Word count: 1015 | Reading time: 5 min read
Pretzel Logic
The columnist says he’s had enough of corporate journalism, and is leaving the Inky.
Frankie Bags said it best about Inquirer columnist Clark DeLeon when he skewered the man at the Gridiron Club dinner show last April.
By far the funniest skit of the evening, Bags’”The Pain Of Clark DeLeon” lampooned DeLeon’s penchant for letting the whole world, or at least the whole world of Inky readers — a diminishing world, at that — in on his foibles and suffering.
Well, now the pain is over.
Or at least his career at the Inquirer, anyway.
After 23 years as a denizen of the Ivory Tower of Truth — 22 of those as a columnist — DeLeon is packing up his bag of troubles and riding off into the sunset of buy-out land.
“I think what it came down to,” says DeLeon, whose run ends this week, “is that my editors — top management — heard enough from me.”
Heard enough of his problems, says DeLeon.
Heard enough of his opinions and pet peeves.
Heard enough about the tough times he had as a young father and the emotional sinkhole of that MOVE disaster that he was never quite able to crawl out of.
“I think,” says DeLeon, “that what happened with me is part of a larger development. A sign that corporate culture is taking over. As long as I have been here, we prided ourselves on being an excellent newspaper with quirky tendencies and liveliness. You see less of that now.”
I could see the end coming one night over beers at Dirty Franks.
I was interviewing DeLeon for a story about his newspaper’s plummeting circulation. DeLeon’s 45-year-old face bore the weary and wary look of a man resigned to his fate.
He was talking the talk of someone tired of yelling across a chasm of misunderstanding at those who, of all people, should understand him the most, the editors.
“The readers,” he told me in the bar, “get it. The editors don’t.”
As I walked home that night, a little lightheaded from the all the Yuenglings, I remembered my favorite DeLeon column, the one about how he and his wife, Sarah, had to hit the public dole to survive a rough stretch.
It was DeLeon at his best, a columnist opening himself up to public display for all interested to watch his battle with his demons. The kind of battle he was telling me about over brews and darts at the 13th Street watering hole.
I also thought about another DeLeon story on that three-mile hike home.
It was a story DeLeon told me once at a wedding, and it says much about him and, I think, about how much the Inquirer will miss his voice, even if a lot of people thought Clark was getting old, and in the way.
The story is about Dirty Franks and how he used to describe the place to his daughter as the “cherry store.”
DeLeon, who like me has a five-year-old daughter, would take Molly out. Sometimes their journey would pass through Franks. When his wife, Sarah, asked where they went, he would say, with a wink, to “the cherry store.”
One day, while the family was walking down 13th Street, Molly shouted out to Sarah, “look mommy, the cherry store.”
It was Dirty Franks.
Where the barkeep gave Molly cherries.
Reading the Inquirer these days, I am not too sure how many people there even know where Dirty Franks is, let alone hang out in a neighborhood haunt like that.
Despite his occasional lapses into the maudlin, despite the fact that he “could not let go of” what happened on Osage Avenue 10 years ago, the Inquirer will miss the cigar-chomping, beer-gulping, motorcycle-riding man of letters because he is, more than anyone else at the paper, Philadelphia in all its glory and ugliness.
The last piece will come either the end of this week or the beginning of next.
“It’s about a doctor in West Philly,” says DeLeon. “A cancer specialist. Oddly enough, he is involved in the politics of medicine and we are going through some similar things. The medical community does not want to hear from him about his treatment of cancer. He has been successful, but the medical hierarchy does not want to hear from him. It has either criticized or ignored the success he has had.”
The similarity between subject and author, says DeLeon, is this.
“He is as baffled as I am in our own professional sense,” says DeLeon. “He doesn’t understand why the medical community doesn’t want his advice. I don’t understand why anyone wouldn’t want a columnist who represents a view of the city. A columnist who clearly has an outspoken concern for the city of Philadelphia and who has chosen to make Philly his life’s work.”
Knowing that he was not wanted led him to editor Max King’s office two weeks ago. DeLeon told King that he wanted a buy-out and, a few days later, he signed a document giving him roughly 40 weeks of pay plus unused vacation time.
DeLeon, uncharacteristically, won’t discuss how much the deal is worth. But he says that he’ll get by and that Sarah “has been very supportive. She knows how miserable I have been.”
More than anything, DeLeon says he is glad to be leaving on his own terms.
“People say this is a terrible time for a middle-aged white male to be looking for work. Sure it is, but at least I am not at Breyers. At least I had the choice of causing my own unemployment.”
And though he is leaving the Inky, I doubt you’ve heard the last word about the pain of Clark DeLeon.
You’ll probably see his by-line in this newspaper in the not-too-distant future. And there is Philly Mag and radio.
But if you really miss the guy and can’t wait for the latest episode of his trials and travails, head over to Dirty Franks.
He’ll be glad to fill you in.
And offer you a cherry to boot.
