Category: Sardonic Side

*If the ACLU can come to the aid of Rush Limbaugh (regarding the secrecy of his medical records), then virtually any pairing — this side of Jon Gruden and Rich McKay — is possible. So why not gay groups wooing conservatives to their side of the same-sex marriage issue?

Indeed, gay rights strategists are now portraying a proposed constitutional ban on same-sex marriage as a step so radical that hard-core conservatives can’t help but oppose it. There’s even a radio and print campaign, which includes this market, with ads that say: “Be conservative with the Constitution. Don’t amend it.”

Conservative constitutional principles notwithstanding, wooing the “mad vow disease” crowd still seems a reach.

* Ralph Nader is politically “Unsafe at Any Speed” to the Democrats. Once again, the Corvair candidate is careening toward a presidential run — this time as an independent. But what’s left to prove? He has already shown that he can’t come close to winning a national election, but that he can help elect a Republican if it’s really, really close. Karl Rove is already writing the thank-you card.

*Too bad the most viable school-choice option isn’t for all students to simply go to the nearest school. Period. Among the elements chronically missing in most schools: a sense of community and local pride. There are a few exceptions. And it shows.

* A sure sign that your presidential campaign is a long-shot — this Tribune headline from a fortnight ago: “Kucinich Counts On Muslim Votes in Dark-Horse Presidential Race.”

*A great name for a health club would be “The Weight We Were.”

*Stories we’ll never see on pan-Arab satellite channels Al-Arabiya or Al-Jazeera: A comparison of Iranian earthquake aid — workers and materiel — provided by the U.S. and al-Qaida. Infidels, it would seem, are more helpful than martyrs in some endeavors.

*Parades, speeches, vigils and step competitions are synonymous with the celebration of MLK Day. But special kudos are due some 150 University of Tampa students who honored the memory of Dr. King by participating in UT’s fourth annual MLK Day of Service. The volunteers — in partnership with the Mayor’s Beautification Program — spent Monday, Jan. 19, replanting medians and landscaping parks as well as the MLK Community Center on North Rome Avenue.

*USF’s decade-long descent into basketball underachievement and spectator indifference hit a new low with that embarrassing, nationally televised 95-40 loss to Louisville. It would have been even worse had UL coach Rick Pittino not played everyone but the Cardinal mascot. With USF slated to join the basketball bullies of the Big East in 2005, you have to wonder what kind of unsettling message that debacle sent to league officials. They could hardly be faulted if they now fear the hoops counterpart of Temple football.

*It looks like Bern’s Steak House owner David Laxer will get city council approval to build a four-story, 86-room hotel — along with a wine shop, spa, restaurant and town homes — on South Howard Avenue. It’s directly across the street from the iconic Bern’s. Laxer helped his cause considerably by meeting with neighborhood groups before the site plans were filed. But promising never again to replicate Bern’s neo-breadbox architecture probably carried the day.

On balance, the Hillsborough County City-County Planning Commission is a pretty staid lot doing some serious work. Indeed, it’s not all that long ago that “planning,” per se, seemed sort of oxymoronic around here. So the commission’s work can involve undoing as well as preparing for tomorrow. Theirs is an important — and typically thankless — job as Hillsborough County — in all its disparate entities –continues its rapid, skewed growth amid Byzantine politics.

Anyway, this Christmas the area’s most acronym-challenged organization almost stepped out of character. In addition to an annual pre-holiday, lunch-hour gathering featuring a church choir, cheery toasts and presents for children, the commission — or at least its entertainment committee — decided to push the holiday-party envelope.

They secured the services of a Bay Area character known to those in the private- and -corporate-holiday-party set as “Sardonic Santa.” Apparently Sardonic Santa’s roast-like schtick is tailored to the specific, hosting organization — but inevitably waxes politically incorrect.

So when some folks at the commission got wind that the church choir was only a warm-up to Sardonic Santa, they complained. Not appropriate. Not everyone would think it was funny. And they, in effect, substituted “Escape Claus” for Sardonic Santa.

Can’t blame them, really. If there’s a chance that someone might be displeased, let it be over the choice of hymns or the flavoring of the punch. Not whether something was funny or insulting.

But here’s the kicker. I have it on unimpeachable authority, that there really was no reason to whack Sardonic Santa. In fact, I know Sardonic Santa. Sardonic Santa is a friend of mine. And he has assured me that among those laughing the loudest would have been Bob Hunter, executive director; Ray Chiaramonte, assistant executive director; Luci Ayer, transportation director; Tony Garcia, planner; Robin McCarthy, receptionist; Mike Tonelli, planner; and Terry Eagan, librarian.

They’ll just have to take Sardonic Santa’s word for it.

Hillsborough County’s “Moral Courage Award,” the well-intentioned brainchild of Jan Platt, has been around since the early 1990s. It’s designed to recognize those who manifest moral courage and high ethical standards.

It conjures up Atticus Finch-like images and Silkwoodian scenarios.

Instead, we get a mixed bag of activists and agenda drivers, some of whom would be more appropriately eligible for a “Chutzpah Award,” a “Self-Interest Award” or an “Up Yours Award.” Among this year’s nominees are strip club owner Joe Redner and Speak Up Tampa Bay, the non-profit group in charge of a lot of bad public access television. Last year’s nominees included grandstanding Commissioner Ronda Storms, who challenged Speak Up, and then-Mayor Dick Greco, who took a trip to Cuba.

There’s no taking the politics — or the silliness out of it. But some of the nominations, such as Redner’s, are demeaning.

Three options:

1)Call it a better ideal than idea. Then call it off.

2)Don’t give it out every year.

3)Add Luke Lirot, White Chocolate, Tony Daniel and Don Connolly to this year’s nominees.

Steve Kersker, the former drug addict who found religion and a cause — the homeless — has apparently found another cause: the thoughtless.

Kersker and his homeless troops were no-shows for a Thanksgiving meal at Carrabba’s in St. Petersburg. The reason, according to Kersker: a “bait-and-switch” deceit. Carrabba’s was merely providing the venue. The food was being prepared elsewhere.

In addition to misplaced umbrage, this is a new low in ingratitude.

It’s also a new low in stupidity. The meal was prepared by the Palm restaurant.

When you’re wrong, the honorable thing is to own up to it. I thought the primary — and quite possibly only — reason that a number of newspapers carried “The Boondocks” was because of its minority orientation. And I thought that a pretty shabby rationale for strip that was not, well, particularly funny. As a result, I concluded, the strip had very little, if any, value.

Wrong. Its value is in politically incorrect commentary that wouldn’t be otherwise included. Not even “Doonesbury.”

For example, the recent “Boondocks” strip where the kid and the grandfather are watching a Lakers’ game on TV. The announcer’s voice says, “The Denver Nuggets revealed their new game plan against the Los Angeles Lakers today, which involves the strategic placement of several 19-year-old white girls immediately behind the Lakers’ basket.”

One more thing.

As comic-strip parody, that still would have worked even had there not been a celebrated rape case involving Kobe Bryant. The NBA. It is what it is.

*If you know people who like to refer to themselves in the third person , you probably don’t like them.

*Whether it elicits laughs or induces winces, Doonesbury belongs on the editorial page. Now more than ever.

*I’ve never been able to disassociate my views on capital punishment from a quote that emanated from Great Britain’s debate on its abolition (for murder). Out of the House of Lords came these words of Lord Gardiner, the Lord Chancellor: “I think that human beings who are not infallible ought not to choose a form of punishment which is irreparable.”

*Periodically, the name of John Hinckley Jr. , President Ronald Reagan’s nearly successful assassin, is recycled into our consciousness. His therapist, we are told, says Hinckley is no longer a threat. Unfortunately for Hinckley — and unlike other would-be murderers — that will never be enough to secure his release from St. Elizabeth’s Hospital in Washington.

Hinckley is more symbol than patient or inmate. John Walker Lindh, for example, will be out and studying Arabic while Hinckley is a senior citizen at St. Elizabeth. He will remain a prisoner of an unwritten American law: “You can’t shoot a president and walk. Ever.” Whether it was politics, demons or Jodie Foster that prompted it. *Nothing should surprise us anymore regarding Michael Jackson . That, alas, includes parents still willing to sign off on a Jacko sleepover for their kids — part of the obscene price paid by a society whose obsessive appetite for celebrity can’t be sated.

*Should GDP keep ratcheting up, productivity maintain its ascent and unemployment slide south, next year’s presidential election may not be a referendum on “the economy, stupid” as it almost always is.

What it may be is what it should be in post 9/11 America . How do we best protect ourselves against perverted Islam, and what is the proper role of the U.S. vis a vis the rest of the civilized world, including Israel?

Rhetoric about “tax cuts for the rich,” exported jobs, the deficit, and even prescription drug benefits and Social Security will look like the emptiest of abstractions if life as we prefer it should end. Anyone think 9/11 was as bad as it can get?

*It’s understandable that lots of demonstrators — from Trafalgar Square to Main Street would vent against President Bush over Iraq. It’s less understandable — but hardly unexpected — that demonstrators would also protest the Free Trade Area of the Americas meeting. There have even been go-figure gatherings in support of Michael Jackson.

But here’s a scenario that has yet to unfold. Demonstrations so organized, so huge and so loud as to concentrate the attention of the entire world, including the Middle East, on this verity: the sheer cruelty and barbarity perpetuated by Muslim fanatics is beyond condemnation. But it’s not beyond elimination. They threaten civilization and must be eradicated like any other plague.

Surely the cause of death, despair and evil has adversaries willingly to speak out. Surely.

*So much was written regarding the 40th anniversary of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination that it’s hard to say anything that isn’t redundant. But I’ll try. How unfortunate that Bill Clinton’s boyhood hero was Kennedy — not Harry Truman.

*I guess I just don’t get it, but I don’t see undocumented, immigrant students being asked to pay out-of-state tuition at Florida public universities as some injustice worthy of outrage and legislation. Why should we expect a student from, say, Thomasville, Georgia to pay out-of-state tuition at Florida State, but not the student from Bogota, Colombia or Montevideo, Uruguay?

In a Panglossian scenario, we would welcome and subsidize everyone in the world who wanted to come here. For a lot of obvious reasons, we can’t — and that includes providing additional incentives for illegal immigration.

* Peter Jennings was in town a fortnight ago, and in several disparate forums underscored that he is very much a pro’s pro. He qualifies as a media elite, but hardly acted the part. Much more than unflappable. Urbane but not pretentious. Witty but not sarcastic. Casual — but not patronizing. Informed — but not fulsomely so. Speaking — but not in lieu of listening.

His aplomb was no less manifest among café con leche-sipping Hispanics, with media representatives at a formal panel discussion or on the portable anchor set of World News Tonight. A lot of local media would have been well served to have taken notes.

*Tampa’s Pam Iorio , not unlike other major city mayors, has her share of frustrations. Anything to do with HARTline surely makes her short list. Getting the new art museum out of the ground is likely there too. Then there are LaBrake leftovers and security concerns. There’s fallout from a county commission that can still dysfunction with the best. Drug deals and code violations still occur. Not everyone agrees with her on condo towers in the Channel District.

And yet, an educated guess is that her short list is topped by the homeless. It’s one of those visceral issues — where the humanitarian and the pragmatic collide. Where doing the right thing for all but the homeless doesn’t feel very righteous.

While not a social engineer, the mayor, at her core, is a do-gooder. Especially on behalf of the disadvantaged and disaffected — whatever their story. The story of the homeless, however, is problematic. For one, it’s not a housing problem. It’s largely one of addiction and institutionalization.

But it’s also a litter, panhandle, public health, and, well, image problem. Image sounds so shallow — so, well, political — when juxtaposed to the “homeless.” But if you’re the mayor, the realization of downtown’s business and visitor potential is no superficial issue. Neither is the maintenance of a clean, odor-and-flasher-free library for tax-paying residents. Been to San Francisco lately?

*Two weeks ago Orlando broke ground for the Florida A&M University Law School. Good for Orlando, good for FAMU — but better for Tampa. As you’ll recall, Tampa was not “selected” for the FAMU project, which would have involved, among other giveaways, free riverfront land. Instead, Tampa SOLD the downtown parcel to Stetson University College of Law, which will have its impressive, new law school facility ready in the coming year.

*Finally. Elections chief Miriam Oliphant , Broward County’s icon to incompetence, has been removed from office by Gov. Jeb Bush. Apparently there actually is a limit to how much gross mismanagement is tolerable when the politics of race is involved. What was outrageous was that Broward voters were held hostage so long to Oliphant’s electoral bungling and cronyism.

*I hope Madstone Theaters in Old Hyde Park Village makes it. For bringing in movies and a theater ambience that are not aimed at 15-year-old boys and for helping to re-energize the Village. Having said that, I can’t help but remain skeptical that a destination for the “sophisticated” movie set will be a big winner. I wonder if that niche is viable enough. It will require regional patronage as well as support from the neighborhood.

Then again, I never expected to see Neiman Marcus in our town. Now if Crate ‘n Barrel opens in the Village

*The ambiguity over Scott Peterson’s alibi would rule me out as an unbiased juror. Here’s a guy — whose wife is eight months pregnant — trying to decide whether he should play golf or go fishing on Christmas Eve. Next case.

*The media need to be more precise when reporting on trial results. Defendants, as we know, are convicted or acquitted as a result of having been adjudged “guilty” or “not guilty.” The latter, however, is not synonymous with “innocent.” It’s a moral judgment, not a legal term; its use is inappropriate when assessing the result of evidence presented and doubts weighed.

Case in point: “Fugitive Heir Found Innocent of Murder.” A number of media outlets — especially on line — actually found that to be an appropriate headline for the not-guilty verdict rendered in the notorious case of New York real estate heir Robert Durst.

Here’s a rule of thumb: Never use “innocent” in a case where a defendant has acknowledged dismembering a body.

Arguably, the multi-hued makeover of the $20-dollar bill works. The floating shades of soft blue, green and peach are easy on the eyes, and the image of an eagle next to President Andrew Jackson is a nice touch. And twenties, with their new watermarks and security threads, are now a lot harder to counterfeit, which is why the pricey project was undertaken in the first place.

But here’s the part that makes less sense. Why stop with color tones and new design elements? Wouldn’t this have been the perfect time to do something with that dyspeptic portrait of Jackson? How about a kinder, gentler Jackson? Alas, he looks like he’s down to his last 20-spot.

According to the NCAA, cheerleading is not an intercollegiate sport, at least not the kind that warrants scholarships. The University of Maryland, however, is currently testing that tenet. To expedite compliance with the equal opportunity mandates of Title IX — and to save some men’s scholarships — UM has promoted part of its cheerleading squad to varsity status this year.

It might be that UM has happened upon a new model to satisfy the Byzantine requirements of the gender-equity gendarmes. Or it might be that the NCAA will see it as an impermissible ruse to skirt the original intent of Title IX.

Would that cheerleaders could be acknowledged for what they are. Being gymnastically athletic is a bonus. Being a babe is a must. It’s not cheerleading; it’s cheer providing.

Two poster lads for corporate sleaze and excess, former Tyco CEO Dennis Kozlowski and ex-banker Frank Quattrone, are now on trial. Many have questioned their decision not to do a deal, and observers will be all over the proceedings second guessing the defense and scrutinizing the prosecution’s strategy.

Here’s another question: what’s the meaning of “jury of one’s peers” in a case like this?

Kozlowski, for example, is accused of looting Tyco of some $600 million. That’s 6 million benjamins for those non-tycoon types scoring from the jury box.

Worse yet for the defendant is how he allegedly spent it. Is there any peerage for a guy accused of buying a $6,000 shower curtain and a $15,000 umbrella stand? Should there be?