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<p>KINGSTON &#8212; Michael Smerconish is a rare breed.</p><p>At a time when angry rhetoric and stoking divisions have fueled many pundits&#8217; careers, the national broadcaster, Philadelphia newspaper columnist, and attorney has built a name for himself as an unabashed centrist.</p><p>Clearly the message resonates with his Sirius XM listeners, CNN viewers and readers, not to mention 184,000 Twitter followers.</p><p>Add to that an appreciative audience of about 350 who packed the <a href="https://www.timesleader.com/news/737668/jcc-ribbon-cutting-celebrates-decades-of-jewish-life-in-region" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">new Jewish Community Center</a> on Sunday afternoon to hear Smerconish speak <a href="https://www.timesleader.com/news/728156/radio-host-smerconish-to-headline-new-jcc-debut" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">for the facility&#8217;s first formal </a><a href="https://www.timesleader.com/news/728156/radio-host-smerconish-to-headline-new-jcc-debut" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">program</a>.</p><p>&#8220;I think that there are really good people in this part of the country, who by the way have been portrayed unfairly by a lot of the national media,&#8221; said the Bucks County native, whose parents, Walter N. and Florence, came from the Hazleton area.</p><p>&#8220;American Life in Columns,&#8221; the one-man stage presentation Smerconish gave here on Sunday, is based on his new book &#8220;Clowns to the Left of me, Jokers to the Right,&#8221; which is a collection of 100 columns covering the post-9/11 era.</p><p>It&#8217;s worth noting that another local tie brought Smerconish here.</p><p>Smerconish was the chair of the Lehigh University College Republicans in the early 1980s when David Schwager &#8212; now a Kingston attorney and Jewish Community Alliance board member &#8212; was the chair of the Lafayette College Republicans.</p><p>The pair studied for the LSAT exam together, and Schwager let Smerconish sleep on the floor in his dorm the night before they took the test.</p><p>Schwager&#8217;s mind naturally turned to Smerconish as a potential draw for the new facility&#8217;s first big gig.</p><p><strong>Hot topics</strong></p><p>Speaking and answering questions for more than an hour, Smerconish regaled the crowd through stories from his interviews and encounters with some big names in politics and entertainment: Ronald Reagan, Arlen Specter, Fidel Castro, Barack Obama, Roger Waters, Sean Spicer and Lord Stanley&#8217;s Cup &#8212; to name a few &#8212; together with anecdotes about friends and family whose stories inspired some of his most poignant columns.</p><p>Smerconish opened, though, with a quick recitation of his diverse positions on some hot-button topics.</p><p>&#8220;I was against the Cuban embargo. I have supported capital punishment, but I think there&#8217;s too much fighting in professional hockey,&#8221; he said.</p><p>&#8220;Post-September 11, I embraced the use of profiling techniques to keep American flyers safe. Similarly at Guantanamo Bay, I endorsed the use of harsh interrogation methods for presumed terrorists. Pretty conservative stuff,&#8221; Smerconish continued.</p><p>&#8220;But I&#8217;m for the legalization of both pot and prostitution, (and) I&#8217;d like to see us end the SAT,&#8221; he added, drawing applause.</p><p>&#8220;Funny that that&#8217;s an applause line, and not prostitution,&#8221; Smerconish deadpanned, before expressing his support for teaching cursive writing in schools, as well as ending Pennsylvania&#8217;s &#8220;stranglehold on the sale of alcohol&#8221; and the Treasury Department&#8217;s manufacturing of copper pennies.</p><p>Those opinions all have been fodder for his newspaper columns, &#8220;but they&#8217;re hard to classify, don&#8217;t you think?&#8221; Smerconish said, which led to the title of his book &#8212; and indirectly to his mug straddling the cover horizontally.</p><p>&#8220;Not even my publisher knew how to depict and market a centrist, and so they turned me sideways,&#8221; he quipped.</p><p>In a mark of what makes him rare among pundits, Smerconish also acknowledged his own missteps.</p><p>&#8220;There have been some things that I absolutely nailed,&#8221; he said, but &#8220;&#8230; there was so much that I&#8217;ve gotten wrong over the years.&#8221;</p><p>One of those things he got wrong? The rise of Donald Trump.</p><p>&#8220;Ladies and gentlemen, I said countless times on radio, on television and in print, he will never run, much less be elected President of the United States,&#8221; Smerconish said. &#8220;I have to own that too.&#8221;</p><p><strong>How divided are we?</strong></p><p>In keeping with the speech&#8217;s theme, Smerconish stressed his belief that the nation is less divided than many pundits argue &#8212; a belief Smerconish said is grounded not just in anecdotal evidence but political science.</p><p>He cited the findings of &#8220;Hidden Tribes,&#8221; a study of American polarization undertaken by not-for-profit group More in Common USA. In particular, Smerconish noted that some of the most strident voices come from 8 percent of people on the far left and 6 percent on the far right.</p><p>&#8220;Here&#8217;s the conclusion: We are an increasingly diverse nation, but there is a loud and hyperactive group of individuals on the far left and the far right, and they are tearing us apart,&#8221; Smerconish said.</p><p>&#8220;Those two groups have a lot of animus for the other side. But somewhere in between are two-thirds of the rest of us for whom compromise is not a dirty word, and we&#8217;d like to see some things get done.&#8221;</p><p>Sunday&#8217;s audience was drawn from a broader area than Luzerne County, with Smerconish fielding questions from residents of Doylestown and Poughkeepsie, N.Y., among other places.</p><p>And then there was Don Gregory, of Lehman Township.</p><p>&#8220;This is the Wyoming Valley. How many different nationalities do we have in the Wyoming Valley? We&#8217;ve been here for generations, we live together and marry back and forth, we go to each other&#8217;s bazaars. What&#8217;s wrong with the rest of the world,&#8221; Gregory stood and said.</p><p>&#8220;You talk about the far left, you talk about the far right, and you have have all these people in the middle. I say let&#8217;s bring back the silent majority but make it the noisy majority,&#8221; Gregory concluded to applause.</p><p>Smerconish, who as noted praised the region&#8217;s people, agreed.</p><p>&#8220;I&#8217;m out on the road because I&#8217;m trying to do exactly that,&#8221; he said. &#8220;I&#8217;m trying to share with people the data &#8212; not only the anecdotes, but the data.&#8221;</p><style>
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<div class="neCaption">Part of the crowd of 350 people is seen listening as broadcaster and columnist Michael Smerconish speaks at the new JCC on Sunday. </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo0>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/web1_TTL040819smerconish_2-2.jpg</photo0><caption0>Part of the crowd of 350 people is seen listening as broadcaster and columnist Michael Smerconish speaks at the new JCC on Sunday. </caption0><photoCredit0>Bill Tarutis | For Times Leader </photoCredit0></div><div class="neFile"><img class="neImage" src="https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/web1_TTL040819smerconish_1-2.jpg">
<div class="neCaption">Well-known radio host, author, broadcaster, and attorney Michael Smerconish presents his &#8216;American Life in Columns&#8217; talk during a book tour stop at the Friedman Jewish Community Center in Kingston on Sunday.	 </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo1>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/web1_TTL040819smerconish_1-2.jpg</photo1><caption1>Well-known radio host, author, broadcaster, and attorney Michael Smerconish presents his &#8216;American Life in Columns&#8217; talk during a book tour stop at the Friedman Jewish Community Center in Kingston on Sunday.	 </caption1><photoCredit1>Bill Tarutis | For Times Leader </photoCredit1></div></div>
<div class="metaInfo"><subheadMeta>Smerconish draws capacity crowd to JCC lecture</subheadMeta></div><div class="metaInfo"><bylineMeta><p>By Roger DuPuis</p><p>rdupuis@www.timesleader.com</p></bylineMeta></div>