Category: Sardonic Side

You know who you are. This is to the Hyde Park parents who sent their pudgy, pre-pubescent daughter trick-or-treating dressed as a Hooter’s girl and the parents who sent out their not-so-pudgy, pre-teen daughter dressed as Britney Spears. You’re a big part of the problem.

In the aftermath of that disheartening debacle against the Philadelphia Eagles, it’s harder to muster the creativity to answer the community call for an appropriate moniker for the Bucs’ defense. Having said that, “The Pillage People” works for me.

Alas, “The Pirates of Penzance” also works for the offense. First runner-up: “The Maginot Line.”

With apologies to supervisors of elections and civics teachers everywhere, it is blasphemously suggested here that not everybody vote. Not next week. Not, quite conceivably, ever.

But hear out this heresy.

America’s love affair with democracy has always had its incongruous side. Our Declaration of Independence accommodated both the essence of equality and the nature of slavery. The franchise to vote had quirky exceptions regarding land ownership, race and gender. Sometimes an election isn’t won by the candidate with the most votes.

Here, then, is but one more aberration

It was hardly high drama. Then again, it wasn’t like watching Barry Bonds intentionally walked. Certainly C-SPANable.

The last of the three gubernatorial debates probably didn’t change anything. People watch to validate what they already believe and, therefore, see and hear what they want to see and hear. Those who haven’t made up their minds likely made up their minds not to watch.

Anyway, no knockouts, no headline-grabbing gaffes. Just a lot of “he said-I said-who says?” interspersed with “yes, you are’s” and “no, I’m not’s” and flavored with “did not, did too’s.” Here a “disingenuous,” there a “you should be ashamed.”

It was reaffirmed from the two previous debates that Florida is either doing well — or not so good. It was further reiterated that the class size-capping Amendment 9 would either brutalize the state budget or save our educational bacon.

On balance, Jeb Bush succeeded in looking more informed than arrogant. McBride, more gubernatorial than goober.

But Tim Russert was a major upgrade, although he wasn’t a candidate.

For those gubernatorial-debate watchers who kept waiting for a “You’re no John Kennedy”-type moment or a “he-coon” line, they’re still waiting. Next best thing, however, was the line delivered by Tampa Tribune columnist Joe Brown during WEDU’s post-debate roundtable discussion.

In affixing blame for a disgraced DCF forced to care for 45,000 children, Brown zeroed in as only a non-candidate can. The root cause, noted Brown, was too many women “procreating with losers. Over and over.”

Would that it weren’t so, Joe.

The Tampa Tribune may be to the left of the Washington Times , but the St. Petersburg Times ?

In at least one instance, that is, indeed, the case. But, no, it’s not affirmative action, school vouchers or pre-emptive sorties against terrorism. The Trib now accepts same-sex union announcements! Could ads for the ACLU be in the offing?

While it’s hardly alone in accepting such announcements, the Trib can still be considered in the vanguard of a trend that statewide includes the Miami Herald, Orlando Sentinel, Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel, Palm Beach Post and Tallahassee Democrat . The overwhelming majority of this country’s 1,600 newspapers, however, still don’t print such announcements. That includes that citadel of liberalism, the St. Petersburg Times .

The Trib’s rationale is straightforward. “We’re a community newspaper, and when members of our community are celebrating a joyous occasion, our role is to provide them with the opportunity to do so,” explained Tribune Publisher Steve Weaver.

It’s not known if the Trib has plans to extend such a policy. But announcement operators are standing bi.

How appropriate that the newly dedicated, asymmetrical Our Lady of the Angels Cathedral in Los Angeles looks like a cross between a penal institution and a fortress. Given the Catholic Church’s bunker mentality borne of its sexual abuse scandal, it’s surprising there isn’t a moat around it.

Among the celebrants and protestors was someone carrying a sign that asked: “What would Jesus do with $200 million?” It’s no longer a rhetorical question.

More Manifest Signs: Speaking of signs, there was an ironic one on display recently at the University of South Florida. In a photo carried by the Tampa Tribune, we see a number of students rallying on behalf of controversial Palestinian professor Sami Al-Arian.

The most prominent sign said “Don’t B an Oppressor, Reinstate the ‘Proffessor.'” The point, at least, was unmistakable. The Al-Arian case is less about terrorist ties than it is about academic freedumb.

“The Complete Idiot’s Guide To

Earlier this month USF’s controversial Palestinian professor, Sami Al-Arian, spoke to the Suncoast Tiger Bay Club in St. Petersburg. Al-Arian, who denies charges that he has ties to terrorist groups in the Middle East, hasn’t made many such public appearances of late. So this Sami sighting drew a big media turnout.

Now we learn that Bay News 9 has been asked by the FBI to turn over its videotape for possible use by a federal grand jury. It’s problematic, however, as to what the feds would learn other than Al-Arian is well-and-out spoken, calculated and smart.

Smart enough to make no more appearances on the O’Reilly Factor. And smart enough to appear in public now to declare his innocence and love of America, free speech and academic freedom a few weeks before Judy Genshaft has to declare him fired or re-hired. Also smart enough to bring his lawyer.

And calculated enough to bring his son and wife. Harder to demonize a family man. He’s even added an after-dinner joke whose punch line lampoons scapegoating.

But the feds would also learn this: Al-Arian the Palestinian activist is uncannily unlucky. No one gets misquoted, misinterpreted and mistranslated more than this tenured computer science professor. Not even Charles Barkley, who was “misquoted” in his own autobiography, is so misunderstood.

Caught on tape declaring “Death to Israel,” Al-Arian explains it in Nelson Mandela-esque terms. “DTI” really means “death to apartheid, death to oppression, death to occupation.” But obviously not death to hyperbole. Besides, who could give a rousing stem-winder to an all-Arab audience without the obligatory, rhetorical overkill of “Death to Israel”? Nothing personal, just playing to the home crowd with killer applause lines. Sort of like Steve Spurrier used to do with Gator boosters.

Then there was Ramadan Abdullah Shallah, the guy he sponsored and hired for his USF think tank, World and Islam Studies Enterprises. As luck would have it, doesn’t Shallah surface later as the leader of Islamic Jihad, the notorious Mid East terrorist outfit. Talk about your PR hits. But who was to know? There was no hint in his vita . Even Sami still asks, “Who was that mosque man?”

When the feds look at the Al-Arrant tape, they will see and hear for themselves; this guy is really unlucky.

See where military officials confirmed that two F-16 jets from Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland were scrambled recently after radar had detected an unknown, low-flying aircraft in the DC airspace. The officials said they do not know what the jets were chasing because whatever it was disappeared.

“It was a routine launch,” deadpanned an Air Force spokesman.

Indeed. Only in post-9/11 America, could the launching of a couple of air-to-air missile-carrying jets around the Capital qualify as “routine.” Your basic, supersonic “Who goes there?”

Interestingly, there was a (non-military) eyewitness. He said he saw a “light-blue object, traveling at a phenomenal rate of speed