Clowns to the Left of Me, Jokers to the Right

by Michael A Smerconish

  For the first few weeks, I couldn’t even gain access to the site. I would log on to the Web address with no result. The screen was all white space with no information. Then one day—Eureka!—I got to the home page and was greeted by the smiling face of the woman whose image has become synonymous with the site (and led to her allegedly being cyber-bullied). After inputting my home state of Pennsylvania, I was at least able to access an application. But when I was next asked for a username and password, the screen froze.

  Trying again later, I could get to a page that asked me to provide the answers to three security questions—only my screen didn’t show me the questions. I tried every conceivable way of getting beyond that step. It occurred to me that the answers were what was important, not the questions, so I tried providing consistent answers to questions I’d never seen. No dice.

  A few days later—Voila!—the questions appeared. I was elated, but no closer to results. That’s because my next roadblock came when it was time to finalize my application. Data that I repeatedly inputted would not save. I was back to square one.

  Finally, I called the toll-free number and walked through my application with an operator who told me she was in Texas. It took about 45 minutes for me to cover the basics—all of my personal information, and that of my wife and three sons. (Our daughter will be 26 in the spring and no longer able to be carried on our plan.) This was a nonintrusive, cursory “Q&A” except for a question about tobacco usage that did not differentiate between cigars and cigarettes (a distinction that has been recognized by my insurers in the past).

  After receiving my information, the operator told me that there were nine plans available for me. I was ecstatic and began to scribble notes. (“Independence Blue Cross/ Keystone HMO plan for $1,926 per month?/6k out of pocket/$0 deductible/$15 per-visit co-pay/$5 prescription. Slightly more: Independence Blue Cross PPO plan. Can pay half that for far less protection.”)

  She assured me that all of the information I had provided would be merged with my online endeavors through my Social Security number just as soon as the bugs were out of the website. Then I would be able to go online and review all nine plans available to me. Great news.

  Except that a few days later, when I could finally access the website, none of the data I had provided over the phone was on my application. I had to start over—again.

  OK, I thought, with the website up and running, it will take me half the time to input the data on my computer than it took me to do so through the operator. (Spelling S-m-e-r-c-o-n-i-s-h was a fatiguing process for us both.) So, again, I inputted all the data for our family, at the end of which I was asked to electronically verify my signature. There was no instruction provided on how to do this. When I finally figured out that it meant simply typing in my name (too bad it didn’t say so), my application was not accepted. Why not? Apparently because all of my attempts at accessing healthcare.gov left the computer model convinced I was a fraud. To which I say, if any crook invests this amount of time in impersonating me, he’s entitled to my health insurance.

  Now it was back to the toll-free number, whereupon an operator told me that I should send a copy of my passport or my driver’s license so that my identity could be confirmed. Huh? I protested, noting that would mean a several day turnaround. The alternative, I was told, was uploading an image of either document to the website. I did, and was told they’d be in touch.

  One day later, I logged onto my still “pending” application and was greeted with this message:

  “You have a notice available about your identity verification.”

  This was yet another reminder of the poor design of the website. Were I dealing with Amazon or Orbitz, that “notice” would have been imbedded in the message itself. No such luck here. Instead, there was only an “x” off to the side, so I clicked it. Guess what? The message went away. And so did my ability to try to figure out what it was.

  Now it was back to the toll-free number, where I was told to expect an e-mail explanation. None has arrived. Out of curiosity, I asked whether she had a record of my prior calls. She did—six. Wrong again. The number is double that.

  Most frustrating is to think there are nine different plans for me to consider. If only I could see them. Especially because mental health is covered, and about now, I’m in need of some.

  AFTERWORD

  The week after writing this column, I published a follow-up in which I wrote:

  This past week I broke the logjam. The key was using a new feature on the website that allowed me to remove my existing applications, then, using a new e-mail address, I started from scratch. . . . The process was not intrusive. I provided background information of the name, rank, and serial number variety. And after just 20 minutes, I was looking at 24 offerings from Independence Blue Cross and Aetna. Not bad, especially considering that Pennsylvania did not set up its own exchange. . . . The plans are grouped into four categories depending on the total cost of coverage they offer (Bronze, Silver, Gold, and Platinum). . . . I need coverage for a family of five. . . . My current plan, provided via my affiliation with the Kline & Specter law firm, is an IBX Personal Choice that costs $2,246.90 with zero deductible and no out-of-pocket maximum so long as we stay within the network. (That plan includes our daughter.)

  The plan my family settled on was pretty much the same as our old plan through the Kline and Specter law firm. While mindful of and concerned about the escalating costs of the plan since I bought it, I was nevertheless able to experience a Travelocity-like market for the purchase of private health insurance as President Barack Obama had promised.

  SECRET FACET

  OF WESTBORO CASE

  Philadelphia Inquirer, Sunday, March 9, 2014

  “MY CASE made the national spotlight. There are almost a million articles on the Internet and I have done interviews across the world, but they won’t tell you the real story. Up until this point, I have kept the truth to myself, my legal team, some family and close friends.”

  So reads a handwritten letter I received nearly a year ago from Al Snyder, a man I had come to know and admire for his courageous legal battle against the Westboro Baptist Church. Snyder sued Westboro after church representatives protested at his son’s military funeral.

  Marine lance corporal Matthew A. Snyder was just 20 years old when he died in a one-vehicle Humvee accident in Iraq on March 3, 2006, just five weeks after his deployment. A half-dozen Westboro members picketed Matthew Snyder’s funeral at a Roman Catholic Church in Maryland one week later. That none of the protesters had any personal knowledge of Matthew or his family didn’t stop them from parading signs saying, “America is Doomed,” “Fag troops,” “Priests Rape Boys,” and “Semper Fi Fags.”

  For calling his son gay and disrupting the funeral, Al Snyder fought Westboro all the way to the Supreme Court without publicly revealing a secret—that he himself is gay.

  Only now has Snyder decided to tell his story, an extended version of which I just authored for Politico magazine.

  Initially keeping the matter a secret was a decision Al Snyder made with his partner of more than a decade, Walt Fisher. According to Al, it was actually Walt who never wanted to make the lawsuit about their sexuality. Al told me recently:

  When we first started talking about it, I couldn’t see where it would hurt. I remember saying to Walt, “I don’t think people are really going to care about that.” And he said, “What it’s going to do is make this a gay issue and it’s not.” He was right.

  Snyder might never have sued Westboro had the church’s bad behavior been limited to picketing the funeral. But not long after burying his son, Al discovered an online screed written by a Westboro member titled “The Burden of Matthew Snyder,” containing vile assertions about the way he and his wife had raised their son:

  God blessed you, Mr. and Mrs. Snyder, with a resource and his name was Matthew. He was an arrow in your quiver! In thanks to God for the comfort the child could bring you, you had a DUTY to prepare that
child to serve the LORD his GOD—PERIOD! You did JUST THE OPPOSITE—you raised him for the devil.

  That’s when Al contacted two lawyers in central Pennsylvania, Sean Summers and Craig Trebilcock, who agreed to file his case. Last year Al wrote me:

  You see this wasn’t just a father fighting a gay hate group, this is about a gay father fighting for the dignity and respect of my son. A father who hid the fact that he was gay from the media and the public.

  Summers and Trebilcock were successful in keeping Al’s sexuality out of the case and benefited from rulings by district judge Richard Bennett, an appointee of President George W. Bush’s, which precluded the questioning of Al about his lifestyle. While Al knows now that Westboro learned he was homosexual during the litigation, that information was never made known to the jury. It was not something he had kept from his only son.

  Al Snyder and Walt Fisher in April 2011, three weeks before Walt passed, in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Photo courtesy of Al Snyder.

  Matthew had known of his father’s sexuality since he was 14, when he’d asked Al about his relationship with the man he called “Mr. Walt.” Al told his son the truth. While accepting his father’s reality, Matthew quickly affirmed his own attraction to girls.

  Al Snyder sued Westboro content in the knowledge that Matthew would have wanted him to do so. When able to write from his basic training at Parris Island, South Carolina, he’d be sure to extend greetings to Fisher: “I’m getting used to the yelling already. I’m looking forward to being a Marine. . . . I love you. Tell Mr. Walt I said hi.”

  Despite the intense interest of national media in a proceeding that revolved around homophobic slurs, the relationship between Al and Walt remained a secret from the media and public through the first trial and the subsequent appeals. Not even the justices of the Supreme Court could have known that, when the case was argued on October 6, 2010, seated in the chambers amid family members were partners Al and Walt. By then, Walt was walking with a cane, having been told he was suffering rheumatoid arthritis, for which he was receiving physical therapy. Soon he would be diagnosed instead with small-cell carcinoma.

  Al Snyder lost his Supreme Court case on March 2, 2011, in an 8–1 decision, and lost Walt Fisher two months later.

  Three years later, the vitriol directed at Al Snyder continues. Last December, Snyder discovered a hateful, online Westboro posting that made reference to Walt, the first public mention that Al has ever seen to the relationship. (“All this while he moved in with his ‘house mate’—a simpering swishing queer-as-a-three dollar-bill open fag.”)

  Today, Al Snyder doesn’t regard the entire experience so much as a coming out for him, but rather, a coming out for Westboro:

  I lost my battle in the U.S. Supreme Court but, in the end, won the war with the American people and the U.S. lawmakers. The lawsuit did what I hoped it would do. It brought this hate group out to the public.

  AFTERWORD

  Sometimes columns beget columns. This one is a great example. By the time I caught up with the attorney Craig Trebilcock to discuss Al Snyder’s story, he was Judge Craig Trebilcock of the York County Pennsylvania Court of Common Pleas. He is also a U.S. Army Reserve colonel who had just served nearly a year in Afghanistan with the Judge Advocate General’s Corps, where he was director of the rule of law for the commander of Afghanistan. After we’d finished talking about Al Snyder, he said, “When you’re finished with this story, I have another for you, something that deserves attention.” And he delivered.

  Judge Trebilcock turned me onto Veterans Treatment Courts, which I wrote about in my column on April 27, 2014. The courts, which began operating in 2008, are the brainchild of Judge Robert T. Russell Jr., who sits on the City Court in Buffalo, New York. He saw and acted on the need after noticing an increase in the number of veterans appearing on his drug and mental-health dockets. His reasoning was that veterans entangled in the justice system should appear in front of judges with a unique understanding of their problems. Trebilcock himself presides at one of the Veterans Treatment Courts, and he shared with me the case of Justin Slesser, a success story.

  When he lost his access to prescription pain meds, Slesser had turned to heroin and a life of crime. After being drummed out of the military, he built a rap sheet and lost his marriage. Luckily for him, help arrived in the form of Veterans Treatment Court. Slesser worked with an attorney and a veterans’ outreach officer to get his legal troubles consolidated. He received substance-abuse counseling in West Virginia and then entered a program for post-traumatic stress disorder. He graduated from that veterans’ treatment program and is now employed, and clean. “Without the Veterans Court, I’d probably be dead,” Slesser told me.

  And when I told Slesser’s story on my radio program, I was overwhelmed with reaction from veterans eager to share their stories of injury, opioid dependence, and in some cases, heroin addiction. For those interested in learning more about this important subject, I recommend Justice for Vets, a nonprofit whose senior director is Melissa Fitzgerald, a Philly native who’s doing good for veterans after a successful acting career that included playing “Carol” on The West Wing.

  SATS DON’T ALWAYS MARK

  A SUCCESSFUL PATH

  Philadelphia Inquirer, Sunday, March 16, 2014

  I JUST EXPERIENCED the thrill of being invited back to the campus of my alma mater to speak to undergraduate students. The invitation came a few months ago from Jack Lule, the chair of journalism and communication at Lehigh University, from which I graduated in 1984. That someone in Lule’s position would think students could benefit from listening to me for an hour gave me a measure of achievement and acceptance.

  And I get why I was invited: the combination of my professional activities since graduation, including writing for the Inquirer, hosting a daily radio program nationwide on SiriusXM, writing five books with a novel on the way, and now hosting a Saturday morning program on CNN.

  There’s just one problem: According to my SATs, I was never Lehigh material.

  Here are the bare facts. At Holicong Junior High School, and thereafter at Central Bucks West High School, I was a “sometimes” honor roll student. My grades were mostly B’s with an infrequent A and an occasional C, frankly, more of the latter than the former. In a scrapbook somewhere I’ve got a few clippings from the Intelligencer listing the most recent honor roll with my name mentioned.

  My public school record included some other attributes—sports participation, a few class presidencies, a stint as newspaper editor—and some liabilities, such as when I was disciplined for selling fake IDs to classmates. What can I say? I was always entrepreneurial, the kid who sold you Christmas cards and came to shovel your drive. Sometimes that ambition got me in trouble. Such as when Coach Carey demanded I stop an NFL betting pool out of homeroom, or when I got thrown in a police van at the Spectrum for selling Genesis bumper stickers in my senior year. (They cost me a nickel to print, and I sold them for a buck.)

  My SATs were never commensurate with my respectable school grades. And it was no one-off. I took the test several times and never batted above the Mendoza line.

  Nine-ninety. I still hate seeing it numerically represented: 990. I never even broke 1,000.

  Lucky for me that my father received his master’s from Lehigh and my brother was president of his Lehigh class the year I was applying. Otherwise, I’m sure my SATs would have sunk my application.

  Driving back to Bethlehem Tuesday, I felt like George Bailey on the bridge toward the end of It’s a Wonderful Life, when an angel shows the Jimmy Stewart character an alternative path. Bailey’s angel was named Clarence. Mine was Samuel Missimer, then Lehigh’s dean of admissions, who admitted me despite my mediocre SATs. What if my college acceptance had been determined by that test?

  A rejection would have meant I’d have never met a faculty mentor named Dave Amidon, who sparked in me an academic fire I never knew existed. Missing from the Lehigh campus in the fall of 1980, I would not have me
t “Ambassador” George H. W. Bush when he toured Bethlehem Steel, an event that led to my working for Vice President Bush and a string of extraordinary political experiences, which in turn caused media outlets to solicit my commentary. No Lehigh? No Amidon. No Amidon? No double major and no Phi Beta Kappa. No Phi Beta Kappa? No admission to Penn Law.

  The intervening years haven’t softened my antipathy toward the SAT, not even the recent experience of a son who aced it. I’m encouraged that the College Board is attempting to change the nature of the exam in a way that will recognize evidence-based thinking that students should be gleaning in high school. Perhaps if I’d had an exam like the board now contemplates, I’d have scored more respectably. But maybe not. Better for students, parents, and colleges to scrap it altogether.

  Today, out of roughly 2,800 four-year U.S. colleges and universities, about 850 make SAT or ACT submissions optional. A recent study by two former colleagues at Bates College, William Hiss, the former dean of admissions, and Valerie Wilson Franks, the study’s lead investigator, found that there is a negligible difference between the performance of students who submit test results and those who do not.

  The study, published under the title “Defining Promise: Optional Standardized Testing Policies in American College and University Admissions,” looked at 123,000 student and alumni records. It found only a 0.05 differential between the GPAs of those applicants who submitted a standardized test score and those who did not—and graduation rates for submitters were only 0.6 percent higher than those of non-submitters. In other words, trivial differences.

  When I shared my personal experience with Hiss, he told me by e-mail that the disconnect between my SAT scores and later academic and career success is “strikingly common.” He added: