Michael Smerconish

Michael Smerconish hosts the morning drive-time talk show daily on WPHT-AM (1210). A Philadelphia lawyer turned political commentator, Smerconish is a fill-in host for Bill O'Reilly on the Radio Factor, and a guest host for Joe Scarborough on MSNBC's Scarborough Country. He has often appeared on the Today Show, It's Your World with Neil Cavuto and Hardball with Chris Matthews. He writes an opinion column in the Inquirer's Sunday Currents section.

Though Michael Jackson´s death was undoubtedly big news, crashing Web sites and sending shock waves throughout the world, it also had the effect of obscuring other, less salacious stories. On the other hand, the increasingly speedy news cycle also makes it more and more difficult for newsmakers to sweep bad news under the rug.

Head Strong: Speedy news cycle can make tomorrow's headlines old news

By Michael Smerconish

Posted 07/05/2009

'Be careful when you pass away." So advised PBS broadcast journalist Aaron Brown during a conversation we had in the midst of the recent crazy news cycle. Several stories leapfrogged one another, culminating in the news of Michael Jackson's death.

Head Strong: Twitter-delphia

Here's how news events of the past would play on present-day devices.

By Michael Smerconish

Posted 06/28/2009

Woman says ppl knocking on her door 2 a.m. saying they were intelligence agents, took her daughter. Clashes today confirmed in Jaam Jam and Mellat Park - militia used tear gas - shooting heard.

Head Strong: Fair comment or foul? Warm up the Muzzle Meter - 06/21/2009: By Michael Smerconish

When a 45-year-old grandmother doesn't take kindly to jokes about a pregnant daughter, a murder victim is dismissed as a mass murderer, and the nation's first Latina nominee to the Supreme Court is herself deemed a racist, it's time for the Muzzle Meter.
Head Strong: Boycotting Chrysler and GM is a bad road - 06/14/2009: By Michael Smerconish

'I won't buy a socialist car, which means I won't be buying a GM or Chrysler car for as long as the U.S. government owns huge blocks of the companies," wrote talk radio host Hugh Hewitt in the June 1 issue of the Washington Examiner.
Head Strong: Keep a 21st-century eye on flight data - 06/07/2009: By Michael Smerconish

Drivers today don't make a move without receiving instruction from their GPS. Kids communicate face-to-face using iChat on their laptops. Nobody leaves home without a BlackBerry. We read books on the Kindle, watch movies in the car, and buy music from our cell phones.
Head Strong: Believability is key in crime-hoax villains - 05/31/2009: It's not racism that drives pretend victims, a profiler says; it's cooking up the best story.

By Michael Smerconish

Memo to hoaxers: You've overplayed the race card. Better to blame the Vietnamese than the blacks. Maybe the Mexicans. Perhaps be daring and say your attacker looked like a guy from the Main Line. Whatever your story, come up with a new rap because the old tale about a couple of black guys just isn't working. Ask Bonnie Sweeten, the Bucks County woman whose abduction hoax ended when she was found in Disney World with her daughter Julia Rakoczy, 9, on Wednesday.
Head Strong: It sounds familiar but looks different - 05/24/2009: By Michael Smerconish

For many of us, Memorial Day marks the unofficial start of summer and the launch of the concert season. The slate of bands stopping in Philadelphia, Camden, and Atlantic City this year looks mostly the same as it did 25 years ago.
Head Strong: - 05/15/2009: By Michael Smerconish

Read Michael Smerconish's column "Head Strong" in Currents, C3.
Head Strong: Checking in with Smokin' Joe to thank him for his dignity - 05/17/2009: By Michael Smerconish

Hard to believe. It's already been a month since the great Harry Kalas passed away. The Phillies - from the memorial cigarette to the black H.K. uniform patches to that famous home run call now playing after each hometown dinger - offered him an honorable tribute. So too did the fans, thousands of whom visited Citizens Bank Park to pay their respects. Only Jack Buck and Babe Ruth got similar send-offs. Harry the K got his just due in death.
Head Strong: Did Hollywood inspire the meltdown men? - 05/10/2009: It's possible that Gordon Gekko, the villian in the movie "Wall Street," served as a role model for brokers out to make a killing.

By Michael Smerconish

Forget Bernie Madoff. The Wall Street veteran who might be the real scapegoat for our country's financial meltdown hasn't closed a deal in more than two decades. Many presume he spent at least some of that time in jail.
Head Strong: Bad news, good news for Republicans - 05/03/2009: Silver lining: By leaving the party, Specter could propel it, at long last, to the sensible politics he represents.

By Michael Smerconish

Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele suggested that Arlen Specter did the party a service by leaving. Steele may be right, but not in the way he intended when he derided Specter on ideological grounds.
Head Strong: The day a talker got ambushed on television - 04/26/2009: By Michael Smerconish

Michael Smerconish's new book, "Morning Drive: Things I Wish I Knew Before I Started Talking," will be available starting tomorrow. In the meantime, an excerpt follows: