Comics Context For “Doonesbury”

“Doonesbury” continues to be an editorial call for newspapers. Most keep it with the comics. It remains the wrong call. The two local dailies are a microcosm. Both keep “Doonesbury” in the comics section.

This was particularly relevant on Memorial Day weekend when “Doonesbury” creator Gary Trudeau once again dedicated his Sunday strip to U.S. soldiers killed in “Operation Iraqi Freedom.” It was an admirable “In Memoriam” salute.

The Tampa Tribune ran it on the back comics page – below a similarly themed “Opus” cartoon and above a house ad.

The St. Petersburg Times , however, kept it in its usual context. Arguably, such a solemn dedication to America’s fallen deserves better than being juxtaposed under “Marmaduke” and adjacent to “Mother Goose and Grimm,” “Jeff MacNelly’s Shoe,” “The Family Circus” and “Hi & Lois.” It just does.

Dukes Of Hazard

Devil Ray’s outfielder Elijah Dukes, he of the alleged “You dead, dawg” threats to his wife and two kids, has a serious problem just staying out of jail and adhering to a minimum code of civilized conduct. Anger, apparently, is something to be unleashed, not managed. Five children by four women by age 22 is just one of his issues.

Any wonder he might have needed some help with that notably deferred public apology the other day? In what ironically might have been as candid an unwitting utterance as he’s ever made, he told an assemblage of media that he wanted to “apologize to the organization for sticking by me.”

Indeed. There’s plenty of guilt and embarrassment to go around. The Rays can at least be a bad team with good guys.

About an hour and a half later , the Rays’ damage-control folks had issued a written “clarification,” little more than a sappy exercise in euphemism and cliché. Unless, of course, Dukes really, really meant what the Rays said he really “meant to say”: It’s time to “move on” and “put this behind us.”

So, move on, dawg. Anywhere but here.

Blair And Balanced

Despite what Jimmy Carter and a lot of Brits might think, British Prime Minister Tony Blair had it dead right in his recent manifesto: “A Global Alliance for Global Values.”

Stated Blair: “This terrorism, in my view, will not be defeated until we confront not just the methods of the extremists but also their ideas. I don’t mean just telling them that terrorist activity is wrong. I mean telling them that their attitude to America is absurd, that their concept of governance is pre-feudal, that their positions on women and other faiths are reactionary. We must reject not just their barbaric acts, but their presumed and false sense of grievance against the West, their attempt to persuade us that it is we and not they who are responsible for their violence.”

Would that President Bush could articulate it that well.

George Bush, Marilyn Manson – And A Lot More

Around this office – granted, it’s a home office – we have what we call “Epitaph Days.” Perhaps you know the feeling. These are days when something in the news or just stubbornly embedded in the society gets you scratching your head or clenching your fist. Sometimes it’s because you’ve been made to feel like an alien in your own culture. Or you get “mad as hell” in the Howard Beale/”Network” sense. And sometimes it’s just a chagrin-and-bear-it moment; nothing a TV remote can’t surf away.

But the net result: “EDs.” As in: “When the epitaph of this country is ultimately written, this will be included.” Not to wax histrionic about rise-and-fall-of-empire scenarios, but here’s a working short list:

*Embarrassingly low voter turnouts. Demoralizing, appalling frames of reference for anything related to civics. Single-issue voters with their marching orders.We continue to lecture the world, especially countries that are still post-colonial constructs, about the merits of democracy. In fact, we get vicariously giddy upon seeing a bunch of Muslims showing off a painted digit after voting for their favorite cleric or war lord.

*The re-election of George W. Bush.

*That there is a need – and that surely can’t be debated – for a law that allows a parent to anonymously drop off an unwanted infant at a designated “safe haven,” such as a firehouse. It’s a disincentive to use dumpsters for newborns. Are we losing our ranking in the animal kingdom?

*Marilyn Manson

*Sure, most people don’t want a military draft for all the obvious reasons. But the fact that this issue has been exhumed speaks volumes. We haven’t resorted to Hessians yet, but increasingly our over-committed armed forces are getting herded into battle based on demographics.

Educational qualifications continue to erode, and a criminal record is no longer considered poor form for military service. Sort of like tattoos: Doesn’t look good, but what the hell. And we now have gang members returning to civilian life after undergoing professional weapons training.

*Being confronted with a do-or-die, us-or-them, civilizational war, we still refuse to enlist the American people in the battle. We remain sacrifice-challenged, except for those over-contributing overseas and $3-per-gallon gas. But nobody’s driving appreciably less – and efforts to wean the U.S. off imported oil remain token at best.

*No country worth its sovereign salt has ever ceded control over its own borders. How long can America continue as an historical aberration?

*Despite the Don Imus Imess, rap music and its myriad financial benefactors still go largely unhassled, unfazed and unleashed. How alarming is it that a crude, thuggish, nihilistic, self-loathing, crotch-grabbing, misogynistic, dysfunctional culture is not something that is scorned – but successful and celebrated as “real”?

*Howard Stern.

*The Goliath syndrome. So, exactly where does the United States fit in this imperfect world? And what do we do that best advances our enlightened self-interest? The case can be made that not enough Americans are asking that question, and yet our national security and our place in the global economy are inextricably involved. The case can be made that if we don’t get this one right, everything else is moot.

*A presidential selection system that requires candidates to first impress the most extreme among us in order to have a chance to represent all of us.

*Elijah Dukes.

*A presidential selection system that now requires the most viable candidates to raise $100 million. That’s ostensibly what it will cost Barack Obama if he is to succeed in taking “cynicism” out of the political process. Who knows what it would cost to take irony out of the process.

*The neo-monarchial prospect of a Bush-Clinton-Bush-Clinton caste continuum.

*The Cold War relic that is America’s embargo-dominated policy toward Cuba. Only now it further undermines our worldwide credibility as a fair and honest force for good in the world.

*Anna Nicole Smith

*Obesity as a birthright.

*Political correctness that’s much more the rule than exception. Imagine not being able to properly use the profiling tool in defending ourselves against terrorists.

*Affirmative action that is still tilted at equal results rather than equal opportunity. The last bastion of meritocracy: the National Basketball Association.

*Out-of-wedlock births. Stigma? What stigma? It’s a choice.

*Marriage. Two men? Two women? One of each?

*China.

*Too much attention on self-esteem curricula in our schools. Would that it helped America compete in a global economy. But perhaps we will feel better than we otherwise would have for future failures.

*Laws (we’re not making this up, Louisiana has one and others are considering) that address how pants should be worn – and the proper ensemble role of underwear.

*Media meltdowns. Ratings-driven media that pander as much as inform. The line between reporting and editorializing too often obliterated. The blogosphere: Who needs editors, publishers and libel laws? Local news devoting precious air time to pimp non-news network programming.

*Neocons.

*Remedial courses on college campuses.

*Coarsening and trivializing of the culture. Let’s not even count the ways.

*Online predators.

*Entitlement attitudes.

*Rosie O’Donnell.

*Two hallowed Amendments, the First and the Second, continuously subverted. If the forefathers were anticipating porn shops and assault weapons, then they get high marks for prescience and low marks for perversion.

*Did I mention oxymoronic rap artists?

Of course, this is not a definitive list. But it does put into context cell phonies, Saturday morning leaf blowers and drivers with jet-engine-decibel-level car stereos.

It’s a lot worse than that.

Cubans Gather To Speak With One Voice

In his youth, Havana native Antonio Zamora put it all on the line to take out the Fidel Castro regime and rid the hemisphere of a menacing Soviet satellite. He survived the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion – and subsequent imprisonment in a Cuban jail.

He could be the avatar of anti-Castro, pro-embargo Cuban gravitas. Indeed, for years he was legal counsel for the hard-line Cuban American National Foundation (CANF). And he readily acknowledges that he “wrote the book on Miami politics.”

But time has elapsed, and times have changed. The influential Miami attorney is now president of FORNORM, the Foundation For The Normalization of US/Cuba Relations.

He was in town last week, along with representatives of 16 other organizations whose charge was to speak with one voice on the need to normalize relations with Cuba. To speak, in effect, with a voice other than the strident, pro-embargo, South Florida one that has dominated the subject of Cuban-American relations for the better part of half a century.

They gathered, appropriately enough, in the theatre of Ybor City’s Circulo Cubano (Cuban Club).

“It’s a different world now,” reflected Zamora. “Back then was a function of the Cold War era. That’s over. Things change

Rhyme And Reason

Most little boys, arguably, don’t want to be poets when they grow up. James E. Tokley, however, comes pretty close.

At age three, he fell in love with the sound of words. He remembers the early epiphany at his grandmother’s side while she read to him in their rural Seaford, Del., home. He was captivated, he recalls, by the words “cantankerous cat” and fascinated by “rapscallion.” They were easy on the ear and fun to say.

He became a lifelong, voracious reader – and writer, including music.

Fast forward 44 years. It is 1996, and the former literature instructor at Delaware State University has been appointed Tampa’s first poet laureate by Mayor Dick Greco. Among his subsequent works: poems dedicated to the inaugurals of Mayors Greco and Pam Iorio as well as Florida Gov. Charlie Crist. Last year Tokley’s poem “Leviathan” bedecked the side of the Park Tower in downtown Tampa where, at 63 feet by 45 feet, it became the largest poem ever produced and posted in the history of literature. Other prominent Tokley works have been featured in forums ranging from the National Urban League Conference to a White House Millennium traveling exhibit.

“What a special gift he has,” says Greco. “He sees things that others miss and then captures them.”

The “gift,” says Tokley, 58, is a byproduct of diligent research in pursuit of a “personal or historical anchor.” Next step: going to the mental mattresses for “word-thing associations and analogies.” Then he entreats The Muse for the first line.

“When I get it, that’s the hook,” he says. “Then the endorphins kick in, and I’m in a sea of images.” After numerous drafts, the process concludes with the “litmus test”: his wife Joanna, who’s no poetic pushover. Sometimes it’s love at first reading; otherwise, her criticism is prefaced with the euphemistic “It needs seasoning.”

While Tokley’s love affair with the evocative power of words continues unabated, he does have a prosaic side. Man does not live by stipend and modest commissions alone. He owns Tokley & Associates, a human resource training and consulting agency.

“Epitaph Day” Material Grows Daily

Around this office – granted, it’s a home office – we have what we call “Epitaph Days.” Perhaps you know the feeling.

These are days when something in the news or just embedded in the society gets you scratching your head. Sometimes it’s because you’ve been made to feel like an alien in your own culture. Sometimes you just feel disgusted. The result: “EDs.” As in: “When the epitaph of this country is ultimately written, this will be included.”

Not to wax histrionic about potential Pax Romana scenarios, but these are a few of my least favorite contemporary things:

*Embarrassingly low voter turnouts. Demoralizing, appalling frames of reference for anything related to civics. Single-issue voters with their marching orders.

We continue to lecture the world, especially countries that are still post-colonial constructs, about the merits of democracy. In fact, we get officially giddy upon seeing a bunch of Muslims showing off a painted digit after voting for their favorite cleric or war lord.

*That there is a need – and that surely can’t be debated – for a law that allows a parent to anonymously drop off an unwanted infant at a designated “safe haven,” such as a firehouse. It’s a disincentive to use dumpsters for newborns. Are we losing our ranking in the animal kingdom?

*Marilyn Manson

*Sure, most people don’t want a military draft for all the obvious reasons. But the fact that this issue has been exhumed speaks volumes. We haven’t resorted to Hessians yet, but increasingly our over-committed armed forces are getting herded into battle based on demographics. Educational qualifications continue to erode and a criminal record is no longer considered poor form for military service. Sort of like tattoos: Doesn’t look good, but what the hell. And we now have gang members returning to civilian life after undergoing professional weapons training.

*Being confronted with a do-or-die, us-or-them, civilizational war, we still refuse to enlist the American people in the battle. We remain sacrifice-challenged, except for those over-contributing overseas and $3-per-gallon gas. But nobody’s driving appreciably less – and efforts to wean the U.S. off imported oil remain token at best.

*No country worth its sovereign salt has ever ceded control over its own borders. How long can America continue as a historical aberration?

*Despite the Don Imus Imess, rap music and its myriad financial benefactors still go largely unhassled, unfazed and unleashed. How alarming is it that a crude, thuggish, self-loathing, dysfunctional, misogynistic culture is not something that is scorned – but celebrated?

*Howard Stern

*The Goliath syndrome. So, exactly where does the United States fit in this imperfect world? And what do we do that best advances our enlightened self-interest? The case can be made that not enough Americans are asking that question, and yet our national security and our place in the global economy are inextricably involved. The case can be made that if we don’t get this one right, everything else is moot.

*A presidential selection system that requires candidates to first impress the most extreme among us in order to have a chance to represent all of us.

*A presidential selection system that now requires the most viable candidates to raise $100 million. That’s ostensibly what it will cost Barack Obama if he is to succeed in taking “cynicism” out of the political process. Who knows what it would cost to take irony out of the process.

*The neo-monarchial prospect of a Bush-Clinton-Bush-Clinton continuum.

*The Cold War relic that is America’s embargo-dominated policy toward Cuba – and how it helps undermine our worldwide credibility as a fair and honest force for good in the world.

*Anna Nicole Smith

*Obesity as a birthright. *Political correctness that’s much more the rule than exception. Imagine not being able to use the profiling tool in defending ourselves against terrorists.

*Affirmative action that is still tilted at equal results rather than equal opportunity. The only true meritocracy: the National Basketball Association.

*Out-of-wedlock births. Stigma? What stigma? It’s a choice.

*Marriage. Two men? Two women? One of each?

*AIDS still killing.

*Self-esteem curricula in schools that don’t do a thing to help America compete in a global economy.

*Laws (we’re not making this up, Louisiana has one and others are considering) that address how pants should be worn – and the proper ensemble role of underwear.

*Ratings-driven media that pander as much as inform. Line between reporting and editorializing too often obliterated. The blogosphere: Who needs editors, publishers and libel laws? Local news devoting precious air time to pimp non-news network programming.

*Neocons.

*Coarsening and trivializing of the culture. Let’s not even count the ways.

*Online predators.

*Entitlement attitudes.

*Two hallowed Amendments, the First and the Second, continuously subverted. If the forefathers were anticipating porn shops and assault weapons, then they get high marks for prescience and low marks for perversion.

*Did I mention rap?

Of course this is not a definitive list. But it does put into context cell phonies, Saturday morning leaf blowers and drivers with jet-engine-decibel-level car stereos.

It’s a lot worse than that.

Rays At Disney

For the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, that elusive road to success undoubtedly includes Interstate 4. And while the Rays’ three-game series last week with Texas at Disney’s Wide World of Sports was less than a flat-out, gangbusters’ success, it was hardly unsuccessful.

The games drew (9,000 average) about as much as they would have at the Trop, but it felt like more because the WWS park, unlike cavernous Tropicana Field, doesn’t hold much more than that. More importantly, the series proved a beacon for Orlando-area media. The home-away-from-home gambit underscored the Rays’ commitment to creating a regional brand, especially for television.

It’s one of the cornerstones that owner Stu Sternberg, who still seems the quintessential un-Naimoli, must have in place to make the Rays a viable franchise. But there are three more foundation blocks.

*One, as Sternberg has already indicated, is a new facility. Sometime after the next five years – but before the obsolete-from-the-outset Trop’s lease is up in 2027. Preferably one with a re-tractable roof, but anything is better than the Big Catwalk House.

*Location, location, location. While no one in St. Petersburg wants to speculate on this one, it’s still obvious that downtown St. Pete is not the place to house a Major League Baseball franchise. Sure, there’s the eastern outreach beyond Tampa to Orlando, but what about west? That’s the Gulf of Mexico, a market sector for deep-sea fishing, not baseball.

It never made sense to plunk this franchise down in St. Pete, but that was more a function of parochial one-upsmanship than sound geography and regional demographics. The market hub that is Tampa — or at least the Gateway section of St. Pete — still makes eminently more sense.

*The last block is winning. The honeymoon of free parking and a spruced up Trop ends this season. Next year has to show a marked improvement in the W column. It will take prudent but ambitious free-agent spending on pitching and the continued development of prospects. But the Sternberg wallet has to be open for business.

Ultimately, winning offsets a multitude of sins. But it’s likely Sternberg needs the full foundation. This is not tourist-driven spring training. This is the real Florida with all that the Sunshine State lifestyle implies. There’s a lot of competition for baseball – even winning baseball.

Florida Must Be A Primary Player

Perhaps the best case for presidential primaries is what they are not: vehicles that select nominees in smoke-filled rooms or via convention-floor arm-twisting. But you can also make a pretty good argument that any time the voices of the voters carry the day, democracy wins.

But over time we began to notice that those anomalous (caucus and) primary states, Iowa and New Hampshire, were more than refreshingly populist, unique retail hustings. Much more, in fact, than coffee-counter crucibles imposed on those in the ultimate political-power hunt.

It was abundantly evident that because they were first, Iowa and New Hampshire were exercising political leverage far beyond their sheer numbers and skewed demographics. Quaint and traditional had become dumb and dumber. Lightweight electoral states had the wherewithal to make — Jimmy Carter — or break — Edmund Muskie — a candidacy, although hardly representative of the American mosaic.

Amid the periodic talk of rotating regional primaries, we’ve seen states start to butt in line to secure more influence. Florida, which had been more than satisfied with its relatively early March primary in the 1970s, began seeing that position erode over the years.

As the Sunshine State grew into a mega, swing state, it became obvious that while Florida — or merely the I-4 corridor — could literally determine the election of a president, it increasingly had little or no official say in actually nominating one. Candidates often had wrapped up nominations by the time Florida voters could cast their typically symbolic ballots.

And then it got worse. A dozen states, including California, New Jersey, New York and Texas will be voting next Feb. 5. South Carolina will do so on Feb. 2. Another half dozen are contemplating similar moves.

Whereas Florida had been largely marginalized as a primary player, it had now been eliminated.

The Republican-dominated Florida Legislature had no choice but to move up Florida’s primary – and it chose Jan. 29. If you’re choosing, why not choose to become the first mega state to hold a primary? Why not choose a date reflective of your prime role in electing presidents? Why not?

Well, both national parties have these pre-arranged schedules that they consider sacrosanct. They don’t want a scenario where it’s nothing but mega states creating a fait accompli nominee right out of the primary blocks. They want a more eclectic group of states having a say in the early going, which sounds hauntingly like a rationale that bequeathed us Iowa and New Hampshire in the first place.

Anyway, the Democrats are more adamant about not allowing anyone to violate their arcane rules. Interestingly enough, Florida Sen. Mel Martinez, the Republican National Committee general chairman, has stayed conspicuously restrained on this one. Not so, of course, with his leather-lunged counterpart, Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean, who has all but proposed water-boarding for gun-jumping Floridians.

In fact, so adamant are the Dems about penalizing offending states (and their delegates) that Florida Democratic officials are seriously considering a compromise that would turn Jan. 29 into a non-binding “beauty contest.” All of which could result in Democrats deferring a more serious campaign effort in Florida. To their own obvious detriment.

Which begs two questions:

*Is this really some deviously nuanced, Karl Rovian Republican plot to thwart the Dems in Florida when the 2008 presidential election is theirs to lose?

*Will we eventually wax nostalgic over those Warren G. Harding smoke-filled rooms and old video of Bobby Kennedy tying up loose convention ends for his brother?

Tampa’s A “Boomtown”

Historical author Michael Barone has been charting a significant shift in this country’s census patterns.

From 2000-06, the U.S. population grew by approximately 6 percent. However, the rate of growth in America’s “Coastal Megalopolises” (such as Boston, New York, Miami, Los Angeles and San Diego) was only 4 percent, points out Barone in a recent opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal . In contrast, “Interior Boomtowns” have grown by 18 per cent in the last six years – a function of significant domestic as well as immigrant inflows.

Among the major “Interior Boomtowns” (with accompanying rates of growth) are Las Vegas (19 percent), Charlotte (13 percent), Phoenix (12 percent) and Tampa (10 percent).