Campaign Trail Mix

The contention — and not just by the Bill McBride campaign — that Gov. Jeb Bush is trying to sandbag McBride via attack ads to assure a Janet Reno primary continues to look like a credible — but ultimately unsuccessful — strategy.

Even Republican insiders will admit on background that Bush has alienated too many not to be at least theoretically vulnerable. But much less so, they say, if he’s juxtaposed to the Samsonite candidate in the red pick-up.

Moreover, this fall Bush will have to contend with cleverly placed constitutional amendments and weather a torrent of national fund-raising and big-name Democratic surrogates. It’s a given that the flow of money and non-Hollywood heavyweights would be far greater for McBride, the preferred candidate of the party establishment. Then there are the pay-back wild cards represented by the “we-wuz-robbed” and “disenfranchisement” crowd, as well as those anxious to send an economic or civil libertarian message to George via Jeb.

There’s also a gut feeling — and not just limited to the McBride campaign — that McBride’s late media push plus some last-minute, epiphany-like assessments of Reno’s candidacy, persona and health will prove determinative.

Granted, Reno still has — however eroding — good poll numbers, and McBride didn’t take full advantage of last week’s debate forum to effectively introduce himself to Floridians. But one state GOP official — with Tampa roots and connections within the Oval Office — still unequivocally predicts: “McBride all the way.”

And he’s hardly pleased about that prospect.

NASCAR’s Message: Fans Come First

I never thought I’d find myself saying this: NASCAR could teach us all a thing or two. Let me back up for some frame of reference, but stay with me on this.

NASCAR was pretty much an alien concept for someone growing up in Philadelphia, the home of Doo-Wop, Bandstand, Chubby Checker and cheese steaks, as well as the Phillies, Eagles and 76’ers. Not to be confused, of course, with Country & Western, The Grand ‘Ol Opry, Porter Waggoner and grits, as well as the Winston Cup. Tracks were for horses and the Penn Relays.

Sports meant real athletes, those who ran and jumped, blocked and tackled, and threw and hit. Driving, no matter the vehicle, speed, distance or conditions, didn’t count. Everyone drove; precious few could hit the curve, elude an NFL linebacker or drain a perimeter jump shot with a man in your face. Auto racing was as foreign as curling, only less interesting.

While today I can marvel at pit-stop teamwork and the reflexes and nerve of the drivers, I still don’t get anything else about the sport. The numbing noise, the motorized monotony, the human billboards. Then there are the crashes, near-crashes and occasional fatalities. They’re not my adrenaline rush hours.

But you know what? The major professional team sports today — baseball, football and basketball — could learn a lot from NASCAR.

There’s a cultural connect that’s obvious between drivers and fans. Loyalty is not something you only owe your posse. You don’t have to love the sport to respect the relationship between celebrity drivers and their fans. Good ol’ boys and their families watching other good ol’ boys race.

However much their fame and fortune, the drivers know that without sponsors and fans they’re stuck in real jobs. So they sign the autographs; they do the interviews; they show for promotions; they banter; they hang out; they give back. Some things you just can’t fake. They let other sports monopolize drug busts, pregnant girl-friend assaults, bad tattoos and arrogant attitudes.

No sport does a better job of marketing to — nor respecting — its fan base than NASCAR. Drivers have agents and attorneys too, but they don’t get in the way of fan identification.

Baseball, as it approaches another strike deadline, couldn’t be a bigger contrast. What was once the national pastime is now well passed its time; more of a sleazy family feud among millionaires. To the eroding fan base that still cares more about pennant races and individual records than small-market scenarios and steroid-stoked stats, baseball responds with a nose-thumbing.

The message from baseball would seem to be: “How can we respect anyone who doesn’t see us for what we are — a competitive sham borne of owner egos and stupidity perfectly complemented by player greed and arrogance?”

Then there’s the lesson to be learned by the no-show fiasco that was the recent Shaquille O’Neal Celebrity Lost Weekend. Whatever the final cover story — beyond indifference and incompetence — the effect was this: too many kids had to learn the hard way what it’s like being treated like a pro sports fan.

Maybe it’s good they find out now. If the result would be fewer sycophantic, hero-worshipping, autograph-beseeching, lemming-like pro sports fans, it would be worth it.

Tampa On Track: A Desire Named Streetcar

This much we know. Come Oct. 19 — barring a hurricane hit, a meltdown between the city and HART or the wrath of former Mayor Sandy Freedman — there will be electric streetcars running in Tampa for the first time in more than half a century. Ridership numbers and economic impact remain intriguing unknowns.

Amid all the familiar names, faces and ceremonial fanfare surrounding the debut of the TECO Line Streetcar System will be a certain city planner who will allow himself the briefest sigh of relief. After the respite, WilsonMiller, Inc. senior planner Michael English goes back behind the scenes to continue culling prospects for station ($100,000) and car ($250,000) naming rights and resume ubiquitous trouble-shooting. For more than a decade he’s been a key streetcar player, including efforts to help land an important federal grant and lobby for special assessments on private property in the areas served by the streetcars: downtown, the Channel District and Ybor City.

English, an affable, mass transit true believer, is a seven-time president of the Tampa and Ybor City Railway Society, the organization responsible for promoting the return of streetcars to Tampa. He’s also president of Tampa Historic Streetcar Inc., the nonprofit corporation that will manage the system.

“It was always intended to be a tourist and visitor-driven concept,” states English. “But this is not a toy. It can help accomplish subtle things. Encourage new residential development; help attract more people to downtown. But, then again, it’s not just an economic development tool. It’s effective transportation within the urban center.”

English, known in South Tampa circles as the civic conscience of the venerable Hyde Park Men’s Club, is also an urban anthropologist.

“One of the key principles of cultural anthropology is people’s behavior and how it’s representative of people’s values,” explains English. “I’ve always believed the streetcar can’t fail here. It still rests in the hearts of local people. Always has.”

Pragmatic progress or utopian vision, it’s back on track Oct. 19.

Who Was That Mosque Man?

Earlier this month USF’s controversial Palestinian professor, Sami Al-Arian, spoke to the Suncoast Tiger Bay Club in St. Petersburg. Al-Arian, who denies charges that he has ties to terrorist groups in the Middle East, hasn’t made many such public appearances of late. So this Sami sighting drew a big media turnout.

Now we learn that Bay News 9 has been asked by the FBI to turn over its videotape for possible use by a federal grand jury. It’s problematic, however, as to what the feds would learn other than Al-Arian is well-and-out spoken, calculated and smart.

Smart enough to make no more appearances on the O’Reilly Factor. And smart enough to appear in public now to declare his innocence and love of America, free speech and academic freedom a few weeks before Judy Genshaft has to declare him fired or re-hired. Also smart enough to bring his lawyer.

And calculated enough to bring his son and wife. Harder to demonize a family man. He’s even added an after-dinner joke whose punch line lampoons scapegoating.

But the feds would also learn this: Al-Arian the Palestinian activist is uncannily unlucky. No one gets misquoted, misinterpreted and mistranslated more than this tenured computer science professor. Not even Charles Barkley, who was “misquoted” in his own autobiography, is so misunderstood.

Caught on tape declaring “Death to Israel,” Al-Arian explains it in Nelson Mandela-esque terms. “DTI” really means “death to apartheid, death to oppression, death to occupation.” But obviously not death to hyperbole. Besides, who could give a rousing stem-winder to an all-Arab audience without the obligatory, rhetorical overkill of “Death to Israel”? Nothing personal, just playing to the home crowd with killer applause lines. Sort of like Steve Spurrier used to do with Gator boosters.

Then there was Ramadan Abdullah Shallah, the guy he sponsored and hired for his USF think tank, World and Islam Studies Enterprises. As luck would have it, doesn’t Shallah surface later as the leader of Islamic Jihad, the notorious Mid East terrorist outfit. Talk about your PR hits. But who was to know? There was no hint in his vita . Even Sami still asks, “Who was that mosque man?”

When the feds look at the Al-Arrant tape, they will see and hear for themselves; this guy is really unlucky.

Also Remember Sept. 11 on Sept. 10

There’s no denying that “Flags Along The Bayshore: Tampa Remembers 9-11” will be a sight for the ages: a patriotic ribbon of red, white and blue waving freely from Gandy Boulevard to Platt Street. It will be an impressively graphic reminder that we haven’t forgotten those who died Sept. 11. Nor what it is that is worth fighting for: our democratic way of life.

But where does that leave Sept. 10? That’s the date of the primary, an opportunity to actually participate in the process we all agree — and decree — is worth fighting for.

For the record, the first primary of 2000 drew 17.09 percent of registered voters. And that, mind you, was an improvement over ’98, when 13.05 percent of registered voters cast ballots.

“Flag-waving is wonderful,” says Supervisor of Elections Pam Iorio, “but the greatest act of patriotism is voting. We can remember Sept. 11 by voting Sept. 10.”

Let’s really roll.

Greco’s Cuban Trip: Why He Did It

A fortnight ago Mayor Dick Greco was ground zero in a raging, geopolitical firestorm over his furtive foray to Cuba. His press conference, an emotional, meandering mix of sentiment, philosophy, rationales and travelogue outtakes, didn’t satisfy most of the media. Very little does.

Explaining a trip to Cuba and a meeting with Fidel Castro — given all the political nuances– is inherently dicey, especially if you’re wont to wear your emotions on your sleeve.

Here’s one columnist’s take on why the mayor did it. The reasons are as multi-faceted as the mayor himself.

* Curiosity: The mayor has long been, well, smitten. You don’t grow up in Ybor City — of Italian and Spanish descent — without an acute sense of Cubans and their homeland. Vestiges of the grandeur that once was had to be seen first-hand. Intimations of mortality only added to the sense of exigency.

Moreover, increasing numbers of Americans of influence and standing, including some in the mayor’s own circle of acquaintances, had gone. A number are Anglos. After a while, the well-intentioned, informative, second-hand accounts were becoming gnawing reminders of where the mayor himself had never been.

“I don’t hate anyone,” says Greco. “But I understand why anyone would hate Castro. I’ve seen what they left. It was gorgeous

Times’ Column: Poor Parody, Poor Taste

Tampa Mayor Dick Greco’s controversial trip to Cuba — and its ex post facto revelation — are certainly fair game for commentary as well as parody.

Having said that, Times’ columnist Sandra Thompson certainly abused the latter in her Aug. 10 column. Her send-up of a Greco sojourn to Baghdad was not funny, merely sophomoric. But that’s not the issue. Not everyone can be intentionally humorous, let alone dead-on satiric. Some efforts are just laughable.

The column morphed from bad to bad taste when referring to the mayor denying “the rumor that he and Linda will be guests of Osama bin Laden at a Sept. 11 anniversary bash

Miner-Survivors And Media Overkill

Let’s just enjoy this while we can.

That gripping, melodramatic rescue of nine miners from the all-but-clenched jaws of death was a news antidote counteracting media coverage of homeland insecurity, stock market trauma, kidnapped children and Middle East carnage. The Quecreek Mine drama embodied so much of the human spirit that we so easily take for granted in a world too mindful of mankind’s dark side.

No less impressive than the trapped miners’ presence of mind and notes to loved ones was the fortitude and technological know-how of their rescuers. A 77-hour reminder of the ingenuity and can-do ethic that is the American spirit.

Also associated with America, however, is media overkill that can turn people into public and private property.

Geraldo and Donahue had early dibs on interviews. Networks touted and teased their “exclusives.” Letterman and Leno are in line. The rights of the “Somerset 9” will need to be secured for a made-for-TV movie. Book scenarios and even endorsements — think Skoal — could be in the mix.

Not all miner-survivors are equally photogenic or articulate. Some will have opportunities outside the mines. Others, when their celebrity status wanes, will have to return to their sub-strata culture.

For now, however, let’s just revel with a cause and enjoy this for as long as it is what it is: a celebration of life against some really long odds.

Mankind and Manslaughter

We can’t possibly know what it’s like to lose a loved one in a tragic, violent way unless we’ve walked in a survivor’s shoes. Would we seek revenge as much as justice? Is the horrifically unforgettable also forgivable? We can’t know, and we can’t judge.

But we can salute Bruce Murakami for the compassion he showed in asking a judge for leniency in the case of the young man convicted of the manslaughter deaths of his wife and daughter. Murakami’s family was snuffed out in a fiery accident caused by a 19-year-old drag racer.

The judge heeded Murakami’s plea for mercy and gave Justin Cabezas house arrest and probation instead of jailing him for up to 30 years. In addition, both Murakami and Cabezas, now 23, will be part of a community-service dialogue with teenagers on the consequences of drag racing.

Moreover, another life wasn’t claimed by the tragic accident. Murakami says Cabezas now has the opportunity to make something of himself. If he, indeed, does, that will be the legacy of uncommon compassion shown under the most trying and tragic of circumstances.

UFO’s: Remember Them?

See where military officials confirmed that two F-16 jets from Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland were scrambled recently after radar had detected an unknown, low-flying aircraft in the DC airspace. The officials said they do not know what the jets were chasing because whatever it was disappeared.

“It was a routine launch,” deadpanned an Air Force spokesman.

Indeed. Only in post-9/11 America, could the launching of a couple of air-to-air missile-carrying jets around the Capital qualify as “routine.” Your basic, supersonic “Who goes there?”

Interestingly, there was a (non-military) eyewitness. He said he saw a “light-blue object, traveling at a phenomenal rate of speed