Stand-Up Obama

While the White House Correspondents’ Dinner is now overly long, overly tedious and overly laden with self-important celebrity sorts, some funny lines do emerge. There will always be political potshots that elicit more winces than laughs, but those served up by President Barack Obama were well delivered and well received. Especially the self deprecating variety.

 

*“No president in history has ever named three commerce secretaries this quickly. Is Judd Gregg here? Your business cards are ready now.”

*Re: The next 100 days. “My next 100 days will be so successful, I will complete them in 72. On the 73rd I will rest.”

*“I will strongly consider losing my cool.”

*“I will learn to go off the TelePrompTer, and Joe Biden will learn to stay on it.”

*Re: GOP Chairman Michael Steele: “No, the Republican Party doesn’t qualify for a bailout. And Rush Limbaugh doesn’t count as a troubled asset.”

*Re: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton: “The second she got back from Mexico she pulled me into a hug and gave me a big kiss and told me I needed to get down there myself.”

Nature Of Media: Inform And Hype

“Pandemic.”

 

The very word — sharing as it does the same first three and last two letters with the word “panic” — is enough to induce, well, panic. Especially when it blindsides you – “Flu Pandemic Imminent” – in the form of a daily newspaper or internet headline or a TV tease.  Especially when most people don’t know that pandemic refers more to geography than science. As in widespread. But not necessarily as in severe.

 

The media always straddle a fine line. They inform. They warn. And they hype. How else to get our attention? (Unless Joe Biden is also on the case.) And how else to get us to follow their in-depth, breaking-news coverage – and not the competition’s?

 

To the media, the worst sin is under-reporting something serious. You can’t undo the ravages of unpreparedness. You can only overcompensate next time. The swine flu (H1N1 is too clinical for hard core alarmists) story is, in effect, part of ongoing “next time.”

 

Ironically enough, beyond the headlines and teases is a context that is hardly apocalyptic. To wit:

 

*According to the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, on average 5 to 20 percent of the U.S. population gets seasonal flu each year. More than 200,000 are hospitalized, and about 36,000 die. It comes with the territory: the vulnerable human condition.

 

*This virus, says the CDC, is not all that different from the seasonal flu that schools deal with every year. Indeed, there is no singular symptom that distinguishes swine flu from the run-of-the-mill, seasonal variety.

 

*The CDC says the new swine flu virus lacks genes that made the 1918 pandemic strain so deadly.

 

As it turns out, the flu coverage actually prepares Bay Area residents for more than influenza. It also helps us manage our media expectations as print and electronic outlets gear up for the 2009 hurricane season. Yes, that means those meteorological Cones of Armageddon and Doppler and Viper updates as soon as West African gusts and choppy waters start affecting wind surfers off the coast of Guinea-Bissau. Just add context.

Poetic Justice

When it comes to architecture, Hillsborough Community College has proven to be an institution of higher loathing in Ybor City. Historic integrity? Doesn’t apply to them. The Barrio Latino Commission? Go away; they’re exempt.

 

HCC has shown over the years – and recently again – that it need pay less than lip service to the history and aesthetics of Ybor. Its regional Ybor campus is a paean to all that is contemporary – and its student services building, currently under construction, is similarly ill-suited. Along the way, it has made clear that it does what it wants and answers only to its own designs. That’s HCC’s history.

 

And then in mid-arrogance, HCC learned that its $14-million, 63,000-square-foot student services building was going to be too tall. It would exceed the 45-foot limit (for YC-3 zoning) by more some 18 feet.

 

It was too late to turn back and too high to put on a mansard roof and call it a day. Now HCC needs an exemption. And it needs it from the Barrio Latino Commission, of all entities.

 

So HCC has to take its thumb from its nose and make architectural concessions. It says it will do some retrofitting that includes pained windows instead of a glass wall façade and the use of beige brick on the building’s exterior, which will match the color of the nearby Cuban Club.

 

HCC hopes these and some other architectural accommodations will offset the height variance it needs. The BLC will formally hear the request next month.  

 

Word is the BLC will enforce a no-gloat zone, but who would blame them if they didn’t? What goes around comes around. Not just in architecture styles.

Immigration Strategy

Once again May (1) Day was a forum for immigration-reform demonstrations across the U.S. And once again, the basic strategies were flawed.

 

Foreign flags and signage in Spanish makes for a feel-good fest and underscores solidarity in the ranks. But it is not the most pragmatically effective approach for defusing your detractors and impressing those who matter most on immigration reform.

Congressional Priorities

There are a lot of folks who think a playoff system is the best way to determine a national champion in major college football. Among them: the president of the United States. When he’s not caught up in priorities that range from economic stimulus and military decisions to health care overhaul, energy independence and educational reform, he can also be a fan. It’s probably therapeutic.

 

That said, what in the world is Congress (specifically the House Energy and Commerce Committee) doing by holding a hearing on a college football playoff?  Republican Rep. Joe Barton of Texas has actually introduced legislation that would prevent the NCAA from calling a game a national championship unless it’s the product of a playoff.

 

Moreover, Utah Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch has put the Bowl Championship Series (BCS) on the agenda for the Judiciary’s antitrust subcommittee this year.

 

Speaking of agendas, this has everything to do with the Universities of Texas and Utah not making it into this year’s national championship game, the one where Florida defeated Oklahoma.

 

Let ESPN and sports bar patrons debate it. Is this Congress or the Colbert Report?

Specter’s Self Interest And GOP’s Flawed Brand

A fortnight later and the issue is still resonating. What exactly is the significance of the defection of Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter to the Democrats?

 

To some Republicans, such as GOP Chairman Michael Steele, the upshot is “good riddance.” Such dismissiveness is typically accompanied by references to “socialism” and “redistribution.”  Specter was never one of us, goes the rationale. Now he’s merely made it official.

 

Specter, 79, acknowledges his motivation was less than noble. Much less. He wants to be re-elected. His ideology is pragmatic self-interest.  His only chance at winning a 6th term next year is as a Democrat.

 

He would not have survived a GOP primary against conservative, Club for Growth totem Pat Toomey. And he wouldn’t, as a Republican, win a general in a state that went for Barack Obama last year by more than 620,000 votes. He’s a former District Attorney of Philadelphia who knows the Philly suburbs are only growing bluer these days.

 

The real significance, however, even after Al Franken comes on board, is not the 60-vote filibuster-buster that the Democrats would ostensibly get. Specter won’t be a rubber stamp – any more than Nebraska’s unpredictable Ben Nelson is.

 

What’s most relevant is what Specter’s self-serving move says about the Republican Party, which seems to revel with a lost cause. The party of Lincoln continues to marginalize all those not in lockstep about fundamentalist values, no-tax mantras, cherry-picked abhorrence to deficit spending, an arrogant foreign policy, outsourced principles and priorities to Rush Limbaugh and the rationalized qualifications of Sarah Palin, presidential candidate. It’s officially a flawed brand.

 

Arlen Specter used to say he stayed a Republican all those years to protect the two-party system. Ironically, he still does. Only they’re now called the majority party and the minority party. It’s what happens when the moderate wing of the GOP is extinct outside the state of Maine.

Minorities In The Media

Much is being made over the “changing face” of the Sunday morning political talk shows. As in more faces of color. As in meaningful, mainstream diversity.

 

Indeed, it’s encouraging to see black visages that belong to someone other than Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and Cornel West. Voices, such as those belonging to Gwen Ifill, Juan Williams and Bill Cosby, that are representative of something other than the African American grievance crowd. And it could get better yet. Think Thomas Sowell, Jesse Lee Peterson and, what the hell, Tampa Bay’s own Joe Brown and Bill Maxwell.

Megahed-ache For Feds

Last month’s re-arrest of Youssef Megahed still has the local Muslim community simmering – and a lot of other folks still shaking their heads about the feds seemingly coming down with a classic case of vindictiveness. Recall that three days after the former USF student was found not guilty of explosives possession he was arrested again – this time by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. A deportation hearing is still pending.

 

The rationale for the immigration charges, upon further reflection, still seems like a legal system temper tantrum. To many observers, most of them non-Muslims, this is how, in effect, it must have played out:

 

“We have a 2 ½ -week trial with a bunch of witnesses and more than 100 pieces of evidence. This is after this guy’s USF pal, Ahmed Mohamed, pleads guilty to providing material support to terrorists and gets 15 years in a plea deal. But Megahed? Oh, he was just cruising aimlessly and cluelessly in South Carolina with his Muslim buddy, the convicted terrorist wannabe! And a jury buys that? You gotta be kidding! Let’s go the civil route this time. He’s over at Wal-Mart. ICE him.”

Cannon Fodder For Legislative Skeptics

For those who think the recent sham legislative session could not have been worse, consider this: Rep. Dean Cannon is in line to be the next Speaker of the House. Recall that it was this Winter Park Republican who was the political point man for unnamed energy interests and Associated Industries in their blind-siding, under-the-radar, last-minute effort to pass a bill allowing oil drilling on the Gulf horizon line.

 

Nostalgic for the ethically challenged Ray Sansom or the merely ineffectual Larry Cretul yet?

Wrong Layoffs

It’s already been a busy off-season for the Tampa Bay Lightning, who had an awful on-season. Lightning owner OK Hockey laid off about two dozen employees as part of its “restructuring” strategy. Among those jettisoned: David Cole, director of fan development, Jay Preble, media relations specialist, and Matt Hitchcock, who played “ThunderBug.”

 

Too bad those staying include those responsible for hiring Barry Melrose and trading Dan Boyle.