Are we a militia, mayor?

The Irish Guys are a social club, Mikey.

We’re ethnics, right?

Irish, says Spuds McAnus.

Trump Irish, Mikey says.

That’s us, says the mayor.

What about them socialist Scranton Biden Irish?

Just Biden their time, McAnus says.

Are there any Irish of color?

Bite your tongue, Mikey.

What’s black Irish then?

You’re black Irish.

There’s no colored in my family, mayor.

You got black hair, dark eyes and tan fast when you’re working construction in the summer.

Mikey proudly squares his shoulders.

Mayor McAnus explains.

The red hair, freckles and pale skin comes from Vikings who failed to conquer Ireland.

We kicked the Vikings’ ass, right, mayor?

Sent them back to Sweden.

So why do we look like we do, mayor?

Because we’re Celts.

Like the Boston Celtics?

Larry Bird forever.

Larry Bird has blond hair.

He was from Indiana.

So even the great Larry Bird isn’t as Irish as us.

Not even close.

You always got the answers, mayor.

Never forget where you came from, says the mayor.

Invitations are going out faster than Russian mail-in ballots for Saturday’s Irish Guys pro-Trump rally at their local Wilkes-Barre pub.

Here’s what the invite says:

“NO MASKS ALLOWED.

“Show your support and your balls by packing the Coal Hole for a ‘WE SUPPORT THE PRESIDENT CLAMBAKE,’ an all-you-can-drink fund-raiser that includes beer and wine. Fifty-fifty tickets and punchboard gambling will be available.”

“SCREW THAT BUG. WE’RE NOT AFRAID OF NO COVID”

Coal Hole bartender Mikey Hoyle got excited.

Beer AND wine. I love that Mogan David blackberry wine.

Mogan David’s a Jew, Mayor Spuds McAnus said. President Trump said they’re only in it for themselves. They stick together. The president said the only kind of people he wants counting his money are short guys that wear yarmulkes every day.

So what wine are we serving?

MD 20/20. People call it Mad Dog but the MD really stands for made in Donegal. It’s better wine because it’s Irish.

AUTHOR’S NOTE: MD actually stands for Mogan David, the company that makes it.

Nothing better than us Irishmen sticking together, Hoyle said. You ever wonder why the President doesn’t drink?

His brother was a lush so the President’s setting a good example for the children, McAnus said.

Then what are we doing pounding down the drinks every day?

Enjoying our freedoms. Never forget freedom isn’t free.

What’s that even mean?

You pay for liberty. Ever hear of the cost of freedom?

No, Hoyle said.

Once you pay the price then it’s like an all-you-can-drink special.

And we paid the price?

We pay it every day.

Yeah, free beer! How many tickets we sell so far?

Three hundred. I made all the cops and firefighters buy them, McAnus said.

Where we getting the clams?

Dooley’s brother-in-law in Jersey knows a guy at the shore who can bring us up a truckload of the ones the restaurants didn’t want. There’s nothing wrong with them clams no matter what some illegal immigrant chef says.

I like mine on the half-shell, Hoyle said. Whadya think of Mr. Trump standing up there on the White House balcony saluting and struggling to catch his breath so he wouldn’t cry because he loves us so much.

I cried, McAnus said.

Me, too, Hoyle said.

We’re making America great again.

Yeah, it’s great.

The woman from Haddonfield, New Jersey, wrote to me on stationary decorated with sky blue and lilac butterflies.

“This is the trashiest book I’ve ever read…so much so I’d never pass it on to anyone else,” she wrote.

So she stuffed her copy in an envelope and sent it to me at my home address.

Such brilliant reviews for Paddy’s Day in Trump Town just keep rolling in.

My critic, who calls herself “a former Valley girl,” for some reason thinks she can purchase my latest novel, read it, wallow in the page droppings, ask for her money back and receive a full refund.

Try that the next time you gobble up an order of greasy chicken wings in Wilkes-Barre and leave the boney dregs on your plate.

Good fiction often leaves a smeared plate. You decide whether to suffer indigestion or enjoy satisfaction, something that even escapes Mick Jagger every now and then.

So what if she gave me the book back? If I drink a bottle of California pinot noir can I give the bottle back and ask for a refund?

The woman got even more devious.

“I’d like my $15.99 back, or just send the refund to Pennsylvanians for Human Life….”

Then she got snide.

“I’m sure one of your favorite charities,” she wrote.

I’ll keep her name out of this so she’s not embarrassed. The last name she goes by isn’t even Irish, but she apparently has a lot in common with the mindset of the Irish Guys white ethnic social club in my novel.

If I do change my mind and give her money to charity, her donation will go to Black Lives Matter. She ought to be thrilled that I’m giving to a real pro-life group and not some tribe of uncivilized religious zealots who try to terrorize women and ought to be put on a domestic totalitarianism watch list.

Granted, I did mention the anti-abortion crowd in the book. One Irish Guy drinks in a t-shirt bearing the slogan, “I’m Not A Choice I’m A Child” and, like in the book, I won’t be surprised if one day U.S. Sen Bobby Casey really does try to register fetuses to vote.

Our “Valley girl” made my day when she sent me her used copy of Paddy’s Day in Trump Town. Other readers are free to do the same. I’ll offer the returns at half price if the National Abortion Rights Action League, or NARAL Pro-Choice America, ever holds a local fundraiser.

Why?

Because Paddy’s Day in Trump Town is alive and well and I’m proud of it.

The name “Johnny Popko” reaches out and grabs you, squeezing like a smooth Ukrainian cage fighter crushing a stranglehold on a terrible tattooed opponent. A gentle man by nature, Popko still snaps and crackles as the laid-back host of an increasingly popular internet radio podcast that puts imitators to shame.

Mature, smart, thick-skinned, all attributes for survival in the thin-skinned world of local online entertainment, Popko takes chances. That’s where he breaks from a petty pack that gets caught coughing in his dust.

Most Popko guests hail from the music world, usually regional, talented and sometimes hard to label. Some are cultural oddities. Others spew false importance. Popko treats them all respectfully. He makes his interviews look easy.

A pro stays calm when the locusts land.

Popko doesn’t let the bugs bother him.

Because he’s composed, his audience learns something deeper about his guests. Because of Popko’s aura, everybody settles down and goes deeper into themselves than what we see when a conversation falls into the hands of less skilled hosts.

Johnny Popko.

An alias?

A brand?

All of the above.

The Steamtown Music Awards recently honored him to be the recipient of two awards – local radio/podcast/streaming personality of the year and his show, ALT-Natives on ALT 92.1, won local podcast/streaming series/radio series of the year.

“I am so proud of what I’m able to do on ALT-Natives on ALT 92.1 and so honored to be a part of the local music scene here in Northeastern Pennsylvania,” he wrote on his Facebook page.

So I was pleased to recently share the platform with the man himself and let the NEPA establishment tight asses know I’m still riding hard with a powerful message to deliver.

Here’s us – Popping Johnny Popko and me, The Outlaw Corbett, rattling cages for the benefit of civilization.

https://www.facebook.com/ALTNativesonALT921/videos/320398655695957

Shoot that into your brain vein.

Always smart in a dark business suit, silk tie and pocket square, trial attorney Chuck Volpe cuts a sharp impression. Secure among the rich and powerful, he hosts public civic soirees and behind-closed-door private business meetings.

Volpe is a player and independent thinker.

That’s what makes him dangerous to the political status quo, especially to his own Democratic Party, members of which he regularly confronts.

Volpe likes the challenge, one reason I like him.

Political hacks fear him. Shady hustlers avoid him. Mighty insider confidants seek him out.

For 13 seasons Volpe has hosted his own interview show on WOLF TV, FOX 56, where he talks politics, commerce and culture with Commonwealth powerbrokers. Topics slant heavily toward life in Northeastern Pennsylvania but Volpe’s reach extends into the boardrooms and backrooms of state and national political circles.

Expert at what he does, Volpe’s courtroom experience is clear.

So is his business savvy and expertise.

When we recently spoke on the air, he impressed me with his ability to analyze electioneering and statecraft at a high level as well as with his ability to understand white ethnic working-class values that still drive hard coal country.

Volpe sees politics the same way I do – a blood sport that requires men and women willing to fight for what is right, not what is politically expedient.

That’s why we both expressed concern that Democrats are not doing enough to beat President Donald Trump in his re-election bid.

That’s why we want establishment elites, mostly well-known elected while male officials in our communities, to pick up the pace or suffer an Election Day loss that will hurt and even kill countless people.

Here’s the link so you can see for yourself:

https://fox56.com/local-shows/the-volpe-report/the-volpe-report-steve-corbett-09-14-2020

Don’t ask me how to spell the CNN newsman’s full name and title.

“For security reasons,” he refused to tell me.

I already know how to spell CNN.

And CNN spells “fake news.”

My bad trip with what media critics call an enemy of the people cable network occurred this morning when I called the CNN Washington bureau. National network journalists and producers are tough to reach in person but, to my surprise, I did a simple Google search and rang the number.

When a live CNN person answered I explained the reason for my call. She connected me to a person further up the news food chain.

Dominic/Dominque/Dominick, etc. came on the line.

Dom asked if I was with anybody.

I took that to mean media and explained I am a former longtime journalist who writes novels and lives in Scranton, Pennsylvania. I said I was dismayed with the CNN promotion airing for Thursday’s “town hall” with Joe Biden and Anderson Cooper. The on-screen promotion says, “Live from Scranton, Pennsylvania.

“That’s not true, I told Dom.

Dom seemed confused.

Your event will be held in another municipality, I said. Your event is scheduled for Moosic, Pennsylvania, not Scranton.

Not only is the promo untrue, the mistake allows Biden to build on the incessant blue-collar myth that he’s, as former President Barack Obama called him, “the scrappy kid from Scranton.”

Dom seemed even more confused.

I explained how we live in an era of severe press criticism that requires accuracy as sharp as Biden’s capped canine teeth. OK, I didn’t say that last part. I said media must get it right or play into the often incorrect and dangerous criticism of hard work journalists perform every day.

Dom wanted me to repeat exactly where the event would be held if not in Scranton, saying he wasn’t from Pennsylvania. I reminded him of the recent trip President Donald Trump made to Old Forge for a successful rally. On the way to that town, Trump’s motorcade passed through Moosic, where his supporters who hate CNN lined the streets. OK, so I didn’t say they hate CNN but they do.

That was Moosic, I told Dom.

I sensed Dom losing interest and had to justify my existence. So I told him CNN interviewed me a number of times during the 2005 Michael Jackson trial and some people would still remember me. (National correspondent Miguel Marquez would remember but he’s in New York.) Believe it or not, CNN wanted me so badly one day producers actually called the head of SKY News in London (for which a foreign editor hired me to provide live commentary) who authorized me to talk about the Jackson case with him on CNN, a competing network.

I asked Dom to put me in touch with a producer, supervisor or reporter who might help me. Dom said he had a live show going on and had to get back to the news. Besides, he said, he’s the person I should speak with about this matter.

I asked for his last name and title. Citing security, Dom refused to provide that information. We went back and forth to no avail. The CNN mystery man refused to budge.

Back in the late 80s I called the New York Daily News and asked to talk to Jimmy Breslin. The legendary newsman quickly came on the phone and we had a nice talk about the mine fire in Centralia. Tell everybody there I said, “Hi,” Breslin said.

I should have mentioned to Dom that Anderson Cooper’s new baby’s name isn’t even a secret.

Let’s see if CNN changes its false promo for a town hall from which the public is excluded and truthfulness is dismissed as well.

I don’t know how to spell Dom’s full name, but credibility is always spelled with a capital C.

Raising his white-taped fists fast as a whiplash, Muhammad Ali leaned close to my face and threw a crushing question.

“Did you just call me nigger?”

A state senator leaning against the dressing room wall laughed. Stunned by Ali’s head shot, I lowered my fists I had raised for a photograph and stared at “The Greatest.”  

Putting on a soft smile, Ali slipped on his gloves and strolled to the Reading, PA boxing ring to fight an exhibition bout with a Black state prison inmate serving a life sentence for murder. Later that year, in September, 1977, Ali beat Ernie Shavers in a brutal 15-round decision to retain his heavyweight title.

Decades later I read how Ali threw the same loaded question at other white reporters he encountered during his celebrated career.

Ali’s lesson remains pounded into my brain.

The N-word has knockout power.

White people aren’t supposed to use the word. I adhere to a voluntary ban and stay away from the word in radio or television interviews about my new novel, Paddy’s Day in Trump Town.

That makes talking about the import of the book difficult.  My white racist characters drown in their use of the word.

Nigger also exists as a term of defiance. Black people who use the word understand the extreme difference in usage from those who slur them with hatred, superiority or white supremacy. More power to Black men and women who reclaim the word, turning oppression around on whitey.

Either way, using the word “nigger” as a weapon is a powerful attack – in my case as an attack on racists and racism. I deliberately wrote every letter of the word to convey my characters’ deep-rooted bigotry.

If you’re smart you’ll learn from me the way I learned from Ali. And you’ll do something about people who stab Blacks behind their backs with a word that feels like hot needles stuck into a beating heart.

My book about white bigotry and tribal ethnic hatred is about us. If we ever hope to evolve, we need to know what goes on inside dangerous minds.

Although my novels require depictions of physical and emotional violence, too many liberal readers reject harsh portrayals of reality. Too many otherwise bright readers turn away from graphic depictions of racism, sexism, homophobia, animal cruelty, physical violence and other abhorrent human behavior.

Some publishers now hire sensitivity readers to screen novels for any cruel portrait of life and death. They snub characters and drama that might upset a reader. I don’t use a sensitivity reader. I alone create characters and plots about these crucial conflicts. I’m my own best sensitivity reader.

In Paddy’s Day in Trump Town I gave life to the characters I developed to illustrate the harsh truth that inhabits too many of my tribe of Irish Americans in Northeastern Pennsylvania. My depiction of white identity should grate against goodness and make many decent readers uncomfortable.

Black readers and other people of color might feel particularly uncomfortable. I ask you to stay in the fight the way Ali stayed in the fight.

As for white folks, it’s always best to face bigots in print before you face them at work, across the dinner table at home or worse, in the mirror.

And, no, I didn’t call Ali “nigger.”

I just got hit with his jab and tried hard not to let the punch knock me out.

Pointing to the red bulb over the door, I’d say, “When the light goes on you talk.”

That’s the prolific advice I always gave aspiring news talk show hosts whenever they visited the WILK News Radio studio. College students, media, a variety of scouts, political candidates, elected officials and others would usually laugh.

I was serious. You either had something to say or you didn’t. For ten years I always had something to say. I still do.

No red light alerted me Monday morning to the start of my interview with WILK host Jason Barsky. I called the station from the comfort of my Scranton home. My old producer Johnny Lucas informed me I had less than two minutes before we went live to talk about Paddy’s Day in Trump Town, my latest novel.

When the red light flashed for Barsky we talked.

You can listen here.

A little rusty from lack of practice and months of pandemic isolation, I tore into raw, hot-button issues I address in my book. Set in Wilkes-Barre, the plot unleashes harsh issues of Irish American tribalism, white male anger, racism, sexism and other bigotry, all severe concerns in the potentially dystopian 2020 presidential election.

I laid the hatred at the feet of President Donald Trump and his white nationalist supporters who want to re-elect him for more of the same treacherous attacks on the people he serves. Four more years of hurtful ignorance, disease and death is too much to take.

Barsky is a pro who heard stories of the outlaw Corbett and honestly wanted to know what makes me tick, what got me into trouble with right-wing Northeastern Pennsylvania listeners and fired by the same bosses who hired him.

I told him.

Trump might win again, I said.

The social apocalypse arrives if he does. America as we know it disappears. Political Armageddon cleaves respect, laying bare decency and hope. We’re screwed.

I hope I drove his regular listeners over the edge. I hope I got under their thin skin, piercing their black hearts with fearlessness and the knowledge that good decent people will face their evil and emerge victorious. I want them to know we will rebuild our nation with the conscience and moral courage they and their demented leader try every day to destroy.

I hope Joe Biden was listening.

Because Trump might win.

I hope both candidates read Paddy’s Day in Trump Town. These two white privileged men can learn some serious lessons about the hard life in hard coal country many people experience here – something neither Trump nor Biden really knows anything about.

If Biden wins, we might win, too.

If Trump wins, everybody loses.

Tight as a prison cage, the WILK News Radio studio pulsed with raw energy and colorful strings of apocalyptic lights. That’s the way I remember the decade I spent behind the mic in that corporate padded cell.

I’ve been gone for more than three years, fired in March 2017 for what bosses said were bad ratings and I said was retribution for my fight against Donald Trump and his cult during the 2016 presidential campaign.

I return to those airways Monday, August 31, at 10:05 AM for an interview with host Jason Barsky, a caller this time, there to talk about my new novel, Paddy’s Day in Trump Town.

My book is about a mindset, a bunker mentality that shelters a dangerous bigotry that plagues the lives of many of my former callers who day-after-day saw me as a threat to their way of life.

I saw them as the enemy.

Neither of us has changed our perception about the other.

Neither of us is wrong.

This is a novel about white working-and-middle-class men and women who will do anything to guarantee Trump’s re-election, a warning that Trump will win again unless Democrats pick up their dull pace and excite more people about dreary Joe Biden.

The book is a primer on politics, hatred and Northeastern Pennsylvania ethnic culture. The book is about us. The book is a ticking time bomb.

Tune in Monday.

You better listen.

We’re not bogus knights in shining armor like the online Order of the Black Shamrock.  We don’t play in an LA rock band named Black Shamrock.

We’re a different breed, those of us born in the shadow of the black shamrock. That’s why I chose this dark image to appear as part of the symbolism on my author’s page. 

You, too, might share this mysterious lineage. Some of you don’t know the depth of your roots. So this magic tale of origin, the legend of the black shamrock, might finally set you free.

Once you recognize your connection, I urge you to wield your wisdom. Once you know your true nature, use your power to stand against evil. Mostly, tell the truth.

We’re not Druids but these wise men and women helped us in the past.

Stout-hearted Druids discovered the first black shamrock sprouting thousands of years ago from rugged cracks in harsh cliffs on the raw western edge of Ireland. Pushing to life in tough terrain, this coal-hued three-leaf clover bent to no one.

Our ancient psychic strain grew in pitch-dark night beneath the stars. High priests first wrote of harvesting her seeds to plant in hidden gardens. They used her leaves for tea, a strange brew that warmed the insides and cast shadows on the brain, the likes of which nobody had ever seen and only dauntless seers could handle. Mystics called the visions prophetic. Our enemies called the dreams diabolical delusions. Bards and chieftains, those of us touched by their alchemy, called the shadows ideas.

My ideas are born of the black shamrock. Yours can be, too, but only if you dare. The shadow of the black shamrock can help you unlock outlaw ideas of your own.

Both you and the world will be better for it.

I invite you to join me regularly on this page.

Please come in.