McCain No Maverick

Remember when Sen. John McCain was the “maverick” presidential candidate? Nothing epitomized it more than telling off Jerry Falwell & Co. during the 2000 campaign. Ever since, he’s been deconstructing that label in anticipation of another run – one in which he can’t afford to alienate true believers on the right.

Most recent case in point: His presidential campaign, which is currently chasing Mitt Romney’s for organizational heft in Florida, has announced the endorsements of Cuban-American U.S. House members Lincoln Diaz-Balart, Mario Diaz-Balart and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen. They are among South Florida’s most dogmatic Cold Warriors when it comes to Cuba.

Maverick?

Is James Garner available?

An Inconvenient Candidacy

While Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama dominate the current Democratic presidential landscape, still waiting in the wings – possibly anticipating a deus ex machina draft moment – is Al Gore. If The Polarizer and the Clean-Cut, Inexperienced One prove problematic in an election that is the Dems to lose, the party could still turn to the man who had a half million more votes than George W. Bush in 2000.

An Oscar nomination and Nobel Prize nomination hardly hurt in a celebrity-driven culture. More to the point, he was vehemently opposed to the Iraq invasion from the start – not the start of the campaign. He has mainstream environmental credibility, and he’s no novice in matters international.

It would be much less of a comeback than that of Richard Nixon in 1968.

For what it’s worth, here’s the Gore take of James Carville, the dean of Democratic strategists, in a recent piece in Rolling Stone magazine: “

Malio’s And Alessi Mean Downtown Credibility

Projects such as the Tampa Museum of Art, the Children’s Museum and the Riverwalk are obvious keystones of any downtown-revitalization scenarios. Complementary pieces include, for example, the new Embassy Suites Hotel, the under-renovation Floridan Hotel and the nearly completed SkyPoint condominium.

Museums, condos, hotels and 66,000 workers, however, don’t make a neighborhood – and that’s what Tampa says it wants its downtown to be. A vibrant in-town where people also live, dine and hang out. It’s a formidable, if not daunting, undertaking for a city where The Hub too long defined nightlife.

But then last year there developed an incipient Franklin Street restaurant corridor with the Thai Corner, Office Café & Grill and the artsy-vibed Fly Bar & Restaurant. In April, the new Malio’s Steakhouse — with chocolate-colored walls and burgundy columns — will open in the lobby of the 31-story River Gate (Beer Can) Tower. Now Phil Alessi is negotiating to open Alessi Bakery Café next to the Colonial Bank at Kennedy Boulevard and Tampa Street.

In and of themselves such enterprises, of course, hardly constitute an extreme makeover. More like food for thought, however, because they do signal a vote of confidence by those steeped in tradition and business savvy who want in as urban infill starts unfolding.

Cartoons And National Security

Say this for Turner Broadcasting Systems – and an advertising agency – they eventually did the right thing in that bizarre Boston security scare. To the tune of $1 million, they reimbursed the agencies that dealt with those electronic devices that caused the closing of bridges and highways. They also donated another $1 million toward homeland security and related programs. The charges against the two men who placed the devices have been resolved.

Not yet resolved: Why in a post-9/11 world would somebody not think twice about a publicity campaign for some adult cartoon show that involved putting blinking electronic devices with wires and circuit boards in places such as highway support beams and a rail line? Or maybe they bottom-lined it: They got their $2 million worth.

Also say this: Didn’t you feel like cuffing around those two punks who abused their 15 minutes of fame?

Memo To Bono

The United States doesn’t mind helping out in Africa. It really doesn’t. That’s why the Millenium Challenge Account was created in 2002. It helps poor African countries whose leaders are really trying to do the right thing.

Ghana recently received a five-year, $547 million grant for agricultural development. It has free – and regular – elections and a government, headed by President John Agyekum Kufuor, that isn’t compromised by corruption. Its economy is relatively robust.

President Bush put the Ghana grant – and 10 others worth a total of $3 billion – into perspective. “It doesn’t make any sense for us to send taxpayers’ monies to countries that steal the money.”

Super Bowl Tradition

Some Super Bowl givens:

1) Not unlike a heavyweight championship fight, most folks in attendance will have little clue as to what is actually going on. Doesn’t matter. It’s the mother of all VIP tickets.

2) Nothing exceeds a Roman-numeraled football game for sheer pretension.

3) Much more than usual, the media horde falls all over itself for vapid, jock-sniffing stories.

4) Each year the extortion ante is raised for the host city.

5) USF economics professor Phil Porter will be quoted around the world as saying that the Super Bowl doesn’t mean economic squat for the host city.

Oprah’s Money – And Priorities

Oprah Winfrey continues to get a bad rap for that $40 million gift to build a school for girls in South Africa – and not use the money for acute educational needs in America’s inner cities.

Five points:

1) It’s her money.

2) There’s no need for any other reason.

3) For the sake of argument, there’s Winfrey’s own on-point, politically incorrect rationale, as quoted in Newsweek magazine: “I became so frustrated with visiting inner-city schools (in America), that I just stopped going. The sense that you need to learn just isn’t there.”

4) To call her hypocritical because she promotes materialism as a high-profile, high-end consumer diva is an irrelevant cheap shot. She’s an American success story. She’s earned it. And she’s sharing a lot of it with those who appreciate it.

5) It’s her money.

Sobering Thought: High Time We Re-Think Gasparilla

Another Gasparilla Parade has come and gone, and the familiar refrains have played out in its aftermath.

To many, Gasparilla remains engagingly raucous, inimitably colorful and just free-wheeling fun. A celebration of self that’s uniquely Tampa. It’s this city’s signature event – 103 now and counting. And it looks great on those Greater Tampa Chamber of Commerce brochures and Tampa Bay Convention and Visitors Bureau DVDs.

And who doesn’t like a world-class street party? Especially one that’s preceded by a one-of-a-kind, paean-to-pleasure flotilla.

To others, the trashy sideshow now trumps the parade, per se.

I used to be solidly in the former camp. Even threw beads from a float while a member of the Krewe of Mambi. Liked the camaraderie, the diversity, the costumes, the music – and enjoyed the look of appreciative kids and, yes, comely lasses who you could accommodate with a targeted toss.

But that’s the parade. An event that hordes of teenagers are – by the starting time of 2:00 p.m. — barely interested in or even aware of.

From the perspective of parade-route property owners and those merely proximate, teen-aged drunks and trespissers are the norm. And, I, for one, no longer think Bud Blight is worth it. Especially now that the Children’s Parade — with accompanying air show and fireworks — has ratcheted up in significance and size. It now draws some 200,000 attendees.

As a result, the Gasparilla Parade itself approaches anti-climax status.

Put it this way. The week before we are reminded that you can put on a mammoth parade for all the right reasons, including an animated civic celebration. It’s a family affair sans drunks and punks – yet still embodies Tampa’s pirate-culture cachet. Families actually wait in line to use the Port-a-lets. Imagine. What’s not to like?

With Gasparilla, what’s to like about teens behaving badly? There’s only so many police who can be shoe-horned into South Tampa — and still not feel that a veritable welcome mat has been extended to criminals elsewhere in the city.

But more to the point, what’s to like about parents who enable deplorable — sometimes injurious — behavior? That’s really the root of the problem: Loco parentage. And you know who you are – even if you are in continuous cell-phone communication with Skip and Flip from the various ground-zero venues. Assuming you can even hear anything decipherable amid the loud-speakered cacophony.

I’ve often wondered: What happens when these kids go home at the end of Gasparilla Day? What – or who – awaits them? Even if they’re staying at Biff’s or Buffy’s house, what do Biff’s or Buffy’s parents think? Or care? Or not. Is it all written off as some alcohol-fueled rite of passage that is somebody else’s problem? An annual exemption from norms? Nice message. Pass it on.

And how do the Tiffanys and Taylors and Madisons get out of the house looking like MTV strumpets? Or are these the same households who, a few years prior, thought it was Halloween cute to dress up their 9-year-old girls as Britney Spears?

I live near St. John’s Episcopal Church. Each year it sponsors a Gasparilla “Safe House” for the underage who overindulge. It’s a praiseworthy effort. Doubtless it has prevented the merely inebriated and the flat-out passed-out from fates much worse. Some of its visitors leave by gurney.

But it also dispatches this message: “Gasparilla. It is what it is. The unacceptable is expected; let’s at least try to mitigate worst-case scenarios.” Not unlike passing out condoms in high school. Let’s cut our losses and concede to the forces of inevitability.

Here’s another message: Given the reality that you can’t parent somebody else’s kids and the odds that something much worse than a Sunday hangover will eventually happen, let’s make a pre-emptive move. Eliminate it.

I know; I know. But arguably Gasparilla is now bigger than this one parade that is an all-call for teens and a siren song for alcohol-induced behavior.

Eliminating it leaves you with the burgeoning, unalcoholic Children’s Parade and the relatively raunchy night parades in Ybor, as well as the Gasparilla Arts Festival and the Gasparilla Distance Classic.

Something for everybody.

Except, of course, those who miss 45 tons of trash, ad hoc neighborhood urinals and too many teens driving the porcelain Buick through the streets and alleys of South Tampa.

Making The Civics Case

Here’s hoping that the combination of Bob Graham, the former governor and U.S. senator, former Rep. Lou Frey and R. Fred Lewis, the chief justice of the Florida Supreme Court, can make a difference. Here’s hoping somebody can. They all are working toward bringing meaningful civics education to Florida schools.

“It’s really incredible, the lack of knowledge in the state,” said Frey. “Not just kids, but adults.”

Graham and Frey want the state’s curriculum standards rewritten with more emphasis on civics. They want civics included on the FCAT to guarantee that it does, indeed, get taught. Justice Lewis has been urging and organizing lawyers (Florida has more than 70,000) and judges to get into state schools to talk about the U.S. Constitution. As in underscoring that we have one and then trying to explain it.

The need for remedial civics is as demonstrable as it is disgraceful.

A 2005 Florida Bar poll found that more than 40 percent of Florida residents did not know the three branches of government. A poll by the University of Central Florida found that only one respondent in three could name either of Florida’s U.S. senators. Relative to the rest of the country, Floridians don’t vote, which may be a mixed blessing given that an informed electorate is considered essential for a well-cast ballot.

And Florida is no isolated case – merely worse than most that also pay lip service to how this democracy of ours works.

And while we’re on the subject of relevant curricula, it wouldn’t hurt to also advocate for foreign languages as well as mandatory courses in world history, geography and contemporary cultures. The role of a super power in a world of globalized insurgency is that important.

Thomas Jefferson forewarned us 200 years ago.

“If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.”

May it remain a warning – and not an epitaph.