeal lies in the Olympic-like training. Or the massive brawn of the combatants. Perhaps it is all the color and pageantry. Or maybe it’s the camaraderie among fans.
Eagles vs. Rams? Hardly.
It’s Wing Bowl X, the real granddaddy of Philadelphia sporting events.
And it is tomorrow.
Relegated (for one day) to second-tier status are guys named McNabb, Staley, and Reid. Tomorrow’s headlines belong to Philadelphia heroes with monikers like Sloth, Magnificent Bastard, Chili Dog, and Tollman Joe.
What I like about Wing Bowl is not only the laughs and giggles that it will provide to thousands at the FU Center, and thousands more in their cars and kitchens, but—dare I say it—I like th
e social and political ramifications of the great event.
The truth is that this distinctly Philadelphia event has not been invaded by the PC police. PETA has not calculated the number of chickens sacrificed for fun and games. NOW has yet to discover the Wingettes, who serve the wings to the mammoth contestants while wearing thongs. MADD has held no press conferences to criticize the sunrise spectacle of thousands of men guzzling beer for breakfast. And John Street’s fitness czar is a guaranteed no-show.
In a society gone crazy with PC notions like avoiding saying “Indian giver” or “welshing” on a bet, where the idea of gay scout leaders draws legitimate debate, where smoke Nazis run the bars and restaurants, where the 10 Commandments have been banished from courthouses, where the swimsuit competition in beauty pageants is barely tolerated, and in which we honor kids’ rights not to recite the pledge of allegiance in schools, there is something to be said for a return to some good old-fashioned fun.
Nobody gets hurt. Everybody has a laugh.
Clowns to the Left of Me, Jokers to the Right Page 2