Category: Sardonic Side

What’s wrong with this picture?

A Winter Park resident is still suing for the right to pose with an identification-shrouding veil for her Florida driver’s license I.D. photo. Islamic convert Sultaana Freeman, the former Sandra Keller, says it is a matter of religious conviction. The American Civil Liberties Union agrees.

No one else should.

This is beyond nonsense. This is beyond Comedy Central.

Whether your name is Sultaana Freeman or Clayton Moore, your driver’s license I.D. photo must identify you. Is there really a need to explain anything?

Thanks to Sen. Hillary Clinton’s “Living History,” and historian Robert Dallek’s “An Unfinished Life,” the strife and times of Bill Clinton and John F. Kennedy are with us again. Especially the salacious parts dealing with presidents and their paramour interns.

And that perennially pesky matter of public people and their private affairs.

Most of us would probably agree that what is done in private that doesn’t impact an official’s capacity to do the public’s work is nobody else’s business. The presidency, however, is different.

Anything that could compromise the person holding the most powerful position in the world is no mere private matter. Blackmail and national security concerns are the real issue — not morality or sleaziness. Whether the liaison is with an intern or a mob moll.

Too bad Clinton’s hero wasn’t Harry Truman instead of JFK.

Ever find your eyes wandering to the “Today’s Birthdays” feature of the daily newspaper — only to reaffirm that you’ve never heard of most of those mentioned? The latest ingenue or rapper isn’t part of your frame of reference.

Did you really need yet another reminder that when it comes to the culture of the mainstream, you’re stuck in a societal retention pond?

But then there was, well, validation the other day. May 28 apparently yielded only two birthdays of general public note. Singer Gladys Knight might be Pip-less, but she’s still going strong at 59. Basketball Hall of Famer Jerry West turned 65. It’s still hard to accept “Zeke from Cabin Creek (WV)” qualifying for Social Security, but I can still see him sticking a long jumper any time, any place.

The conservative Weekly Standard ran a recent piece on Gov. Jeb Bush, anointing him as the early favorite for the GOP 2008 presidential nomination.

As Dana Carvey might say, “Wouldn’t be prudent.” Even with the best possible spin on Jeb’s controversial tenure as governor. Even with the understanding that Jeb was his own family’s top presidential choice before his loss to Lawton Chiles and brother George W.’s upset of Anne Richards. Even though Jeb’s a quicker study and a better debater than his president brother.

Here’s why Bush in ’08 only works if the 22nd Amendment is repealed for George W.

Americans respect a familial legacy, but not something akin to aristocracy. Father-to-son is fine. It worked for the Adamses and it’s already worked for the Bushes. The third would not be a charm. It would smack of monarchy and entitlement. And Jeb’s arrogance would underscore it.

*Recently a big deal was made of a poll conducted by several of this state’s largest daily newspapers. Some of “The Voters Speak” results were, well, weird.

For example, despite this state’s fiscal miasma of a Legislative session and budget roulette, 54 per cent of respondents said they would still vote for the amendment to reduce class sizes. That’s even more than voted for it (52 per cent) on last November’s ballot.

In addition, 58 per cent of respondents indicated they “disapproved” of “the job the Florida Legislature did in the recently concluded legislative session.” Why not 100 per cent? It meant that 42 per cent either approved or didn’t know enough to be appalled by that embarrassing, do-nothing circus.

*House Speaker Johnnie Byrd, the man most responsible for driving the regular Legislative session into a ditch, did accomplish something of note. Imagine making voters nostalgic for Tom Feeney?

Welcome news that Tampa will soon be the primary production location for a major movie starring John Travolta. “The Punisher,” an adaptation of the Marvel Comics superhero, will begin shooting this summer. The title character is an undercover FBI agent who turns vigilante after his family is murdered by mobsters.

The feature movie shoot, this city’s first since Burt Reynolds’ “Cop and a Half” in 1992, will mean a hefty economic jolt, one worth an estimated $2 million. It could only get better if “The Punisher” decided to stay on and work East Tampa.

If there’s anything more asinine than “Jackass the Movie,” it’s got to be jackasses, the audience. Especially the wannabes.

We all have such lists. Stuff we just “don’t get.” Not just dislike — but “don’t get.” And seriously wonder why anyone else would.

Maybe yours would include modern monarchies or rap music or croquet or mosh pits or cats or slasher movies or O’Doul’s or France or Jackass The Movie or jackass the audience or the NBA. Or maybe Johnnie Byrd or Adam Sandler or David Caton or Rosie O’Donnell or Al Sharpton or Howard Stern or the Osbournes.

Mine include some — ok, all — of the above in addition to storm chasing, body piercing and curling. Plus school choice plans, religious zealots, instant messages, North Korea, celebrity autographs, racial reparations, Grand Theft Auto, the Cuban embargo, Chuck LaMar, Syria on the Security Council, hipper-than-thou ESPN personalities, Carrot Top, bumper stickers, anyone but catchers wearing a baseball cap backwards, Joey Bishop belonging to the Rat Pack and all the mundane applications of the word “awesome.”

I now add one more.

I was watching ESPN 2 the other day from the captive-audience vantage point of a stationary exercise bike at a local health club. It was the mid-morning “ESPN Outdoors” show.

I’ll confess a bias here. I’m not an “outdoors” guy. Don’t hunt. Don’t fish. Don’t camp. There are easier ways to deal with mountains than climbing them.

What I didn’t realize, however, was how visceral my reaction would be to a show about turkey hunting in Alabama. And it’s not as if I’m some card-carrying member of PETA or a vegan-gone-Visigoth.

The program was on, someone else had scored the Wall Street Journal editorial page and I looked up to relieve the tedium.

The perspective was that of a miked, hushed-toned, hooded, fatigue-ensembled hunter who meticulously stalked a gobler, lured it with a turkey call and then shot it. It was “probably looking for a hen,” he sagely surmised.

Granted, his efforts may have helped thin the herd or whatever a bunch of turkeys are called, and the 20-pounder will doubtless be eaten. That’s “get-able” in an atavistic sort of way. The part I don’t get is the fun part. The exhalting.

“Look at those claws!” the unhooded hunter clucked gleefully. He whooped and practically high-fived himself.

Actually, I come closer to “getting” Eminem.

Warren Sapp may be rude to most fans, but he’s the media’s favorite Buc. He’s a sound-bite savant. All copy all the time. And say enough stuff and eventually something profound, profane or just generically controversial will result.

The other day, however, Sapp went off the hyperbole scale and waxed truly absurd.

Apparently, he foresees his “blood, sweat and tears” tenure with the Bucs ending after the upcoming season, which is also the last year of his contract. One that will pay him $6.6 million in 2003. If you’re scoring at home, that’s about $900,000 per sack based on last season’s output.

His instincts are likely on the money. The Bucs wouldn’t be wise to shell out more of that kind of multi-year money for a (next year) 31-year-old defensive tackle whose best seasons are receding behind him.

“That’s what the NFL does to you,” Sapp recently opined to a reporter. “That’s why I say it’s a slave system.”

Now you know.

Enough already on Emmy Acton, the otherwise respected and competent — but now beleaguered — Hillsborough County Attorney.

Sure, she gave noblesse oblige a really bad name with her hand-me-downs syndrome. And then there was the toilet-cleaning support staff not invited to stick around for the Acton house party they had just tidied up for. And then there’s that wafer-thin line between sick days and vacation days. And a personality that doesn’t suffer fools — or underlings — especially well.

But this now is well beyond overkill. Anyone who looks like Dan Ruth in drag deserves to be let alone.

Newly elected City Councilman John Dingfelder didn’t exactly hit the ground stumbling.

First, he nominated and passionately championed the case for the council’s new chairperson, Linda Saul-Sena.

Then he took on encroaching, excessive commercialism symbolized by a proposal to rename Ice Palace Drive “St. Pete Times Forum Drive.” That’s the street that runs behind the erstwhile Ice Palace and in front of the Tampa Marriott Waterside hotel. The issue came before the council as a second reading of an ordinance approved by the previous council.

As a city council rookie, Dingfelder couldn’t have chosen a better way to debut than to question anything else being named “St. Pete” in downtown Tampa. As it is, the “St. Pete Times Forum” is about as welcome as Tampa Tribune Field or The Trib Pier would be in downtown St. Petersburg.

We don’t have to like the St. Pete Times Forum name, and a lot of us don’t, but we have to accept it. But we don’t have to accept what we don’t like about a prospective St. Pete Times Forum Drive. That’s a public right-of-way — not a .3-mile throw-in to the $30-million, arena naming-rights deal. It never should have been up for re-naming.

In the name of compromise, however, Dingfelder offered up “Times Forum Drive,” which seems workable. Another, “Welcome Drive,” was blithely suggested by the Tampa Tribune .

But frankly, enough of compromising. A newspaper buying arena naming rights is already a compromise — of ethics. If Ice Palace Drive is not acceptable, then the marketing effrontery — which is at the core of this whole issue — should be incorporated into any new name.

“Chutzpah Way” sounds like a winner.