Quoteworthy

* “Like Abraham Lincoln, my father did not claim that God was on his side; he prayed humbly that he was on God’s side.”–Martin Luther King III.

* “Obama is the victim of the elevated expectations he so skillfully created in 2008. He came as a Redeemer and then–tied up in W.’s Gordian knots, dragged down by an economy leeched by wars and Wall Street charlatans–didn’t redeem. And nothing bums out a nation that blows with the wind like a self-appointed messiah who disappoints. If we’re not the ones we’ve been waiting for, who are we?”–Maureen Dowd, New York Times.

* “Maybe it’s just a lack of anything better to do in the August doldrums, but the talk of replacing Vice President Joe Biden with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is beginning to reach a certain level of credibility mass among Washington political junkies…In 2008, when it became clear she wouldn’t win the Democratic nomination, her supporters–including her husband, the former president–began talking her up for the running-mate slot. They described an Obama-Clinton pairing as the ‘dream ticket.’ Clearly, the dream hasn’t died.”–Dale McFeatters, Scripps Howard News Service.

* “Cuba is a totalitarian, repressive, communist state that–unlike China–can’t lend us money.”–Stephen Colbert.

* “She’s clearly collected a lot of IOUs. The real question is what she wants to do with them.”–National Republican pollster Whit Ayres on Sarah Palin’s involvement in dozens of political races across the country.

* “President Obama could not wait to get on vacation. As soon as the plane landed, he grabbed a couple of beers and slid down the emergency slide.”–David Letterman, host of CBS’s Late Show.

* “We do not pay much attention to races for governor in any state other than our own. But it’s going to be hard to resist watching to see if Florida wants to put its fate in the hands of a guy who looks like Lex Luthor and once ran a company that admitted defrauding the government of $1.7 million.”–Gail Collins, New York Times.

* “Florida doesn’t need a Sarah Palin with a law degree for attorney general.”–Dan Gelber.

* “It’s not an anti-incumbent year. It’s an anti-incompetence year.”–Dave Beattie, Alex Sink pollster.

* “I doubt if I’ll have a relationship with T.K. anymore.”–Former FSU football coach Bobby Bowden, referencing former FSU President T.K. Wetherell, who made Bowden the offer of staying on as “ambassador coach” or stepping down.

* “The gangs are used to putting fear into the community. Law enforcement is putting the fear back into the gangs.”–Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office detective David Evarts in the aftermath of an anti-gang operation that resulted in 28 arrests, many in the Palm River and Progress Village area.

“The Wilder Show’s” Other Message

OK, I’m old school. There are, I’d like to believe, worse afflictions. The most recent manifestation: A skeptical reaction to what amounted to “The James Wilder Jr. Show” last week — live from Plant High School in South Tampa.

For the uninitiated, Wilder is a very, very good, high school football player and by all accounts a nice kid. Every major college program in the country would love to have him on its campus and in its stadium. So, for rabid fans of high school and college football — and the ubiquitous media that chronicles it all — it was a big deal for Wilder to finally announce where he planned to go to school next year. Reportedly, it had come down to Georgia, Florida and Florida State. 

So the Bright House Sports Network carved out a half hour to go live and showcase — and orchestrate — Wilder’s decision. Not unlike the NBA’s LeBron James — in his controversial, prime-time, ESPN-enabled revelation of where he would take his free agency (Miami) — Wilder waited until near the end of the show to finally reveal his choice of FSU. Grid drama to die for.

Here’s what’s inherently wrong with this scenario. It’s part of an athletes-as-a-spoiled-class continuum. One where the rules are often customized or compromised and the lionization starts early. High school hero worship as reality TV.

At one end of that continuum are professional sports, most notably football. The NFL is arguably as much about show business as football. The networks are in bed with those they cover. That’s why cameras linger on those whose jobs include playing for their teams — as well as to the cameras. Cheerleaders are chorus-line eye candy for the usual demographic. It’s about pedestaled stars, boorish swagger, juvenile choreography, huckstering talking heads and TV ratings. That’s why it needs Tim Tebow more than he needs the NFL.

Alas, college football — with all that rides on TV money, conference affiliations, booster pressure  and bowl-game scenarios — keeps ratcheting up the ante on winning. Too many “student athletes” are oxymoronic Hessians. Too many have already mastered look-at-me narcissism. That’s because they’ve been catered to and spoiled and told how special they are from high school.

And that’s why I have an issue with “The James Wilder Show.” We’re talking high school. A man-child is still a teen. And it’s still just about football — not a salute to a lad who’s a paragon of community volunteerism or a shout out to an aspiring cancer researcher. It seems like it’s too much publicity and too much enabling of the sort of self-important attitudes too often manifested by prominent athletes in our culture.

Can a kid, especially one so gifted, remain grounded when all those around him remind him, in effect, that he’s above it all? That he warrants his own, well, show? Lights, camera, perspective?

And yet.

There are other perspectives. One is that of Wilder’s coach, Robert Weiner. He sent out pro forma e-mails to Wilder’s family, friends and the media. He shared the stage before Wilder’s announcement that he would be a ‘Nole next year.

“As an educator (he’s also an English teacher), I want to find out what is special about all of my students and all of my players,” says Weiner. “But we don’t want to contribute to a feeling of entitlement. It’s a fine line…There’s a lot of hoopla, if you will, that’s created by the media. But when I spoke, I said very little about James’ football ability. More about his personal growth.”

And such announcements and ceremonies are nothing new at Plant. Every player who signs to play at the next level gets one. The week before Wilder’s highly hyped announcement, the media took note of the early commitments of quarterback Philip Ely and tackle Tony Posada to Alabama and Michigan, respectively.  It was “news.” Last year six Plant kids who signed with non-marquee, smaller schools were also feted — in the context of family and friends — with a ceremony and video highlights. Even though it wasn’t “news” — and went uncovered by the media.

“We want them to remain grounded and humble,” underscores Weiner. “But we won’t stop having celebratory moments. I know that in the end, we’ve created a special moment for a young man. Everything else is the collateral experience around it.”

And know this about the uber successful Weiner, whose teams have been state champions three of the last four years. He takes a back seat to no one when it comes to putting things about young people into perspective. That’s why he brings Plant players to a muscular dystrophy camp each summer to work as counselors. It’s why players, including Friday night heroes, help organize Saturday morning “Panther Pride Challenge Football” adaptive games for disabled youths.  

It’s why he stresses another facet of announcement ceremonies, including the Wilder one. “It’s an opportunity to say thanks,” emphasizes Weiner. “To say, ‘Mom, I love you.’ A public forum that we would all like to have — to sincerely and honestly thank those who helped us get to that spot.”

And one more thing. ESPN will televise Plant’s preseason game at Bradenton Manatee as well as a mid-September matchup on the road against Abilene (Texas) HS, which right now is ESPN’s top-ranked team in the country — with Plant at number two.

Is ESPN getting carried away with nationally televised high school games — and all the attendant publicity and pressure it inherently involves? Probably. Will I be watching? For sure. Go, Panthers.

An Unlikely Embargo Critic

When it comes to a position on the Cuban embargo, it’s all too predictable.

The pro-embargo crowd consists of the usual hardliners, including many who literally take it personally, and those they can influence. Often that means intimidate and buy off. Self-serving politics first, the best interest of America–from economic to geopolitical–a distant second.  

For the anti-embargo crowd, it’s neither a personal vendetta nor a litmus test for human rights–not when we have normal relations with the un-democratic likes of China, Vietnam, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and virtually every country that ends in “stan.” They also see through a Cold War atavism for the counterproductive relic that it is.

But who would have expected this? The October issue of Soldier of Fortune magazine, not to be confused with Mother Jones or Rolling Stone, will feature a piece with the headline: “Fifty Years of Failure: Petrified U.S. Policy Toward Cuba.” Its prominent co-bylines: Don Bohning, former Miami Herald Latin America editor, and Jay Mallin, former Latin America reporter for the Washington Times (not Post) and news director of Radio Marti during the Reagan administration.

They raise the usual, all-too-familiar arguments against the embargo, including overwhelming United Nations’ condemnation–the vote was 187-3 last year. (Thank you, Israel and Palau.) They also reference the embargo as “essentially an absurdity that accomplishes nothing.” Moreover, they assert, it “has been a boon to the Castro government, providing a handy excuse” for its endemic failures.

To be sure, we’ve seen these arguments repeatedly, but this is Soldier of Fortune magazine–not The New Republic.

Graduation Rates

Not that it was a total surprise, but it’s still a shocking statistic.  A study by the Cambridge, Mass.-based Schott Foundation for Public Education has singled out Pinellas County for national notoriety. It graduates, states Schott, the lowest percentage of black males of any major school district in the country. In the COUNTRY. Approximately 20 percent. One in five.

The school district and the schools will–again–seek to address black underachievement–after questioning the Foundation’s methodology. Calls have already gone out for initiatives–more remedial classes, more study halls, more mentors as well as better principals, better teachers, and better pay.

As my African-American friend Joe Brown, the former Tampa Tribune editorial board stalwart, has often pointed out. Education is a “three-legged stool.” The school and its teachers, the students, the parents. Absent any one leg, the stool collapses.

This is not what M.L. King, Medgar Evers and Rosetta Parks had in mind.

Mosque Mania

Now we seem headed toward a rhetorical 9/11.

A zero-sum collision of views more imbued with heat than light over that proposed Muslim complex near New York’s Ground Zero. The one with the secularly-sanitized name, Park51, that threatens to further polarize this politically-partisan society as well as ratchet up the global confrontation between Islam and the West.

The one that would be the ultimate desecration to some of those who lost family at the Twin Towers conflagration. The one that would symbolize defiance of those who pervert Islam. The one that would stand as a testimonial that the United States isn’t just mouthing platitudes when it says it’s steeped in religious tolerance.

But, no, the $100-million, 13-story Park51 should not be built two blocks from where 3,000 people cruelly perished at the hands of murdering Jihadists. In fact, Daisy Khan framed it appropriately. She is the head of the American Society for Muslim Advancement and the wife of Feisal Abdul Rauf, the imam behind the plans for the Park51 Islamic center.

“We know that we have the right to do this,” she said. “But what is right for the larger community, or the larger good of the larger Muslim community?” Valid questions and pertinent context. And better than a Newt Gingrich or Sarah Palin sound bite.

This is no place for a constitutional pyrrhic victory: One that could be claimed by the tolerant as well as the terrorist. Best to err on the side of respect and sensitivity for victims and their families. That is no sign of disrespect for Islam. And it’s not as if New York City is mosque challenged; it has more than 100.

However well intentioned, Park51, the erstwhile Cordoba House, two blocks from Ground Zero is the wrong place to exercise an acknowledged right. No less than a Shinto shrine in the shadow of the USS Arizona Memorial.

Because you can doesn’t mean you should.

Cinema Veritasteless

I’m sure some of you can identify. Ever check the daily newspaper staple that notes what celebrities are sharing a birthday–and the revelation makes you feel like an alien in your own culture? Who the hell are these people? After Betty White and Harrison Ford, you’re clueless.

Then there are reviews of movies, especially summer fare, that you’ll never, ever want to see.

But sometimes a contrarian mood will prompt me to read about something that I will definitely not be seeing at Tampa Theatre nor ordering from Netflix. Case in point: Piranha 3D. Saturday’s page 2B of the St. Petersburg Times was devoted almost entirely to Steve Persall’s glowing review of Piranha 3D.

See if anything seems incongruous to you. “Rating: R; graphic gore, gratuitous nudity, strong profanity, sexual and drug content…Rating: A. …The most irresistibly sick movie in years…giddy, gory and gleefully tasteless fun.”

And, no, I’m not picking on Persall, who will simply delight in accusing me of not “getting it.” (And better yet, “not getting” what I haven’t gotten around to seeing.) As in, it’s a Jawsesque “spoof,” and there is no such thing, apparently, as a bad, gratuitous spoof. For what it’s worth, I “didn’t get” The Blair Witch Project either.  I called it a “hoax” and the “cinematic version of Piltdown Man.”

Steve and I have been in periodic correspondence ever since.

Bondi’s Palin Endorsement

Part of politics is the endorsement game. It can elevate a campaign’s profile and credibility. But it can be a double-edged sword, as we well know. Former Democrat Pam Bondi, the Republican candidate for Florida attorney general, was recently endorsed by Sarah Palin. It came, we are told, as a surprise. Word is Bondi, the former Hillsborough prosecutor, truly had no idea it was coming.

Perhaps that explains why she didn’t just say “Thank you” or, better yet, “No thanks.” But surely, upon further reflection, she would not have gushed: “I’m so very proud to be endorsed by such a strong Christian woman who loves her family and her country and is a true role model.”

Surely.

Mini Minaret

OK, it’s probably nit-picky. But I think the Tampa Bay Host Committee for the 2012 Republican National Convention could have done a better job with the design of the logo that accompanies its website. The downtown skyline, the undulating lines of a waterfront and a prominent palm tree all work, but that’s generic Florida. Could be Jacksonville. Unfortunately what is truly iconic about Tampa, its minarets, are slighted and largely lost in the mix.

Quoteworthy

* “As my wiser professors used to tell me, history doesn’t repeat itself; historians and economists repeat each other.”–Zachary Karabell, Time magazine, in underscoring that comparisons of the current recession with the Great Depression are overplayed.

* “The President didn’t send me over here to seek a graceful exit.”–Gen. David Petraeus, commander of American and NATO forces in Afghanistan.

* “In 2008 the ratio of Democratic Jews to Republican Jews was far more than three to one. Now it’s less than two to one. This is no doubt a reaction, at least in part, to the Obama administration having taken a hard rhetorical stance with Israel, while taking ‘special time and care on our relationship with the Muslim world,’ as Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, put it in June. If that sounds like courtship, it is.”–Charles M. Blow, New York Times.

* “What is distinctive about ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis) … is firstly that there is no loss of sensation (a mixed blessing) and secondly that there is no pain. In contrast to almost every other serious or deadly disease, one is thus left free to contemplate at leisure and in minimal discomfort the catastrophic progress of one’s own deterioration.”–Historian Tony Judt who died recently of ALS.

* “Islamophobia has become the accepted form of racism in America. You can always take a potshot at Muslims or Arabs and get away with it.”–Muslim-American writer and commentator Arsalan Iftikhar.

* “(Jeff) Greene might see himself as an upstanding family man, but his yacht is bad, bad, bad. It’s an embarrassing, headline-making connection–the Levi Johnston of boats.”–Gail Collins, New York Times.

* “If our ultimate goal is to reduce the amount of illegal immigration into the United States and, of course, Florida, then we have to accept the reality that it is jobs that are the big draw.”–State Rep. William Snyder, R-Stuart, who has drafted a bill that calls on all businesses to use E-Verify, a federal online employee verification database.

* “BP’s promise to ‘make things right’ appears to be all PR for the damage done to the world’s perception of Florida’s pristine beaches, which was very seriously damaged. BP should be held accountable for both the damage done and the repair of that perception.”–Tim Bogott, CEO of St. Pete Beach’s Tradewinds Island Resorts.

* “We will have missed the point unless the lesson learned from the gulf oil spill is that the way we create and consume energy is simply unsustainable.”–Susan Glickman, director of the Florida Business Network for a Clean Energy Economy.

* “No one knows better than me what a good campaigner he is. He’s just got a lot of energy and knows the state.”–Jim Davis on Rod Smith, gubernatorial candidate Alex Sink’s choice as running mate.

* “Ms. Sink has obviously benefited from all those negative ads that have gone on between Scott and McCollum–no  doubt about it.”–Peter Brown, assistant director of Quinnipiac University’s Polling Institute, whose latest survey showed Sink outpolling Scott and McCollum for the first time.

* “I believe in regionalism, and I believe the assets of the region belong to all of us.”–Tampa Mayor Pam Iorio.

City Council Contretemps

While attending a Tampa City Council session the other night–one that devolved into a welter of confusion over byzantine, anomalous and “patchwork” land-use zoning–I was confronted with this sobering reality. Have we ever had a less impressive City Council?  Raw rookies and confirmed lightweights dominate. And Charlie Miranda, more wise guy than elder, too often appeared more enamored of his role as resident, homespun wit than voice of institutional history, reason and common sense.   

Speaking of Miranda, his personality shtick also included the off-putting, badgering treatment of Bruce Cury, who was speaking in opposition to a request by residential street-based St. John’s Episcopal Church and Parish Day School to change its land-use designation from residential (R-10) to Public/Semi Public (PSP). Cury wears some other hats. He’s an attorney as well as the unflappable chairman of the Hillsborough County City-County Planning Commission. The PC had already passed along the St. John’s land use-change request to city council.

Cury was trying to explain that he had recused himself in his PC role but was now speaking as just another Hyde Park resident voicing neighborhood concerns. The dyspeptic Miranda did more than not play the professional-courtesy card.  He played to the capacity crowd and reveled in a rude, rhetorical, gotcha exchange that used up a good chunk of Cury’s time. He wasn’t granted any additional.

Perhaps the county’s “Bully Busters” campaign needs to look beyond the schools.