Tower Power

                 Several things seem clear in the aftermath of that contentious meeting last week at Coleman Middle School over the proposal to construct a cell phone tower on the school’s campus:

*If there’s a serious nay-saying element, they will always outnumber and outshout their opposition. It’s the dynamics of such gatherings.

*No principal should be put on the spot and in a position that belongs to engineers.

*A lot of South Tampa parents will now need to make good on those fund-raising boasts. In the midst of a severe budget crunch, Coleman lost $36,000 per year in lease payments from Collier Enterprises II of Tampa.

*Because of the need for increasingly expanding cell phone service, a new tower will go up nearby anyhow. Just not literally on the campus, where it would have brought Coleman approximately $430,000 over 10 years.  

Gator Postscript

              *Watching the Florida-Oklahoma national championship game on TV last week was more than tense. It was also frustrating. Fox Sports doesn’t typically do college football, and it was glaringly obvious.

Play-by-play man Thom Brennaman and color analyst Charles Davis were awful. Chris Myers on the sideline made viewers pine for Erin Andrews, who at least hustles. Recruiting Joe Buck from pro football and baseball would have been the way to go.

            Brennaman was criticized for his game-long canonization of Tim Tebow, but we can forgive that. Tebow is that refreshingly unique. Think Roger Staubach and Bill Bradley back in the day. Only more so.

But not explaining penalties and losing track of the down was downright disgraceful. Stating the obvious has never qualified as analysis. That’s what buddies in a sports bar are for. The Bright House Sports Network guys who do the local high school games are better. And they aren’t that good.

            The good news is that this was the last BCS championship game for Fox. Next year ABC has it and then it goes to ESPN.

The potential bad news – for Gator fans who envision a repeat – is that next year’s big game will be at the Rose Bowl. That would be a de facto home game for the University of Southern California, a team that many observers expect to make it that far in 2009.

            *The sobering saga of Charlie Strong, UF’s highly-regarded defensive coordinator, continues. He has the coaching credentials, the track record, the respect of his players and peers, the unwavering gratitude and loyalty of Urban Meyer — and no head coaching offers. Those of lesser stature and accomplishment have leapfrogged Strong and taken such jobs.

            Charlie Strong is black. Is it racism? Almost assuredly. With a taboo subplot.

There are only a handful (actually seven) of black major college football head coaches. When UF offensive coordinator Mike Mullen recently took the Mississippi State job, a position for which Strong wasn’t even interviewed, the whispering campaign grew notably disquieting.

But the outgoing MSU head coach, Sylvester Croom, was also black.

But Croom didn’t have a white wife, as Strong does. As does prominently successful, black University of Buffalo coach Turner Gill, who had hoped to be hired last month by Auburn. It didn’t happen. The less-than-subtle message: It’s still impossible for certain universities, especially in the South, to countermand the wishes of their good-old-boy booster networks that still draw their own racial lines in the 21st century.

More than a few pundits have noted the irony of college football’s coach-hiring racism in the context of the election of this country’s first African-American president.

Frankly, however, we probably wouldn’t be referencing the upcoming inauguration for its historic significance if Barack Obama had married somebody more like his Kansas mother and grandparents. We have a ways to go yet.   

            *After the long-awaited, much-ballyhooed national championship game that was the Florida-Oklahoma battle, anything else, including a Tampa game with Roman numerals and a global TV audience, now seems anti-climactic. Especially when one of the teams, Arizona or Philadelphia, will come in with seven losses or six losses and a tie, respectively. Super? Maybe this is the Parity Bowl.

And if the other team is Baltimore? We’ll see a lot of Lakeland’s Ray Lewis – and be reminded that he could, instead, (had it not been for his obstruction-of-justice plea bargain) be doing time for his role in that (still unsolved) Atlanta murder-case fiasco of 2000.

*The “peoples’ business”: As if U.S. Rep. Bobby Rush, D-Ill., didn’t have enough to do with all his grandstanding for Roland Burris as the next junior senator from Illinois. He also found time to weigh in on the BCS national championship game. Actually, he did more than rhetorically lobby.

He has co-sponsored a bill that would prohibit any person to “promote, market or advertise” a post-season game as a national championship unless it is the final game of a postseason playoff system. And, yes, it has been sent to committee.

Gunning For A Legacy

Every outgoing administration leaves final reminders of its tenure on the way out. They’re often ideological parting shots in the form of executive orders and regulations. Plus some pardons and commutations.

But the Bush Administration, already legacy-challenged, abused the less-than-proud tradition. It wasn’t satisfied with the last political quacks of a lame duck.

Not with more Second Amendment roguery to inflict. Not with a final paean to the National Rifle Association to deliver.

Thanks to the Bush Administration, starting today (Jan. 9), you can conceal a semi-automatic weapon and take it with you to your favorite national park or wildlife refuge. Pack some heat and head for Egmont Key or the Everglades or Yellowstone.

Park rangers, among others, aren’t concealing their strong disapproval. Something about more accidents and poaching.

But the gun lobby loves it.

Pet Peeved

The other day Washington Post columnist Gene Weingarten penned a piece on pet peeves. He had a couple dozen, solicited from friends and colleagues, including “news anchors who blame or credit the meteorologist for the weather” and customer service reps who “do not solve your problem, then ask if there is any other way they can be of service today.”

Well, here’s an addendum, in no particular order:

*Christmas cards with just a signature. The sentiments, I gather, are really Hallmark’s.

*Annual family-and-friends Christmas letters. The other variation on a one-size-fits-all theme. Only this one is boring. Especially the really unfunny parts. If you were really close, and any of this stuff were really important, you would already know it.

* Network TV cameras at football games that persist in lingering on those clowns manifesting the most boorish, look-at-me antics after a play.

*Neighbors who leave their dogs, typically high-strung, yappy breeds, outside for long periods of time. (Yes, this is personal.)

*Awaiting in vain for a response from someone you just spoke to or otherwise communicated with only to determine that they were on Planet iPod or Blue Tooth.

*Those – media and politicians – who have to tritely affix “gate” to any public flap or “scandal,” no matter how trivial. It has been neither clever nor fair, including “Troopergate” and “Rhinogate,” since G. Gordon Liddy and the lads.

*Unimportant people who are self-important. Typically those preening, suck-up, organization types obsessed with the next rung in the corporate ladder.

*Cliché-trafficking – in any way, shape or form.

*Free-lancing, Gasparilla Day “trespissers” who use the parade-adjoining neighborhood landscaping — including mine — as ad hoc port-a-lets.

*Meteorologists in suspenders. It oozes “show biz.” You know killer teases, hype and drama await. Especially during hurricane season.

*Sharing really loud, really awful music with anyone within a half mile of your industrial-sized car stereo.

Stadium Reality For Tampa Bay Market

Note to the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. Good move in releasing that internal report showing possible stadium-site options. That’s how you generate momentum and grass roots enthusiasm. Not with what may be perceived as presumptuous decrees.

And nothing, candidly, says viable quite like the Carillon Town Center across from Feather Sound by Tampa Bay – near an I-275 exit. Parking is not an issue and a population of 1.2 million is within a 30-mile drive. That is double the population base for either Tropicana Field or a downtown St. Petersburg waterfront site.

In short, the nearer to Tampa, the hub of the Tampa Bay marketplace, the better. The closest market west of St. Petersburg is Corpus Christi. The Rays are a regional franchise – and that includes Orlando.

Topical Storms Ronda

        Say this for Ronda Storms. Amid all the sound bites and fury over her library-related comments, sense was made.
        We live in an age where the printed word is under assault. We are increasingly a video culture with all the attendant concerns about becoming a less literate society.
        Libraries are the last bastion of literacy. Arguably, they don’t need to be in the business of loaning TV sit-coms.
This is not a censorship or micromanagement issue, as some – including the American Civil Liberties Union – would contend. It’s a books issue.

Special Session Is Nothing Special

               About six weeks ago, Rahm Emanuel, Barack Obama’s chief-of-staff designate, spoke to a Wall Street Journal-sponsored gathering of CEOs. Among Emanuel’s economic observations, this piece of ironic pragmatism: “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. This crisis provides the opportunity for us to do things that you could not do before.”

               Indeed. Everything — from massive stimulus packages to massively controversial bailouts — is on the table. Familiar touchstones — from Adam Smith and Ronald Reagan to Gordon Gecko and Alan Greenspan – no longer counsel or console. Gospel is out; bold is in.

Which brings us to Florida, where a $2.3-billion 2008-09 budget hole – that could deepen to $3.8 billion or more in 2009-10 – has been awaiting this week’s special legislative session.

Alas, the only thing remotely special about the session so far is the announcement that House Speaker Ray “The Funnel” Sansom will actually step down from his ethically-challenged position with Northwest Florida State College.

Unless, of course, you want to define “special” as inexplicable indifference to the budget “opportunity” presented. An opportunity to finally reconcile Florida’s revenue-raising formula with reality. An opportunity to finally think outside the financial pox. An opportunity to overhaul Florida’s tax system that hasn’t changed appreciably since LeRoy Collins was governor.

Put it this way. When rapidly ratcheting population growth largely insulated this state from recession, the old paradigm of a sales tax-skewed revenue system sufficed for the short term. It was, of course, the only term that mattered politically. But now that growth has flatlined, that system is insufficient. Woefully so.

You would think a responsible state Legislature — even a reasonably irresponsible one — would have noted as much. At least in a “special” session.

Because of the state constitution that prohibits deficit spending, Keynesian solutions are precluded. And that, we are told by the Republican-dominated Legislature, leaves only borrowing and spending options to address burgeoning budget deficits. And that, in effect, means cutting services – at a time when Florida leads the country in food stamp requests — and jobs — during a recession. It also means raiding trust funds and employing accounting sleight of hand.

Alternatives are obvious to all not wearing ideological tax blinders.

Start with the easy stuff. It would be expedient if the Legislature would stop pouting about being a “rubber stamp” and finally approve the gambling compact with the Seminole Tribe of Florida and then get on with adding that $1 to the paltry (33.9-cent) state tax on cigarettes. Voluntary taxes should always be on the table, especially during a serious economic downturn. Especially those that could (combined) net the state nearly $1 billion annually.

Interestingly, Florida Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink has been the only one with any clout willing to state the obvious. “Every sales tax exemption ought to be back on the table,” proclaimed Sink.

Perhaps Sink could use Gov. Charlie Crist’s unused bully pulpit to better make the case for realistically addressing the deficit(s). It would include scrutinizing general sales tax (6 per cent) exemptions, including services, as well as taking the initiative to involve Florida in the concerted regional effort to collect sales taxes on catalogue and Internet sales.

And if having the cebollas to make such proclamations makes Sink look, well, gubernatorial, good for her. Perhaps “the people’s governor” will take note – as well as notes.

Florida can no longer afford populist piffle for leadership and ad hoc band aids for an economic strategy when confronted by a crisis of unprecedented proportion. Playing the tax-exemption, loopholier-than-thou game is a loser.

But it’s what Florida gets by letting “a serious crisis go to waste.”

A Festival Like No Other

               I have this shirt.

               It’s pink and black and festooned with flamingos. I bought it in Key West. I wear it as often as I go to Key West, which is infrequently. Thin line between fashionably whimsical and, well, cheesy.

               Last Saturday I wasn’t in Key West, but I wore the flamingo shirt anyhow. The occasion: a unique, memorial gathering for a unique, deceased friend.

               No, it wasn’t Hunter Thompson.

               It was Judy Dibbs, 65, who you may not have heard of. She wasn’t famous — merely important.

Judy’s main societal contribution was working hard at making the world a better place. When not doing that, the Sumerville, Mass., native was the avatar of courage for the way she confronted her terminal breast cancer.

Judy was a Florida HRS medical case worker for nursing home placement in Ft. Lauderdale. But that’s like saying Abraham Lincoln was a lawyer. She quickly earned renown for empathetic advocacy and relentless persistence. She was the lady — the pretty one with the Doris Day smile — that no bureaucrat dared cross.

“She helped people without a voice,” recalled social worker Ruth Gartland Michael. “She focused on the least of the least. She was so compassionate – but she knew when to be political and pragmatic. She cut right through the bs. The bureaucracy never got the best of her.”

After stints as an Eastern Air Lines trainer and the director of human resources for Cellular One in Chicago, Judy (and husband Dave) moved to Tampa, where Dave grew up. The last four years became the ultimate crucible. Each day – after the reoccurrence of her breast cancer – a daily mortality memo.

And, yet, she had these other priorities: she had four “perfect grandchildren” that needed doting, and she was a Guardian ad Litem volunteer, once again advocating for the powerless. In this case, abused and neglected children.  

She later became an inspirational Survivor Speaker for the American Cancer Society and was honored in 2006 with the ACS Courage Award. She was also a fund-raising force. In 2008 her Making Strides Against Breast Cancer team topped all others in Hillsborough County. 

“Judy was very intelligent, very well spoken and always professional,” said Charles Nelson, regional director for the Guardian ad Litem program. “She was never satisfied with the status quo. She could be tough. She had a remarkable ability to go after the issues while still making people feel good.

“Despite the pressures of the (GaL) job and her health, she never lost her sense of joy of life,” noted Nelson. “I saw her a week before she passed. She was still the one making us feel good.”

Stena Campagna, who coordinates the Moffitt Cancer Center’s FACTors (patient support) program, remains in awe of Judy’s indomitable spirit.

“Judy Dibbs lived every day to the fullest – and gave back,” said Campagna. “She didn’t live her life as if she were dying. She was always high-spirited. Coming here for chemotherapy was her ‘spa day,’ she would say…The fact that she was a Guardian ad Litem was amazing. Everything she did, she did with great gusto.

“Even though she knew there was nothing else to be done, she continued to fight the fight and raise money for those coming behind her,” added Campagna. “She took charge of her care and always looked for options. She spoke her mind freely but politely. She was the ultimate patient role model.”

                                            Festival of Judy

 So we gathered — per Judy’s final wishes — with Dave, her two sons, Elliot and Scott, and relatives — and each other — for “The Festival of Judy” open house in South Tampa. The theme was Key West good times, the dominant motifs: flamingos and anything pink. To celebrate the life she led, to savor the lives she touched, to revel in her “killer margarita” recipe — and to swap Judy Dibbs stories. Morrison Avenue as Margaritaville.

“I looked down (from his back porch to an overflow crowd) and I thought, ‘What an eclectic mix of people,’” recalled Dave Dibbs. “I knew it was right. I got the lump out of my throat. And, then, after that first chuckle, I knew I would be OK.”

The Improv this was not.

It was humor as the universal antidote for loss. The sort of humor – from self-deprecating to the ironic — that Judy employed shamelessly as a coping mechanism.

Dave referenced one of their first dates. He was a Virginia Military Institute cadet and Judy a scholarly undergraduate at Duke University – back in the days when few of those scholars were female.

 Dave was visiting Judy on the Duke campus. But it coincided with a big Duke-Michigan basketball game that night. And Judy was as hardcore a Duke Blue Devil fan as any guy.

And a certain life-long trait would manifest itself. Even then, Judy was into taking charge, however politely, on behalf of a worthy cause.

“She said,” deadpanned Dave: “‘If I can get you a ticket, great. If not, I’ll see you after the game.’”

The crowd loved it.  

Others spoke of Judy as a mentor, as a mom and as a model for guts and grace under fire. There were accounts of the “Judy stare” that indicated a level of consternation or disapproval that might have elicited a rant from others. She also had a grammar-maven side. The exercise in redundancy that is “very unique” was repeated with impunity in Judy’s memory.

Inside, a video of images chronicled Judy’s life. One photo was particularly poignant. It showed a chemo-bald Judy surrounded by her grandchildren. She had just submitted to a face-and-pate painting.

She didn’t want her grandchildren to be afraid of the disease. She wanted to max out on the limited time they would have together. It gave them a wonderful memory. And it was one more opportunity to thumb her nose at the Grim Reaper relentlessly stalking her.

Then there was Pat Knowlton, a breast cancer survivor who became one of Judy’s countless “best friends.” Only more so. They were comrades in harm’s way who both found it therapeutic to treat cancer with wickedly humorous disdain.

“I never felt depressed after talking to her,” said Knowlton. “She would laugh about the side effects. She always found hope. She was my personal cheerleader. Judy Dibbs lived more every day than most people I know who are not ill.”

Near the end, Judy made her promise that she would wear a certain teal,  flamingoed muumuu with a complementary blinky-light necklace to the inevitable “festival.”

“This is what Judy wanted me to wear,” explained Knowlton. “I said, ‘This is God awful.’ She said, ‘If anyone can pull this off, you can. And I expect you to.’”

It was vintage Judy. Thinking of others. How do you grieve inconsolably in a teal muumuu with blinky lights?

Campaigns And Late Night TV Hustings

            Among the outtakes we’re left to ponder after the presidential election is this one: candidate appearances on late-night talk shows reached a new high.

For the record, there were a total of 110 candidate-appearances on the late-night comedy shows, according to the Center for Media and Public Affairs. Accounting for nearly three quarters of such on-set appearances were “The Tonight Show With Jay Leno,” “The Daily Show” with Jon Stewart, the “Late Show With David Letterman” and “The Colbert Report” with Stephen Colbert. In contrast, there were 25 such appearances in 2004 (an election year with an incumbent).

            “Candidates have figured out that you can reach voters through entertainment venues even better than news,” explained Robert Lichter, a George Mason University professor and head of the CMPA.

            Candidates also figured out that such vehicles are free and command large audiences. And, yes, they are hardly mettle-testing crucibles. That’s why, as Sarah Palin eventually discovered, participating in a Saturday Night Live self-parody was still much better than submitting to a Charlie Gibson or a Katie Couric interview.

            Actually, it had already been figured out by the John F. Kennedy campaign nearly a half century ago.

That’s when presidential aspirant Sen. Kennedy went on the “Tonight Show” with Jack Paar.  

            The Kennedy people were ahead of their time. Their candidate would be positioned in front of a large, non-traditional audience, and the host would be deferential. This wasn’t the political-junkie gauntlet of a “Meet The Press” or “Face The Nation.” And the witty and winsome JFK, of course, was right out of central casting for this relatively new medium. A slice of the electorate would see a side of Kennedy that would later resonate in press conferences.

            Eventually, we would see other candidates begin to use TV to complement their paid ads, whistle-stop appearances and nightly network news clips. From Richard “Sock It To Me” Nixon dropping in on “Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In” in 1968 to Bill Clinton practicing safe sax on “The Arsenio Hall Show” in 1992.

            Now, we are reminded, such appearances are routine. Such that they’ve become almost symbiotic.

The candidates get exposure – and for the particularly personable and/or glib, they can conceivably energize a campaign the way no mere policy paper can. They also can lead to life after an also-ran candidacy. Mike Huckabee now has his own talk show on the Fox News Channel, and no one would be surprised to see Sarah Palin follow suit.

As for the shows themselves, they were able to tap into an endless campaign that seemed increasingly like the ultimate reality show. Ratings’ hikes resulted.

            Only one major problem.

            When appearances with late-night comics become de rigueur, they lose their original allure. Which was, lest we forget, seeing a candidate out of his handler-controlled comfort zone exchanging quips with a non-political insider. Showing some personality, a sense of humor, some heretofore unseen trait. Humanizing himself.

            Now, it’s more like: Conan O’Brien, check; Bill O’Reilly, check; David Letterman, check; Wolf Blitzer, check; Jon Stewart, check; Brian Williams, check; Stephen Colbert, check; David Gregory, check; and Oprah, Tyra and Ellen, triple-check.

            The campaigns ask: What are their demographics and ratings? Who else is on? What’s the order? Can we get a good book plug in? What’s our agenda beyond good-natured, witty banter and not looking like we think we are somebody special just because we’re running for the pre-eminent position in the world? Can we dumb it down without looking dumb? Do we have appropriate ad libs?

            Call it routine. But also call it trivializing and demeaning. Remember “boxers or briefs?”

The American presidency is the most important, the most powerful job on the globe. The U.S. is economically imperiled and geo-politically adrift. It’s also in a war with zero-sum, civilizational implications.

The time has never been worse for presidential candidates to regularly and routinely schedule chit-chat fests with comedic talk-show hosts looking for a ratings’ spike. Can you imagine FDR and Wendell Wilkie barnstorming with Fred Allen and Jack Benny in 1940 – with the U.S. on the cusp of war, in the thrall of isolationists, and in the final throes of the Depression?

Why — if a contemporary presidential candidate is looking for a big, freebie audience and lots of softball questions — isn’t Larry King enough?