Whatever.
According to a Marist College poll, “WHATever” is the most annoying word to encounter in conversation. Nearly half of the 938 respondents cited the popular slacker term of indifference. Then came the Caroline Kennedy staple “you know,” followed by “it is what it is,” “anyway” and “at the end of the day.”
The margin of error was said to be 3.2 percent, which is like, awesome.
Walt Disney World has been playing it smart in Florida since those 1960s dummy corporations were designed to avoid a land-speculation boom. Since then it has enjoyed favored status. Think: Reedy Creek Improvement District and WDW immunity from land-use laws.
Disney’s tourist-mecca status, however, has had obvious synergistic impacts on Florida. On occasion, enlightened self-interest has been a complementary key. That’s been notably revisited recently.
Disney is now a major player in Florida’s pitch to the feds for $2.5 billion in stimulus money to help launch a high-speed rail line between Orlando and Tampa within five years. Disney has said it will give the state up to 50 acres for a rail station. It will also extend transportation to the station and use its considerable land-use clout. The feds want “shovel-ready” projects in key transportation corridors, but they’re also impressed by private-sector buy-in. Disney on board helps the rail cause.
On a more pedestrian level, Disney has now begun a new promotional give-away – one that rewards those making positive societal contributions. Specifically, it’s giving free passes to those who volunteer at select charities.
Of course, it’s smart marketing – and those with free passes don’t get free refreshments or free Mouse Ears. But it also promotes volunteerism and affords free publicity for the benefiting nonprofits.
It’s classic win-win – not unlike having a 150-mph train accommodating those traveling between Tampa and Disney-proximate Orlando.
Alas, enlightenment was nowhere to be found in that recent BayWalk decision by the St. Petersburg city council. It did not pass an ordinance that would have cleared a chunk of public sidewalk at the entrance of BayWalk, an area frequented by animated activists and loitering punks. The motley scene had become a major deterrent to patrons of BayWalk, the erstwhile downtown-revival catalyst now morphing into a plywood ghost town.
No, the ceding of the sidewalk to BayWalk owners would not have been a panacea, not during a recession, but it would help. It would help those investing in BayWalk and those employed at BayWalk. It would address the viability of downtown and help safeguard $20-million in taxpayer funds.
And no, such a vacation would not have been a free-speech sacrilege. The option for demonstrators and thug wannabes was to relocate to the other side of the street – hardly a Constitutional affront.
Enlightened self-interest? How about some common sense?
Finally, there’s more than hope for optimism at Florida A&M University law school. Now there’s a concrete reason. The 7-year-old, Orlando-based school is accredited. And it wouldn’t have happened without a beefed-up, better-credentialed faculty and stabilized leadership. Median LSAT scores are up, although not yet significantly.
Two other issues remain unaddressed.
First, the FAMU passage rate for the Florida Bar is unacceptably low at 53 percent. The state average is 80 percent.
Second, do we really need more lawyers?
It’s now official. The next Gasparilla Parade of the Pirates will start at Bay to Bay Boulevard and proceed down Bayshore Boulevard, across the Platt Street Bridge and then head west along Ashley Drive and end at Cass Street. The downtown extension is new.
That’s an improvement, but likely no acceptable solution for those in South Tampa who will still see their neighborhoods invaded. Parade routes – and overburdened police and crowds in the hundreds of thousands – will never mix well with residential areas. Tampa is still unique in such parade shoehorning.
Among those who still don’t understand that concept: the congenitally disingenuous Darrell Stefany, whose only vested interest is being president of EventFest, which only organizes the event.
“Property owners like that the parade is coming down their street,” gushed Stefany. “It’s a neat thing because it’s a beautiful area.”
Hey, Darrell, try asking residents who practically shrink-wrap their property or feel extorted into hiring private security because the Ye Mystic Krude parade route is so neat.
We all know about the turmoil in Tallahassee over the Bobby Bowden situation. It’s sad, messy – and getting messier. But did Jim Smith, the chairman of the FSU Board of Trustees and former attorney general, have to go public with his feelings about Bowden needing to exit? Sure, FSU is off to a disappointing start in the Atlantic Coast Conference. But Smith’s out-of-school trash talk is strictly Bush League.
We can all agree how unconscionable it was for Erin Andrews, the popular ESPN sideline reporter and Bloomingdale High grad, to have been videotaped naked in her hotel room. Now we know she was victimized by some twisted insurance exec who has been charged with interstate stalking.
Apparently this creep would find out where she was staying before a big game and try to get a room next to hers. How? He would request it.
Giving out that kind of information? That’s also unconscionable.
Here’s a variation-on-a-theme quote we’ve seen countless times. After a recent Rays’ win over the bottom-dwelling Orioles, which was the Rays’ 157th game of a disappointing – but winning – season, manager Joe Maddon said: “We easily could have mailed all these (Orioles) games in.”
It was a compliment to his players for still trying hard even though the team had been mathematically eliminated from post-season play a week earlier.
Here’s the part I don’t get. Anybody who’s ever played a game where they keep score tries hard. Even if you’re not being paid. It’s called competition. It’s also called pride.
But when it’s your job — your JOB — why wouldn’t you go all out? Moreover, nobody paid to see you intentionally perform below your ability. That’s no longer poor work ethic or a character flaw. That’s fraud.
Unless Maddon was singling out B.J. Upton, no compliments for professionals trying hard — regardless of circumstances — need be proffered.
Not surprisingly, the grumbling and grousing in Tallahassee about the lingering Bobby Bowden era grows apace. Continued also-ran status in the Atlantic Coast Conference, a forfeit-affixed, academic-cheating scandal and that historic loss to the erstwhile commuter school from Tampa has only fueled the furor.
So outspoken have some Seminole boosters — and even a key trustee — become that no longer do you hear the argument that iconic coaches such as Bowden, 79, (and Penn State’s Joe Paterno, 82) should be able to call their own retirement shots.
That’s the good news.
Given the charge of institutions of higher education, including those with high-profile football programs, nobody should be calling their own shots about stepping down unless they’ve cured a disease or won a Nobel Prize. Long-tenured, highly-successful football coaches should not be an exception and, in effect, be able to dictate to a university president when they will opt to step aside.