My household, Smerconish and Attila the Hun

Thought for the Fortnight

My husband I have liked watching Smerconish, the news and current affairs programme hosted by Michael Smerconish, since we first discovered it on CNN some years ago. We find his topics stimulating and his viewpoint refreshing.

It has become part of a Saturday afternoon ritual in the Richardson household.

There are normally three or so topics covered during a programme. Each week, as part of one of the topics covered, the programme asks its viewers their opinion on some subject.

Examples of recent questions¹ are:

Should the U.S. take over Gaza? Yes/No

Are you comfortable with your tax dollars funding USAID soft power initiatives such as Sesame Street in Iraq? Yes/No

Who bears the most responsibility for the Oval Office argument? Choices: Donald Trump, JD Vance, Volodymyr Zelensky or All equally

At this point, we tend to pause the programme and discuss our respective answers. We got in the habit of each setting out our own response and then guessing what the audience response would be. The latter would be based on our views of who comprises the likely audience of Smerconish, plus how we think they think.

This always ended with a friendly bet, just for fun.

The audience response to the day’s question is always shown at the end of the programme, so our guesses can be checked against that information.

We have each tended to be as likely wrong as right in our guesses (even Smerconish himself expresses surprise sometimes about the vote), but once in a while one of us would get it exactly right. We would have a laugh and then move on.

During the last year or so, our now 15-year-old grandson who frequently spends the weekend with us, has liked to join in. Both his parents are American (his father only via birth parent citizenship, i.e. me) and he takes a lively interest in what is going on there, although he lives in London.

He, too, wants to give his opinion on the right answer, plus what he thinks the audience response would be. He is not unsophisticated on this front and can hold his own in discussion. His involvement has been fine and made it even more fun.

But during the last six months or so, a fourth voice has been joined into the discussion, introduced by said grandson: Attila the Hun.

Why? I don’t know. He just appeared and became an additional participant. In my view, he added fun in the form of a wild card to the whole discussion.

(My husband countered with the suggestion that we add Jesus Christ to the mix, but I put my foot down and said four responses were enough to cope with.)

Knowing what he knows about Attila (gleaned, I believe, from computer games and some internet research), our grandson works out what the Hun’s views on current affairs in America might be, plus his assessment of the views of the TV audience. Sometimes, we have a three-way discussion about this, but the final arbiter is always our grandson.

When it was a two-way discussion between my husband and myself, this whole exercise was fairly straight-forward and done solely orally. With four sets of views about audience ratings, however, our grandson decided that the respective responses needed to be written down so there would be no argument afterwards.

He duly gets a pen and paper and records our decisions. I believe that, for no good reason I can see, he also later records them on his computer.

It is all glorious innocent fun on a Saturday afternoon. Educational for us all.

Perhaps especially for Attila the Hun. How could he have guessed, seventeen centuries after his death (d 453, no birthdate found) would be making educated guesses about American politics in London?

Next time you are having a friendly argument on an issue, consider how Attila the Hun (or anyone else for that matter) would have responded.

It will make your day.

I love hearing your responses to my writing. It makes such a difference to the process. Do you have favourite programmes that become a ritual to watch? Do you enjoy guessing audience responses? Have you ever given one minute’s thought to the views of Attila the Hun?

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1. These are questions set by Smerconish, but some are from his radio programme, I believe. I couldn’t find the set of questions used on his CNN TV programme alone.