Media Matters

*A recent Pew Research Center poll found that 45 per cent of Americans have a favorable view of the soon-to-be ex-Governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin, and that 44 per cent have an unfavorable view of Palin. Reportedly, the remaining 11 per cent said they were incredulous that 45 per cent had a favorable view.

 

OK, I made that last part up. But only the last part.

 

*Not to pick on the City Times, but that “Voices on the Web” feature still takes me aback on occasion. Recently a reader weighed in about the closing of the Ybor City Starbucks. Good talking point. And, indeed, some of the observations were valid. But wasn’t there a time when “signing” your name as “downtown suks from Tampa” was a guarantee of NOT making it into print? And shouldn’t that quaint proscription still hold, digital age notwithstanding?

 

*Not to pick on the Times again – or its good-natured, good-guy columnist Ernest Hooper – but what’s with that house ad featuring Hooper? Granted, the Times’ “Man About Town” often notices the little, seemingly mundane, details in life. But that still doesn’t explain this copy: “I love the train that runs through my NEIGHBORHOOD AT 2 A.M.; the lilting sound of its whistle gently reminds me that the world is still spinning AND WE ARE OKAY…” Perhaps it’s just me, but, frankly, I’d prefer not being awakened at 2 a.m. to ponder a still spinning world.

 

But maybe it’s more rationalization than reassurance. In which case: nice spin, Ernest.

 

*Jim Brown may have been the best running back in NFL history. He was that big, that fast, that mobile, that good. But when it comes to racial consciousness and social commentary, he’s always been out of his league. Even with his ethnic hats and dashikis; even with his permanent snarl and grievance agenda.

 

He has no right to criticize Tiger Woods, as he did on a recent HBO special, for a “terrible” record in helping to effect social change. Woods, who is more Thai than African-American, has contributed millions of dollars to the less fortunate through his Foundation – and influenced millions of kids by his success and classy demeanor. Something Brown’s never been accused of.

 

Woods has been a solid — not just wealthy — family man. Never a hint of scandal, including assault. Something Brown’s been convicted of.

Will There Be Follow-Up To Cuban Visit?

Good for City Councilwoman Mary Mulhern, as well as Tampa Port Authority Commissioner Carl Lindell, for joining a fact-finding delegation of businesspeople that visited Cuba.  

 

Some pols still won’t touch this because it seems like foreign policy freelancing. Others, confoundingly, are still intimidated by a half-century of Cold War politics and the last vendetta vestiges of leverage still exercised by the usual South Florida suspects. This is a third-rail issue in 2009?

 

But more to the point, good – potentially – for Tampa. As Mulhern noted, “It involves economic development possibilities, trade and jobs.”

 

Cuba won’t be a windfall, but it can be a well-timed source of increased trade and port traffic. It defies business – and common – sense not to avail our area, with its Cuban roots and favorable geography, of such an opportunity, especially during such turbulent economic times.

 

But here’s hoping that these Tampa public officials, especially Mulhern, go beyond glad handing and business-card collecting. And, frankly, go beyond other — potentially influential — groups who went for the Cuban cachet and photo ops with Fidel Castro. The Cubans have long been visited by other American delegations from other port cities – from Corpus Christi to Mobile to Jacksonville – and Tampa is, regrettably, behind its competition.

 

The onus is on an elected official to do more than position Tampa for post-Castro, post-embargo Cuba. That smacks, candidly, more of opportunism than opportunity. The seeming nuance is not lost on the Cubans. Such a blatantly self-serving approach says, in effect, “Please, don’t forget about us when the time is right.”

 

With so many other American port cities better established, the Tampa message should be: “When we get back home, we’re going to lend our (appointed and, especially, elected) Florida-official voices to those calling for an end to the counterproductive economic embargo against Cuba. We’re going to use our forums and contacts to try and make the inevitable happen as soon as possible. We’re not content to say: ‘We’re now going to bide our time, but we’ll be more than ready to skim some economic cream off the top when Cuba finally opens.’”

 

Lest anyone think differently, Cuban officials are more than aware of who wants in and who wants to work to help make it happen.

 

In business, it’s called “following-up” – hardly a novel concept. When it comes to Cuba, it’s called not being intimidated by the usual exponents of the status quo.

 

You go, Mary.

Still Evolving?

Too bad neither William Jennings Bryan nor Clarence Darrow was available. Their presence at the recent “Controversial Issues in the Science Classroom” workshop at USF would have underscored how far we haven’t come when it comes to evolution.

 

Indeed, evolution was prominent on the agenda. One speaker, archaeologist Debra Walker, A Monroe County School Board member, soberly noted that she “was shocked at how many districts just totally ignored evolution.”

 

Actually, it’s arguably not so shocking – given that for the past two years the Florida Legislature considered bills challenging the validity of evolution. No wonder. According to the Pew Research Center, less than a third of the public now agrees with the proposition that life – including the human variety – has been evolving.

 

Then, again, it’s only been 83 years since the Scopes trial. Evolution obviously takes a while.

“Brightest” Not Always Best

The recent death of former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara had many of us revisiting the Vietnam era that was so synonymous with the late, less-than-lamented secretary of defense. McNamara, who died at 93, was the reluctant warrior who, not unlike Colin Powell, couldn’t resign in honor when it mattered most.

 

When he finally did — in early 1968 — it was too late. Many of those 58,000 American G.I.s were already dead.

 

The man who turned “architect” into an epithet was often Exhibit A for the Kennedy Administration’s “Best and Brightest” self-paean. But here’s what we never figured out: Why McNamara for that job? Because as the young, well-pedigreed president of Ford he was a bona fide “whiz kid” when it came to crunching numbers, improving procurement practices and finding efficiencies? Obviously.

 

But how about the pressing issues of the day? Where, how and whether or not to apply America’s military might? Obviously not a priority.

 

The Defense Department gave bureaucratic morass a bad name, and McNamara was brought in to tame and transform it. He was, as the Washington Post’s David Ignatius has pointed out, brought in “to challenge outmoded practices, politics be damned.” He was “the ultimate rationalist,” said Ignatius, whose father worked for McNamara at the Pentagon.

 

Talk about “outmoded practices.” How ironic.

 

Was anything more on its way to being outmoded than the paranoid, 1960s, anti-communist prism through which too many American leaders still saw the world?  

 

* A prism that rationalized Vietnam as a necessary and righteous proxy fight and not a civil war. One that theorized geopolitical “dominoes” and put America on the side of a corrupt South Vietnamese regime and in league with the assassins of President Ngo Dinh Diem. One that defined Ho Chi Minh, who once helped the Brits against the Japanese, as an implacable, ideological enemy of a country on the opposite side of the world.

 

* A prism that obscured the reality that it was the U.S.-backed South that wanted no parts of the Geneva agreement that included national elections.

 

* A prism that so distorted history that it actually seemed to make sense for America to have replaced the French in IndoChina.

 

Ultimately, McNamara presided over Kennedy-Johnson Administration policy that asked young Americans to die for something far less than the legitimate defense of their country. It was more than wrong. It was morally repugnant. It was to become his legacy.

 

McNamara was bright enough to see the need for a more efficient fighting machine, but not astute enough to see soon enough that U.S. military might wasn’t meant for guerilla warfare. Hearts and minds could never be won with napalm. A legacy subset.

 

The “Best and Brightest?” No, McNamara wasn’t the best nor the brightest choice for a job that should have required so much more than slide-rule acumen.

Joe Brown Is Still Old School

Veteran Tampa print journalist Joe Brown had his epiphany moment two years ago. He was on holiday and riding the commuter elevated train in Chicago, his home town. As per custom, he was settling in with the Chicago Tribune.

 

At some point, he took a token glance around. Then he did a double take. The car was fairly crowded, but he was the only one reading a newspaper. Seemingly everybody else was on a cell phone or an iPod. Brown acknowledged the uncomfortable metaphor. The Chicago El was a fast-tracking extension of the wired global village, and he was an anachronistic, inky elder.  

 

“I really saw the handwriting on the wall that day,” underscores Brown, 59. Indeed, by last October he was another casualty of the Tampa Tribune’s Web-first strategy and out of a job – the one he had held for 15 years on the Trib’s editorial board.

 

Brown was the only African-American on that board and its highest-profile editorialist. He had been hired – from the Iowa City Press Citizen – in 1993 by Ed Roberts, the Trib’s former editorial page editor, who had been looking for that most challenging of journalistic hires: a conservative minority. That’s what he got in the hulking, six-foot, 1-inch, 250-pound, former defensive back for the University of Iowa. An African-American who once changed barbers because of his antipathy toward gangsta rap – and has been known to refer to BET as “Booty Every Time.”

 

The good-natured, generally right-of-center Brown would prove to be outspoken – especially on matters of public policy – as well as well-spoken. He became a go-to panelist on local television, notably WEDU’s “Florida This Week.” He could be called an “Uncle Tom” – and worse – by the NAACP because of his opposition to forced busing for integration. And he could be called a “grievance black racist” – and a lot worse – by those taking offense at his linkage of slavery and the Confederate flag. He became a fixture in the community, one that was 50 per cent black and Hispanic. He was a coup.

 

“Joe was very versatile,” recalls the now-retired Roberts, who won a Pulitzer Prize with the National Observer in the 1970s. “Always accurate in his facts and logical in his arguments. He’s one of my favorite people. A gentle giant. When he was let go, I was devastated.”

 

Former editorial board colleague Diane Egner remembers an invaluable point of view, one grounded in a black, working class, Chicago-neighborhood upbringing, that Brown brought to the Trib table.

 

“Joe Brown brought a perspective – and community contacts – that the rest of us just didn’t have,” says Egner, now the publisher of the Tampa Bay weekly online magazine 83 Degrees. “He was also a deep thinker and a professional man to the T.        

 

“His (Sunday) column was excellent,” adds Egner. “He probably got more feedback on that than anyone else on the board.”

 

But respect, perspective and feedback were guarantees of nothing — in an industry being buffeted by tectonic shifts in communications and news delivery. Brown was hardly insulated from the rippling effect of the brave, new digital world wreaking havoc on newspapers. You didn’t have to be an industry insider to know that “browser” wasn’t a synonym for “reader” and that Craigslist was an ad-revenue siphon.

 

Or to see that downsizing meant more than a literally smaller product. In the case of the Trib, Brown saw his Media General employer jettison — among many others — colorful columnist Dan Ruth, its most recognizable voice; Kurt Loft, its Renaissance-man writer; and Op/Ed Editor Nancy Gordon, his close, personal friend.  

 

He also winced when he thought of the implications for American democracy. “It’s very scary,” he warns. “You now have government with fewer people looking over their shoulder. And I have major concerns about an electorate used to getting things in sound bites.”

 

But even amid the grim-reaper visitations and attendant paranoia at the Trib, Brown was still taken aback when his number was up in the fall.

 

He remembers the foreboding chronology. Working under a cloud of rumor-mongering was taking a toll. It was no secret that Roberts had been Brown’s mentor and friend. Nor was it a secret that Roberts’ successor, Rosemary Goudreau, was neither. Morale was in free fall. Moreover, nothing had been assigned to him for the 2008 primaries, a sure signal that he was now odd-man out on the board. Then one day he noticed a human resources person slip into Goudreau’s office. Then he got called in.

 

“I felt sucker-punched,” he says. “Then my reaction was relief. The job had stopped being fun. So, now on to the next phase of my life.”

 

Easier said than lived. Belying a low-key, affable demeanor was a gut feeling more akin to “bitter and resentful,” Brown concedes.

 

He took a buyout. Filed for unemployment compensation. Rolled his 401K into an IRA. Then began tapping into it. Then tried dipping into the freelance writers’ pool.

 

His future, he knows, is not in journalism as he knew it. More like some combination of freelance and — even more likely — public relations.

 

But then politics could come calling. Maybe.

 

Imagine in today’s polarized political environment, what it could be worth to the right -but not far right — conservative to have Joe Brown on staff — and out front? An African-American who will quote Bill Cosby and Thomas Sowell and call out racial hucksters, even if they have “Rev.” in front of their name. An African-American who can talk civil rights without sounding like a one-man grievance committee. An African-American who can make the case for vouchers as easily as he can vouch for fiscal conservatism. And, lest he be too typecast, an African-American who thinks blacks are “too conservative” on gay rights.

 

Brown’s take? “It makes sense,” he agrees. Then adds a caveat you knew was coming. “I could do that,” he emphasizes, “but only if I sensed I wasn’t merely being a tool.”

 

Joe Brown lost his job, not his integrity.

 

The Brown Soapbox

* “If you’re born poor, it means you have to work harder.”

 

* “People that impressed me from (editorial board) interviews? Right off the top, I’d say Bill Nelson, Connie Mack, Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani. Not so much: Bob Graham. Maybe he had done too many. And Mel Martinez. Seemed robotic and formulaic. Locally, I’ve been impressed with Les Miller and (city council candidate) Randy Barron.”

 

* “We (newspapers) still have a critical role with elections. We do a lot of the dirty work the average voter doesn’t do. We take time to analyze the Amendments.”

 

* “There’s no mass movement for a city-county mayor. But it should be debated. It’ll probably get on the ballot, and it might pass. If it does, I know who I would endorse. Pam Iorio.”

 

* “I think it’s good to have the light-rail option, but I think it’s being oversold. You need to know all the costs, how many people will ride it and what does the train connect to when you get off?”

 

* “I’d give President Obama “A” for effort. Maybe it’s too much too soon. He’s definitely trying to bring about change.”

 

* “The Supreme Court made the right call in the New Haven firefighters case. You can’t throw out a test because you don’t like the results. Diversity is a worthy goal, but that’s no way to achieve it.”

 

* “Right-wing Christians and black preachers gang up on gays. That’s very discouraging.”

 

* “One of the most dangerous places to be is between Jesse Jackson and a camera.”

 

* “I feel free as a black conservative – actually, ‘pragmatist.’ My ‘conservatism,’ if you will, is based on experience. I know what works. If I’m wrong, prove I’m wrong. I can take it. I provide an alternative voice. Like questioning the whole school-busing thing. A lot of black folks agree when it’s their kids being bused.”

 

* “Busing doesn’t work. And enough about ‘re-segregation.’ That would mean a dual system. Lutz Elementary is 97 per cent white. Is it segregated? Are FAMU and Bethune-Cookman examples of segregated education?”

 

* “All blacks don’t think the same, but they vote the same in most cases. It’s called being ‘progressive.’”

 

* “Is this post-racial America? That’s ridiculous. Sure, we have a black president. That’s another step. This is the post-civil rights era. This is something that black advocacy groups have never adjusted to. Never got to Phase II. You’re not advancing if your whole agenda is to find fault.”

Middleton Should Look Inward – Not Backward

Understandably, a lot of Middleton High School alumni are upset with what they’ve been seeing in the reincarnation of their old high school, the one with the proud heritage. It came more clearly into focus recently when Middleton, which dates to 1934, held its 75th anniversary.

 

Today’s Middleton, a $50-million East Tampa facility that opened in 2002, is an academic imposter, unworthy of the Middleton mantle. For the last six years it has received a “D” grade from the state, which means it’s still on the “intervention” list. Which means from its ’02 restart-up it’s been embarrassingly underperforming. Now it’s subject to any number of mandates, including a restructuring of its staff by the school board.

 

Two points.

 

First, Middleton should not have held a 75th anniversary gathering – but rather the 38th anniversary of its first 37 years. As in hearkening back to when Middleton stood for achievement and neighborhood pride. When it was converting America’s segregation crucible into a community challenge. THAT Middleton closed under a federal desegregation order in 1971.

 

So, why not make modern Middleton earn its way back into the fold, one forged against the odds by proud predecessors? Nostalgia only applies to those who have lived it.

 

Second, we know what works. Call it old school thinking, but you could have found it in a Catholic school with one nun teaching all subjects to classes twice what Florida’s Class Size Amendment would allow. Or in a black school in a black community during the infamy that was Jim Crow. It’s not merely a matter of “accountability systems” or pressure tactics directed at the school board or its superintendent.

 

The key is teacher-student-parent alliances, where teachers and parents reinforce each other. Where students don’t equate good grades with “acting white” and don’t need a drum line for motivation. We know that a $50-million campus can be rich in resources and poor in parental participation. And we know an iconic name is irrelevant to those who think academic accomplishment is uncool.

 

Good schools start in good homes. Not necessarily affluent homes, but good homes. No, life isn’t fair, but nobody’s precluded from decent values. We already know — absent a culture of parental support and student pride and work ethic — what millions of dollars can yield. In Middleton’s muddled case: failure and “intervention.”

Serpentine Logic

Python: Monty, yes; house pet, no. Why is this still an issue? Some things inherently make no sense.

 

We already know that gigantic snakes such as pythons and boas are incompatible with this state – or anywhere outside of their unique habitats, such as the jungles of Myanmar. Their presence is invasive in the Everglades; their ecological threat serious and documented. And with the application of common sense, we know that creatures that grow well beyond 20 feet and 200 pounds can be lethal to domestic pets and some humans – notably, children. Recently a toddler from Sumter County was suffocated by one.

 

And yet they are legal. The permit costs $100. Failure to have one is only a second-degree misdemeanor. The law also requires such snakes be secured — under lock and key. Obviously they always aren’t. The child killed in Sumter was victimized by an albino Burmese python. She was also victimized by its owner, who didn’t have a license, a secured environment or, seemingly, whatever sense he was ostensibly born with.

 

Most of the people who own jumbo snakes are not herpetologists. Who knows what the attraction is for all the non-herpetologists, although the thought is unsettling. I wouldn’t want them living next door. Officials estimate about 450 licensees are allowed to possess such “reptiles of concern.” They have no idea how many unlicensed, “reptiles of concern” owners there are.

 

Here’s hoping Florida Sen. Bill Nelson’s bill – which would include pythons on the list of injurious, non-native species that can’t be imported into the U.S. – now gets some traction. Unfortunately, it has taken a needless tragedy borne of unconscionable stupidity and negligence to formally add public safety to the environmental-havoc rationale.

 

And doesn’t it speak volumes when, courtesy of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, we actually have – and obviously need – an exotic-pet amnesty day? Bring ’em in. No charge. No questions asked. Including the most basic query: “Why the hell did you want one of these in the first place?”

Rays’ Frayed Patience

The Rays’ ownership and front office continue to be nonplussed by attendance, notably that three-game “World Series Rematch” with the Philadelphia Phillies that averaged less than 20,000. Here’s a possible rationale.

 

Start with the daily double: St. Petersburg’s Trop, among the worst facilities in Major League Baseball, is also poorly located in an asymmetrical market with no mass transit. Then add the region’s lack of corporate headquarters, which is the typical life blood of season tickets, as well as sponsorship deals. Then throw in history. Baseball is part of the social fabric of traditional markets such as Philadelphia. The game is generational and attendance is not driven solely by on-field success.

 

In contrast, Tampa Bay’s history is spring training, which means inexpensive, tourist-skewed, relatively intimate gatherings. It’s a diversion.

 

 And then it ends in time for summer, when big league clubs head north, and locals turn to a lifestyle that many relocated here to enjoy. And baseball isn’t a big part of that. We’re talking golf, tennis, fishing, boating, swimming and retreating to the Carolinas. In short, there are better things to do in the summer around here than go to a baseball game.  

Rays’ Attendance Dilemma

The Tampa Bay Rays officially remain bewildered that attendance isn’t better. Oh, it’s improved from last year, but that requires context. The improvement’s built on a very modest base. Relative to most other franchises, let alone one that made it to the World Series, the Rays remain laggards at the box office. They are 24th out of 30 Major League franchises.

 

And that recent three-game set with the Phillies, which averaged less than 20,000 per (mid-week) night, soberly underscored the point to Rays’ management. That same series would have drawn sold-out, capacity-plus crowds in Philly, or more than double the crowd size at the Trop. The uncomfortable truth may be that baseball just doesn’t play that well here.  And maybe the answer ultimately lies in relocation.

 

As a native of Philadelphia – and a FORMER Phillies’ fan – I’ll weigh in.

 

First of all, baseball in cities such as Philly, Chicago, Boston or New York are societal fixtures. It’s what you do – generation after generation, good teams and bad – in the summer. The tradition here is that of cut-rate, casual, spring exhibition baseball with tourists following their home-town teams while on vacation. It’s not the same thing. Not nearly.

 

This is still a life-style market, with most folks from somewhere else, some still clinging to former allegiances. Golf, tennis, fishing, swimming, boating and retreating to western North Carolina are big. There are, quite arguably, better things to do in the summer than go to a baseball game.

 

But if you’re inclined, it would help if the home team didn’t play in the ill-suited, much-maligned, cat-walk house that is the Trop. And in an asymmetrical, non-traditional market sans mass transit, it hardly helps that the field is not closer to the population centers, especially Tampa – and even Orlando.

 

Plus, the Tampa Bay market is saddled with a dearth of corporate headquarters. This key sector generates more than sponsorships; it’s also typically responsible for a critical share of a franchise’s season-ticket base – that which ensures good turnouts on a regular basis.

 

Other than that, who can figure why only 19,000 live ones show up on a given (non-concert) night in June in St. Petersburg for a World Series rematch?  

Diversity Irony Over Justice Choice

Crist Crucible:  Gov. Charlie Crist wanted his actions to match his words about wanting a more diverse judiciary. Specifically, Crist wanted to reject the all-white list of nominees for appointment to the 5th District (Daytona Beach) Court of Appeal. But he was thwarted by the Florida Supreme Court, which ruled that – worthy rationale notwithstanding – he had to fill the vacancy from among the six candidates duly submitted by the Judicial Nominating Commission. Sorry, Charlie.

 

Writing for the court was Justice Jorge Labarga, a Crist appointee and the court’s lone Hispanic member. Labarga wrote that the governor does not have the discretion to refuse to act on the commission’s submissions even though “we applaud the governor’s interest in achieving diversity in the judiciary…” Indeed they do, especially Justice Labarga.

 

Recall that the Cuban native’s own appointment last year — a politically controversial one — served to underscore the governor’s high-profile commitment to diversity. Now it’s Justice Labarga, whose ethnic heritage was so instrumental to his Supreme Court seat, who had to make it clear that wanting diversity wasn’t reason sufficient to override the Constitution and ignore the nominating commission. Talk about irony.

 

Crist has 60 days to make his choice among the six white nominees.