I was transferred from Atlanta to Detroit in April, 1989 by CNN to take over its Detroit Bureau. That made me the face of the network in the Motor City and there was someone extremely anxious to make me face the music about how the city was portrayed in the national media.

Within a few weeks after my arrival I found myself walking one block south of the building where the CNN Detroit Bureau was located at the time to the art deco Fisher Building, home of the Great Voice of the Great Lakes, WJR– 50-thousand watts of clear channel broadcasting pumping its programming to more than 20 states east of the Mississippi. I wasn’t just on a stroll. I had been summoned to sit across the desk from legendary morning man…Broadcast Hall of Fame announcer, J.P. McCarthy. Fiercely loyal to his hometown he was not pleased with CNN’s coverage of Detroit after a series of reports related to the upcoming 1990 U.S. Census that would reveal the city’s precipitous population losses, dropping it below the one-million mark.

He tossed his verbal daggers at me so adeptly I barely felt them pierce my flesh, but yet I suddenly empathized with a bull weakened by a picador. Attempting to rally I reeled off references to the vast number of positive stories the network had produced about Detroit, the auto industry and uplifting personality profiles. J.P. didn’t appear impressed but he was ready to move on.

Believing he had adequately put me on the defensive and made his point, the brilliant broadcaster suddenly smiled, relaxed his face and changed the subject, asking me oh, so conspiratorially, “got any good stories about Ted Turner?”

As still an employee of Mr. Turner’s and hoping to remain that way for some time to come I managed to toss off a couple of quick, innocuous anecdotes. Nothing scandalous, but stories Mr. McCarthy had never previously heard. That greatly pleased him.

I was honored by being invited back a few more times over the years, and we enjoyed both serious and lighthearted discussions. But by far, the biggest honor was being asked to appear on his “Focus” program during his final week on the air. This was a broadcast giant to whom captains of industry, showbiz celebrities and political power brokers never refused being summoned to his studio, or to speak “on the other end of my line.” Then there was me. I never understood, and I never will understand, how I made the cut, when the great J.P. McCarthy had the choice of virtually anyone he desired, to share the mic during his precious last moments of a legendary career. It remains one of the moments in my mostly mediocre career for which I’m most grateful.

One word can tell a complete story. I found one that tells the story of this election cycle. The word is “inured.” Its definition? “Able to withstand hardship; to become accustomed to something unpleasant by prolonged exposure.”

By my reckoning the nation’s prolonged exposure to this unpleasantness began when when Ted Cruz became the first to toss his dogma and Eddie Munster face into the ring on March 23, 2015. Hillary Clinton and her emails made the inevitable entry a few weeks later on April 12, 18 days before Bernie Sanders, who seemed at the time, like a gnat the Clinton machine would zap, but didn’t realize Sanders and his followers had already bathed themselves in bullshit repellant.

For the sake of brevity, and to get to the point, it was another two months before Donald Trump sized up the field and took the race for the nation’s highest office to its current depths by riding the down escalator at the gaudy Trump Tower and announcing his intentions to Make America Great again by eventually revealing he has studly equipment, presumably to screw us all. 

Other candidates have come and gone and some, like Marco Rubio, are hanging in because, in his case, campaigning is apparently more fun than suffering through those onerous debates and votes in the Senate chambers. In other words, looking for a new job instead of doing the job for which he’s already been elected. Plus, at campaign events they have free food and often some children, making him feel, temporarily, like a tall person and who, incidentally, have small hands.

As a nation we have indeed inured, suffering through this traveling circus featuring a shrinking cast of clowns where both the donkeys and elephants are acting like asses. I look forward to the nominating conventions which will be each party’s Big Top in their race to the bottom. If they were held today, given the delegate totals, it would be Trump vs. Hillary for the big prize. That’s almost as depressing as binge-watching episodes of “Duck Dynasty.”

But we’re strong. We will endure, as we continue to inure, becoming all too accustomed to this prolonged unpleasantness, which, incidentally, we would never give up, as it’s merely the downside of democracy.

I can’t think of a decision handed down by the late Justice Antonin Scalia that I agreed with. It’s easy. We just had different opinions. Mine were based on my outlook on life, upbringing and moral compass. He contended his were based solely on his interpretation of the Constitution with a large dollop of his faith thrown in.

But then he died and I read and heard more about Justice Scalia than I’d heard or read the entire time since I became aware of him when he ascended to the High Court in 1986. I’d read his decisions over the years and most time, angrily disagreed.  But what did I know about the law? I’m a journalist. He was a jurist. Still, his opinions seemed, at times unreasonable, insensitive and just mean.

That opinion, from the bench in my basement writing this, is now open to further examination. Listening to interviews with him during coverage of his death, I found his reasoning far beyond that of just conservative thinking, malicious ruling or cantankerous crankiness. His reasoning for, what I continue to believe,were confounding, infuriating rulings appeared sincerely based on his belief the Constitution is a document not open to interpretation or interpolation, but rather a turgid screed sealed in its original 18th century form.

In one interview he asked his questioner whether or not he’d read The Federalist Papers. Of course he hadn’t. But now I am. The Federalist Papers is a collection of 85 articles and essays written by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay promoting the ratification of the U.S. Constitution.  Even after  a quick survey of the 85 papers before delving deeper I have learned that the Constitution must take into account the individual rights of  each state, must create order, fairness and even courtesy in government. I have not yet found a passage supporting Justice Scalia’s contention the Constitution is not open to interpretation.

I look forward to the next week or two filling my brain with the heady writing of our Founding Fathers. They wisely wrote these essays in accessible language, not only to make the case for ratification, but to create a timeless record to which future generations could refer and understand.

And I thank the late Justice Antonin Scalia for resurrecting thoughts of the Federalist Papers from my long ago history classes to the top of my mind. I’m sure I still won’t find myself agreeing with his rulings, but at least I’ll understand, just a little better, why he made them.

I made it around the Sun…again

It’s the same trip I’ve been taking since Truman was President yet each circuit is different from the last. Oh, there was the one where my friends and I got very upset because New York State started taxing food and we had to cough up 6 cents for a Clark Bar instead of a nickel. I mean, really? A penny? What’s that gonna get the government except bushels of nuisance spare change you can’t buy anything with anyway.

There was the orbit where my 6th grade teacher vetoed the class vote for me as its Student Council rep because I was generally disruptive. Isn’t that what gets results? I wrote her a strongly-worded note deriding her for negating the “will of the people.” and she wrote my mother an equally blunt missive ordering her to appear for an important meeting regarding my lack of respect for authority. My wonderful mother, who was equally as recalcitrant, listened to my teacher’s complaints and feigned sympathy, then came home, rolled her eyes and begged me not to bust the teacher’s chops so much

During one circuit of the Sun I had a summer job in an engineering office where the draftsmen and designers were working up blue prints for piping at a nuclear power plant in Michigan. My job, as clerk, was to send the blue prints out to the construction site so they’d know how to put the plant together. Ooops. I sent blue prints for pipes that hadn’t yet been fabricated. Sad face from boss. And people wonder why we have problems with nuke plants. Might just be ferhoodled summer clerks.

There was the year my boss didn’t think I’d looked like I took enough trips around the big ball of gas. That’s when I worked at CNN. I was 34 but unfortunately looked about 14. That’s not good when you’re a correspondent. So they said I could still report, but not show my juvenile face. I figured that “problem” would serve me well after many more solar orbits, but by then the news business went to hell and no one wants reporters with any experience because they’re expensive.

Some of my trips involved professional triumph as well as abject disappointment, great personal joy and mourning, acting incredibly stupid and surprisingly ingenious. I’ve been lucky and unfortunate, responsible and foolish, angry and joyful.

My one constant has been my family, which keeps me on my toes. Never allowing me too much modestly or conceit, while keeping me focused and grounded.

I don’t know how many more trips around the Sun I will have the privilege to make, but I know one thing, in the end, I will have come full circle…searching for that nickel Clark Bar.