Author: opinionstogo

Strange Journalistic Bedfellows

The sober Wall Street Journal and the less-than-august New York Post were the strangest of journalistic bedfellows recently. They both found it fitting to publish the name of the controversial juror in the trial of two former Tyco execs.

That ethical — but not illegal — breach expedited outside contact to Ruth Jordan, the erstwhile juror No. 4. Ultimately such contact, threatening and intimidating, led to a mistrial.

In defense of themselves, both the Journal and the Post noted that Jordan’s identity was available in the public court record.

True, but most people are not about to access such information. And it’s not the media’s charge to I.D. jurors to all its readers or viewers while a trial is ongoing. It’s always the media’s job to cover the news; it’s never their purview to make the news.

Worse than the time wasted and the expense of Tyco II, however, is this cold reality. The arguments of those already seeking to restrict media coverage of high-profile cases have been considerably strengthened. Self-policing and self-interest may now appear incongruous.

Presumably the rationales of the Journal and the Post included the people’s right to know — as in who exactly was recalcitrant juror No. 4. Moreover, that it was the people’s right to know it before the trial ended.

And now, of course, the people also know what precipitated the mistrial.

Rebuild It and They Will Come (Back)

CLEARWATER — The year was 1973.

The Watergate plot was thickening and gas lines were lengthening. Vietnam saw a cease-fire, and the world bid adieu to Pablo Picasso and JRR Tolkien. David Halberstam’s “The Best and Brightest” was a best seller; “The Godfather” earned an Oscar; and Secretariat won the Triple Crown.

And Clearwater Mall opened.

It was amid considerable fanfare on what used to be the Seville Peacock Farm. It was anchored by retail giants Gayfers, Ivys, Burdines and Montgomery Ward. It was at the mega intersection of U.S. 19 and Gulf-to-Bay Boulevard (Rt. 60). It was riding the enclosed-mall wave sweeping the country.

Eventually, however, the malling of America would leave losers in its wake. Prominent among them: Clearwater Mall. Bigger, better and newer is never good news for the prototypes. Barely five miles to the north on U.S. 19 would come Countryside Mall. It would eclipse Clearwater Mall. Big time. Other enclosed retail outlets — from Pinellas Park to Citrus Park — also ate into its regional base. Over time, Clearwater Mall lost cachet, customers and tenants. It never made it into the new millennium.

Enter the Sembler Co., the St. Petersburg-based developer of shopping centers.

“I had seen Clearwater Mall grow tired over the years,” recalls Greg Sembler, company vice chairman. “It had obviously had its day, and Countryside had become a great (Westfield) Shoppingtown.”

But Sembler also saw opportunity. A reincarnated Clearwater Mall could find a new niche, he sensed, because there was a post enclosed-mall trend afoot: the open-air, “power center” malls.

Open-air malls are cheaper to operate — with big savings in common-area overhead. They are also more convenient — with customers driving right up to a store instead of parking in the hinterlands and hoofing it from there. And “big box” anchors act as discount magnets to price-conscious shoppers.

“The enclosed mall is kind of dead,” states Sembler. “Very few are being built now, because the economics are very, very difficult. Even the major mall developers are looking at open-air designs.”

According to Patrick Berman, retail specialist with Cushman & Wakefield real estate company, the new Clearwater Mall “has hit the trend right on the money. It can capture the vast majority of consumers. They can save time and money, and you can hardly beat that.

“Sembler is the premier developer in this market,” adds Berman. “They took a huge dinosaur and gave it new life. It’s not your father’s Clearwater Mall.”

In partnership with the New Plan Excel Realty Trust of New York, which has since bought out Sembler’s interest, the Sembler Co. presided over the old mall’s razing and 18 months of rebuilding. The $100-million retail center celebrated its grand re-opening last November. It already has sparked a rejuvenation of nearby restaurants.

The catalyst, says Sembler, was signing up the “highest and best” of the targeted “big box” categories: Costco, SuperTarget and Lowe’s.

“The traffic counts got them excited,” says Sembler. “It wasn’t a tough sell. Once we put together the big three, our job was a lot easier.” SuperTarget, at 185,000 square feet, is the largest tenant in the 796,000-square-foot mall.

By the beginning of the year, the new mall’s space was approximately 99 per cent leased. Most leases are in the 5-to-15-year range. All but four of the 54 spaces are accounted for with a tenant mix ranging from the “upscale discounters” to Borders, Petsmart, Michael’s and Linens n Things to nail and tanning salons.

Among those celebrating the return of Clearwater Mall is Ralph Stone, Clearwater’s assistant city manager. Prominent, boarded-up spaces at the city’s biggest intersection sends all the wrong signals. It also means a big hit in taxable real estate value.

“There was a lot of concern and rumors about what the future would bring,” admits Stone. “Everything from apartments to storage. So we were thrilled to have Sembler step in. They did a first class job — not just on recruiting tenants — but in delivering aesthetics and landscaping. They made it a nicer place than some others might have. They live here too.”

Other Sembler Scenarios

The Sembler Co. is not your typical mall developer. Its stock and trade has been strip center development. Moreover, its chairman is based in Rome. Mel Sembler is U.S. ambassador to Italy.

The Clearwater deal has encouraged Sembler to look elsewhere for additional open-air opportunities. The company is currently in the preliminary stages of developing the 1.2-million- square-foot Winter Garden Mall as well as smaller open-air developments in South Hillsborough County (near Big Bend Road and I-75) and (a SuperTarget Center) in Kissimmee.

Bush Tees Off On Miller Light Softballs

If you’re a Dennis Miller fan — and I qualify — you had to be disappointed with his interview of Gov. Jeb Bush last week on the comedian’s new CNBC show.

Miller is acerbic, quick and topical. He cares about current events. But the post September 11 Miller is more of a political partisan. He has morphed into a Fox-like conservative on national defense — and is a staunchly outspoken defender of President George W. Bush.

As a result, Miller served up some deferential asides disguised as questions to the president’s brother — after beginning with a befuddling note about a cockfighting bust in Hendry County. It was a Saturday Night Live “Weekend Update”-type reference in futile search of a punch line.

Gov. Jeb looked properly quizzical at the Hendry County comment, but then had a chance to tee off on the Miller Light softballs. When your state is juxtaposed to California’s “Bataan death march to socialism,” you know you’ve got the high ground. And an opening to remind whoever needs reminding that Florida’s “guiding principle” is to “try to make government grow slower than people’s income.” If nothing else, it was better than Johnnie Byrd’s well-worn sound bites on fiscal restraint.

Overall, the governor was able to tout his spin on educational accountability, fiscal conservatism, in-state job growth and even Everglades’ stewardship. Everything went unchallenged unless you count: “You mean you paid to keep up a swamp?” Gov. Jeb also managed a dig at John Kerry and a nice plug for his brother’s tax cuts, which are, he stressed, especially helpful to small businesses — of which Florida has a bunch.

The governor, who doesn’t do many national interviews, got what he wanted out of the exposure. Good for him; he’s a consummately glib politician with a brother running for re-election to the presidency.

As for Miller, he ostensibly got what he wanted as well. And that’s too bad. He’s a lot more entertaining being irreverent — not reverential.

Helping Tampa Forget Sapp

The Rays open in Tokyo. The Lightning are in the hunt for the Stanley Cup. And we’re still talking about football. But then the Bucs make it easy.

How is this for timing? On behalf of the John Lynch Foundation, John and Linda Lynch recently took out full-page ads in both metro dailies thanking everyone from “the fans that supported me and the community that embraced my family” to “Michael the Mailman.” The ad also underscored that the community work of the Foundation will continue — even though John Lynch will now suit up for the Denver Broncos.

It was the sort of classy gesture we’ve become accustomed to. And it was a reminder of the cheesy manner in which the Bucs let him go. Another day at the orifice.

Then just a couple of days later the Bucs announce the signing of mammoth defensive tackle Darrell Russell, a likely replacement for the departed Warren Sapp. Russell comes with baggage, as in serious issues with drugs, women and video cameras. According to Russell, he’s too often been in the wrong place at the wrong time, hanging with the wrong crowd — including those all-too-familiar with the date-rape drug GHB. To most others, he IS the wrong crowd.

When given yet another chance by Washington last year, he showed his gratitude by not showing up on time for a meeting — and was axed.

Now the Bucs are hoping he helps fans forget about Sapp. Multiple paternity suits and generic belligerence and arrogance never looked so benign.

The Priorities Of Bruce Almighty Allen

Wouldn’t the Bucs have been better off honestly explaining the signing of Russell? Instead, there was the smarmy “second chance” rationale of Head Coach Jon Gruden and the dismissive, hierarchical illogic of General Manager Bruce (“Bill Clinton did a lot worse things than Darrell Russell“) Allen.

Here is what the Bucs might have said, and perhaps fans might have been more accepting of the move. Well, maybe.

“The Tampa Bay Buccaneers have announced the signing of former Pro Bowl defensive tackle Darrell Russell. The 6-foot-5, 325-pound Russell, 27, signed a one-year contract worth $535,000. He is expected to compete for the nose tackle position, with Booger McFarland moving over to replace Warren Sapp at the under tackle spot.

‘It is what it is,’ explained Bucs’ General Manager Bruce Allen. ‘This is not the National Benevolent League. This is pro football. It’s a tough, often harsh, bottom-line business masquerading as a game with roots in the Pop Warner League.

‘It’s all about winning. All things being equal, we prefer, of course, to win with nice guys. But things are never equal. We couldn’t pass up the opportunity to bring in someone of dubious character who used to be very good and still is relatively young. We’d rather win with thugs or predators than lose with nice guys. We think hardcore football fans will understand that reality and applaud any effort to produce a winner. No one wants the Yucks back.

‘And one more thing. I’m not here to be a societal counterweight to Coach Gruden. I’m here to do his bidding. He wanted Russell, because he’ll do anything within the letter of the law to win. I fully support that philosophy. If you can help this team in some way and are not currently incarcerated, we are interested.'”

The “No Class” League

The NFL does not stand for the “No Fun League.” That’s the disparaging reference made by those who say the league is overreacting with a recent rule change. Starting next season, there will be automatic 15-yard, unsportsmanlike conduct penalties — in addition to fines — for “organized and choreographed” end-zone displays that include “extraneous objects” such as Sharpies, cell phones and eventually lap dancers.

What the league is apparently trying to do is rebottle the genie of hip-hop culture that increasingly dominates the playing — and marketing — of pro football. Officials, such as Rich McKay, co-chair of the league’s competition committee, are trying to avoid the appellation of the “No Class League” without actually using those words. That’s because rehearsed showboating is a boorish, juvenile, attention-attracting stunt — not a manifestation of exuberance or expression of jubilation.

By cracking down on its classless celebrants, the NFL would also be doing a major favor for a lot of high school football programs, which desperately need better role models.

Hornung Gang-Tackled By PC Police

Paul Hornung is a Notre Dame alum, NFL Hall of Famer and Heisman Trophy winner. He’s done — and seen — some things. He is not some 68-year-old white guy who doesn’t “get it,” unless “not getting it” means being honest about the self-evident.

But that’s the issue.

We live in a society where candor and citing the obvious will get you in trouble in a hurry on certain sensitive subjects. And none is more sensitive — or volatile — than race, as Hornung was recently reminded.

In a radio interview the other day Hornung opined that his alma mater should “ease it up a little bit” on its standards. Specifically, such easing would enable Notre Dame to get more black players. “We must get the black athletes if we are to compete” were his words.

When the usual suspects, including Notre Dame officials, either recoiled in horror or simply backed away from such heresy, Hornung modified his stand. He was remiss, he said, because he “didn’t include the white athletes.”

Here is what Hornung should have — and probably meant — to say:

“Notre Dame has more than its share of black football players. What it doesn’t have is its share of blue-chip black players. And that has everything to do with standards — both academic and behavioral.

“It makes no sense, for example, for Notre Dame to play a daunting schedule, be expected to compete for the national championship and be precluded from recruiting the same blue-chip black players that the Oklahomas and Miamis do. Do you really think Notre Dame stood a chance of recruiting, say, Willie Williams, the nation’s top linebacker prospect who will either go to jail or the University of Miami? Do you think the administration or alumni would have bought the argument that nobody knew he had double-figure priors before he took his punk act to Gainesville?

“Here’s the reality, regardless of who doesn’t like it. If you look at high school graduation rates — and SAT scores — it’s obvious there’s a big disparity between blacks and whites, whether they play sports or not. (This isn’t the forum to debate why this is so, but suffice it to say it has more to do with a dysfunctional black culture than throwing more money at public schools.)

“Anyhow, the disparity is real, and the chasm only grows wider. As a result, it is OBVIOUSLY more challenging to get black athletes into universities — or black non-athletes for that matter. It forces universities and their revenue sports — football and basketball — to get creative and apply other criteria. Leadership, economic hardship, special skills, first in family to go to college, etc. Notre Dame has to get with the program and adjust.”

What Hornung is saying is that Notre Dame, which doubtless already does some of that, needs to do a lot more of that. In effect, Notre Dame needs to lower standards — or expectations. It won’t win big by recruiting more Irish.

Hornung did nothing wrong. Just got ensnared in another PC dragnet. Let’s not pretend it is anything other than that.

Cultural Affront To Bay Area

The current issue of “Travel + Leisure” magazine rates 25 major U.S. destinations in a variety of categories relevant to travelers. Among other things, it lists each area’s best and worst rankings. The Tampa-St. Petersburg market’s best facet: weather (4); its worst: cultural events (22).

Nice weather, frankly, seems a rather lukewarm commendation. And while the Tampa Bay Area may not be the cultural Mecca that, uh, Nashville (4) is, it seems to have been short shrifted on the arts. Downtown St. Petersburg alone would guarantee a higher cultural ranking. Makes you wonder if the magazine bothered to investigate or did T+L just mail this one in?

Speaking Out On Self-Destructive Black Behavior

Some things you say rarely –if at all — in a public forum, unless, of course, you don’t mind being labeled a racist, a sexist, a homophobe, an ethno-centric Neanderthal, an anti-Allah alarmist, a generic bigot or a traitor to a cause. To even broach certain topics, you need to know which code words to use and avoid, what the euphemisms de jour are and how extensive a dragnet the PC police are casting.

I know you know what I mean.

So it was refreshing to see the stir that’s been created by Henry Louis Gates, the black chairman of Harvard’s African and African-American Studies program. Gates considers himself the antithesis of conservative, black Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, and he has big-time bona fides within the black community. He goes to the rhetorical mattresses to defend affirmative action.

What Gates did — both in his latest book “America Behind the Color Line: Dialogues With African Americans” and in subsequent speaking engagements — was to say what few black leaders — and no white leaders — can safely say.

He says he’s worried about the ironic upshot of the civil rights movement. He bemoans the legacy of a righteous cause that has descended into self-destructive behavior and “bling-bling” values. He is wondering out loud about a conspiratorial culture that seems to define education as “a white thing,” and showcases the notion that “authentic black identity is some kind of thug ghetto anti-education identity.”

What’s not to dislike?

In a recent address to the Aspen Institute in Washington, which was well chronicled by the Washington Post, Gates criticized the lack of in-house criticism coming from black leaders. To wit:

“Our leaders need the courage to stand up and say — behind closed doors and in public — that we have internalized our own oppression, that we are engaging in forms of behavior that are destroying our people. Too many of our leaders won’t stand up because they are afraid of being appropriated by the right, or afraid they are going to sound like Clarence.”

Actually, another irony is that more black folks might also want to listen to Clarence. Maybe then “equal opportunity” wouldn’t be synonymous with “equal results,” and the debate could be permanently elevated from entitlement to achievement. And the Thomases, Colin Powells and Condoleezza Rices wouldn’t be so routinely portrayed as less authentic black voices than those of 50 Cent, Ludacris and Allen Iverson.

But at least Gates has used his considerable public forum to put the focus where it belongs. On self-criticism within the black community. He also urges those blacks who have “made it,” to do more heavy lifting in helping their brothers and sisters.

No one, it has been said, can be made to feel inferior without his own cooperation. It didn’t take government mandates in the 1960s to change the South’s Jim Crow laws. It took an awareness by the indigenous black population that the back of the bus and “colored” bathrooms were inherently wrong, and they weren’t going to take it any more. That forced the government’s hand into doing the right thing.

The same principle is in play now. No one can be made to wear opportunity blinders without their own consent. The path to an unsubsidized life is basic: finish school, defer procreation, get an entry-level job, build a track record.

Anyone who has ever taught in the public schools can tell you that the biggest educational disparity over race has to do with parental involvement and peer pressure. With more than two out of three black children born to unmarried — often teenaged — mothers, an inordinate number of black parents are unprepared for the task at hand. The cycle, tragically, is too routinely perpetuated.

Moreover, the pervasive “bling-bling” values, victimhood mantra and hip-hop misogyny help foment a counterproductive peer pressure. That means serious disincentives for students to use standard English, earn good grades and conceal their boxer shorts.

To use, alas, a sports analogy, consider Derek Brooks and Warren Sapp. Black kids need many more of the former and no more of the latter. They also need more Clarences and fewer Snoops.

Ybor As The Big Easel?

Now that the promise of an affordable artists’ community is off the drawing boards with the planned East Village of the Arts in Ybor City, a key question is begged.

No, not the one about why artists should be singled out and subsidized to do what they do, which sometimes includes creating stuff that even mystifies those who aren’t practicing Philistines. Anyway, the artists are not supposed to be of the “starving” sort; they’re expected to have rent-paying “day jobs.”

Nor is it about the criteria for choosing the arts’ worthiness of prospective tenants, which sounds almost Solomonic.

After all, artists having formal patrons predates the Medicis. This is the 21st century, quasi economic-development model.

No, the key query concerns the nature of the new art ‘hood — north of I-4, between 12th Street and 19th Street. This is one tough, crime-familiar section. Arguably, punks will outnumber poets. No drive-by sonnets in this rundown part of town.

As a result, leasing apartments at fixed low rates to water colorists, sculptors and mimes could be more noble than practical — or safe. Nothing against the aesthetic and ephemeral crowd, but this could get dicey. Security should be a serious concern for the earliest pioneers, even if they’re a colony of police sketch artists.

To that end, why not add a complementary organization? Preferably one with some muscle. As long as the city is designating a favored group for help, it might want to expand that subsidy scenario. Why not, say, an Olympic Development weightlifters community as well? At least until gentrification kicks in.