Month: September 2005

Rap And Roll?

When you’re a baby boomer and the music of your formative Philadelphia years was a continuous loop of Elvis, Jerry Lee, Fats, Little Richard and tons of Doo-Wop, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame evokes a special time. Not what Canton, Ohio or Cooperstown, NY are to football and baseball fans, but close enough.

When it opened in Cleveland in 1995, Little Richard cut the ceremonial ribbon. Chuck Berry and Bruce Springsteen performed.

Now, 10 years later a new group of inductees includes rap pioneers Grand Master Flash & the Furious Five.

Say it ain’t so.

Heavy metal noisemaker Black Sabbath and the punk-rocking Sex Pistols are (nominee) reaches enough. But at least carrying a tune and playing musical instruments were not incompatible with their acts.

But oxymoronic rap artists?

Would Canton take Ryan Leaf?

Would Cooperstown take Wilson Alvarez?

Security Absurdity: Putting Up With Pat-Downs

The homeland war on terrorism impacts relatively few terrorists. Security concerns necessarily inconvenience the masses.

It’s the nature of asymmetrical warfare. It’s also the price we pay not just to improve our chances of avoiding an atrocity and staying alive – but living our way of life.

Having said that, we can still do some pretty stupid things in the good name of national security and self preservation. The National Football League’s pat-down policy comes readily to mind.

It’s perversely egalitarian; everybody gets searched. As a result, you have 2-year-old tykes, senior citizens in wheelchairs and Cindy Gruden submitting their hips, bellies and backs for frisking. You never know who may be packing mass-destruction heat.

About the only thing more outrageous is the Bucs asking the Tampa Sports Authority to pay for it. Most NFL teams cover the increased security that comes with a post-9/11 world. But Malcolm Glazer isn’t most owners. The TSA is paying $9,500 per pat-down game at Raymond James Stadium. And it’s still out $237,000 for past unpaid security bills since 2001.

To be fair, the Bucs have a technical case. Its stadium agreement, which dates to 1996, stipulates that the TSA pay for security. The TSA construes that to mean the 1996 level of security. No one was anticipating the post-9/11 ratcheting of security measures.

That was then and this is now, says the TSA. That was then, and this is an extension of then, say the Glazers.

To be fairer, still, the Bucs should at least compromise with the authority. There’s plenty of precedent around the league for teams doing a lot more. But the Bucs remain public-relations and good-will challenged when it comes to their bottom line. Even for relatively chump change.

Obviously, Malcolm Glazer would rather be checked for explosives than write a check.

Fox In The Hunt

It’s not quite stop-the-presses news, but it is now official.

Long-shot, wild card Al Fox is in the race to succeed Jim Davis in Congress.

And that means something else is also a certainty.

The other Democratic candidates – Hillsborough County Commissioner Kathy Castor, State Senator Les Miller and Tampa attorneys Michael Steinberg and Scott Farrell — will not be able to finesse their positions and hedge their bets on Cuba. They won’t be able to maintain the incongruous position that while it’s inhumane for the Bush Administration to have tightened the screws on Cuban family visitations and remittances, it remains quite acceptably humane to maintain the long-running, counterproductive and cruel economic embargo. At least not without being called on it.

The 61-year-old Ybor City native and long-time Washington insider and lobbyist says Cuba is “the one issue that nobody else has.”

For sure, nobody else has his take. He’s vehemently opposed to the embargo and in favor of sitting down with Fidel Castro and normalizing relations. That’s a gutsy – some would say ill-advised and still politically untenable position — for a Florida politician.

His reasoning:

*”My position is what’s best for America, not what’s best for Cuba. The embargo is a relic of the Cold War. It costs us buckets of money.”

*”I support sitting down with the Cuban government as it is. It’s a sovereign country, and we don’t have to like it. For that matter, I don’t like North Korea or Saudi Arabia.”

While Fox insists he’s not a one-issue candidate, this is the one issue that will draw the most attention and generate the most debate heat.

He’ll likely not be the next U.S. Representative from District 11, but Al Fox will make sure the winner doesn’t get a pass on Cuba.

Photos Of Pubic Interest

Good call by Hillsborough Circuit Judge Wayne Timmerman in barring public access to graphic police photos of Debra Lafave. Let’s hear it for common sense and good taste.

Three points:

First, the letter of the law permits genital photos for identification purposes, whether the accused is drop-dead comely like Lafave or androgynously weird like Michael Jackson. Whether stirrup shots were necessary, is another matter. Lecherous is not a synonym for legal.

Second, the prosecution has made it clear that it has no plans to present the photos as evidence during Lafave’s trial on lewd-and-lascivious-battery charges.

Third, there is Florida public records law, there is the people’s right to know and there is the media’s penchant for pandering. Two local TV stations, WTSP-Channel 10 and WFTS-Channel 28, did not distinguish themselves by filing written, albeit routine, requests to see the photos before Judge Timmerman made his ruling. The matter is now moot, but the principle isn’t. What was it about pictures tantamount to gynecological close-ups that were so compelling?

Boston: Some Politics, Some History

A couple of observations from a recent trip to Boston:

*Speculation keeps revving up that Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney is positioning himself for a run at the Republican presidential nomination in 2008. Ideologically, he’s working hard on his GOP bona fides. He’s increasingly disinclined to compromise on gay marriage; is now gearing up to take on liberal state lawmakers on welfare overhaul; and is intimating that wiretapping mosques as a means of intelligence gathering in the fight against terrorism has merit.

He’s also been accorded positive national media coverage for his willingness to take in thousands of Katrina evacuees.

And Romney recently opened his summer home to several hundred Republicans from New Hampshire. It was a party fund-raiser. As vice chairman of the Republican Governors Association, Romney was an appropriate host to the Granite State party operatives. They responded with a gift: a copy of “Why New Hampshire?” — a book on the first-in-the-nation primary.

*Here in Hillsborough County – from Plant City to Ybor City – we are blessed with history that we take great pride in preserving. Hence, our numerous designated historic districts.

But history is relative.

Staying in the Colonial Inn, in the heart of Concord, Mass., was fascinating — even if you were not a history buff. The waiter’s presentation included historical tidbits – such as the year the Colonial Inn, the part we were dining in, was built. It was 1716. More than a half century before there was a United States.

History can also be humbling.

Name Game Redux

Here we go again. St. Petersburg, which is quite the happening place and the downtown model for what Tampa would like to be, still has an identity crisis.

Over the Devil Rays.

Seems that the national media persist in occasionally confusing Tampa Bay with Tampa, thus short shrifting St. Petersburg as the actual site of Tropicana Field. Miffed to the max was St. Pete City Councilman Bill Foster, who drafted a resolution requesting the Rays to formally put St. Petersburg in their name. As if.

It’s the Rays’ call legally until the team’s contract with the city runs out in 20 years. But they’re not about to abandon their regional identification, even if the national media don’t know the difference between Tampa Bay and Green Bay.

In the mean time, the Rays’ host city still gets 81 St. Petersburg datelines a year, which go across the country – and sometimes farther. And should the Rays get competitive and attract network TV coverage, those waterfront-vista shots will render all this poor-me pique irrelevant.

But the day the team agrees to call itself the St. Petersburg Devil Rays will be the day we read of the Foxboro Patriots.

In-Your-Face Motivation

Perhaps you saw the photo. If not, you’ve seen their like before.

It showed a seventh grade English teacher in Tampa taking a whipped cream pie in the face, much to the delight of an auditorium full of middle schoolers. The context: It was part of the school’s celebration of a successful magazine fundraising drive and recognition of its track team.

Here’s another context.

In a profession crying out for the best and brightest and beseeching society for respect, this doesn’t help, however well intentioned. There are plenty of fun, creative ways to motivate and reward children shy of belittling slapstick.

Granted, the Mr. Chips approach is probably passé — but Soupy Sales?

Mayor Pushes Tampa’s New Global Game Plan

As local news stories go, it was a one-day wonder. Mayor Pam Iorio announced an initiative and named a committee to spearhead it. Another day at the office.

Then it was back under the headline radar, giving way to disaster contingency jurisdictions, the fiscal ’06 budget, storm water fees, the art museum soap opera and a testy city hall-city council contretemps.

This initiative, however, is too important and this committee too high-profile to be relegated to a bureaucratic lost-and-profound department. The charge is to drum up more worldwide trade, a challenge more formidable than pitching a Super Bowl.

The economic implications are far-reaching and long-term. The global marketplace is not an option; it’s a necessity. How much longer can phosphate define our international trade identity?

For too long Tampa has not taken full advantage of its Hispanic history and proximity to Latin America or the international potential inherent in a world class airport and one of the country’s busiest seaports. It’s evidenced in the dearth of international flights out of Tampa International Airport, in a stillborn free trade zone and in a nominal – albeit incrementally increasing — container cargo business at the Port of Tampa.

As to the nine-member Mayor’s Global Business Committee, it includes a lot of the right people. Notably Louis E. Miller, the Executive Director of the Hillsborough County Aviation Authority; Richard A. Wainio, Director of the Tampa Port Authority; Arthur Savage, President, A.R. Savage & Son Inc.; Bronson Thayer, Chairman of the World Trade Center – Tampa Bay Inc.; as well as Mark Huey, Tampa’s Economic Development Director. It is chaired by the savvy Jeff Knott, Vice President International for Rooms To Go Corp.

“Our global business mission is not well-focused and needs to be more coordinated,” understated the mayor.

Indeed, the rule of thumb for local entities engaged in foreign commerce has long been to work independently in research and marketing. Sharing of information was tantamount to spilling state secrets. Proprietary has too often been confused with parochial, such that the enlightened self-interest of this market is undermined. And “this market” must mean more than Tampa. The sooner that regional partners, such as Pinellas County, are brought into the fold and the master strategy, the sooner the Tampa Bay area gets on the globe – not just the map.

Another critical issue is the chronic need for a clearinghouse on raw data, such as what exactly is imported and exported – both products and services — and the amount of foreign investment.

The mayor thus put forth a formal focus on quantifiable goals. There are no theoretical bottom lines here. The proof is in the numbers. It’s how you keep score in the global trade game. Tampa and the Tampa Bay area have to play as if they’re behind and want to become major global players.

They are, and they can.

Bean There, Done That

It’s no secret that the relationship between Hillsborough County and the City of Tampa seems like a wreck in progress right now. As a concept, the city-as-economic-hub might as well be the quantum theory to the county commission. Tampa, along with Plant City and Temple Terrace, is seemingly just another incorporated city – only one with an attitude.

But should this area suffer the brute force of a major hurricane or other disaster, Tampa will be a lot more than Temple Terrace on steroids. It will be ground zero. But it also will be, in effect, everybody’s ground zero.

That’s why Mayor Pam Iorio has been adamant about the city’s role in any disaster scenario. That’s why it has been disheartening to see how the county-city dynamic has been playing out here between Iorio and Hillsborough County Administrator Pat Bean. Think: Son of Civitas.

Of course, the county is responsible for coordinating all emergency activities within its purview, which is everything within its boundaries. State law and county ordinance codify it. And any effective chain of command only has one person at the top, where the buck necessarily stops. That’s Bean, who’s also the designated emergency management director.

That said, however, why wouldn’t the county administrator want the mayor on board as her out-front, go-to person for Tampa, the county’s flagship and its most vulnerable area?

What can’t continue, however, is the ongoing antipathy between the city and the county. It’s debilitating on a good day; absolutely disastrous should a disaster strike — a time when we all have to pull together as residents without label.

Hopefully, cooler heads will truly prevail, and Iorio and Bean (and Commission Chairman Chaperone Jim Norman) will sit down – outside the posturing context of a press conference – to hash out the appropriate role for the mayor of the county’s keystone. A good start would be for Bean, who’s ultimately in charge, to stop sounding like Alexander Haig in the process.

Channelside’s Signature Departure

In retrospect, a lot of folks are agreeing that the departure of the Signature Room Grill from Channelside was not all that shocking. High-end chop houses are usually incompatible with informal entertainment and dining venues. A 1930’s dinner club ambience with jazz – nestled between Bennigan’s and Hooters was not a recipe for success.

And speaking of Hooter’s, which was directly under the Signature Room, here’s a December ’03 quote from Signature Room owner Rick Roman in answer to a question about his (under construction) restaurant’s juxtaposition to Hooters: “We love the exposure.”

Funny line, but not enough did.