"He’s a sage, skillful and respected leader (who's doing) all he can to take our country back. At the end of the day, he’s one of the few people in the country who can command respect from people of all walks of life."
-- Sarasota, Florida GOP Chairman Joe Gruters on Donald Trump, whom the Sarasota GOP is giving its "Statesman of the Year" award
I'm not even sure where to begin -- whether to insult the statement, Gruters, Florida, the modern Republican party or Donald Trump first.
You know, now that I think about it, I got nothin'.
"I’d be willing to bet that in no other city but Miami would the following quote appear matter-of-factly in a crime story: 'Rudy was not a face-eating zombie monster.' ... Is it the vibe of this place that promotes such a bounty of derangement, or do the deranged simply move here for the vibe?"
-- Carl Hiaasen, on the recent naked face-eating attack in Miami
First of all, I love Hiaasen -- he and the rest of the old guard at the Miami Herald were who I grew up reading and what made me want to become a writer and columnist. Second, he's absolutely right. When I first heard that a naked guy had eaten the face off of a man in broad daylight on the side of a busy street, I wasn't even repulsed -- in fact, I kind of laughed, as morbid as that may sound. The reason? The minute somebody told me it that it happened in Miami, I just said, "Of course," having known for years that my hometown is the most batshit lunatic place on earth.
No matter how twisted, gruesome, flat-out weird or generally unbelievable you might think a news item is -- no matter how "WTF?" it may seem -- in Miami it's barely worth raising an eyebrow over. The place could not get any crazier. It simply isn't possible.
"There shouldn't be anything controversial about a .45-caliber bullet. If it were up to me we would just throw them off the Sunshine Skyway bridge and be done with it."
-- Republican State Representative Brad Drake of Florida, who filed a bill on Tuesday to bring back the firing squad as a method of executing death row inmates in that state
You might think that the bill itself makes this story so Florida -- but you'd be wrong.
It's the fact that the epiphany that led to the bill came to Representative Drake while he was having a conversation at a Waffle House -- that's what makes this story so perfectly, gloriously Florida.
As God is my witness, this is not from the Onion. It's from an article in the St. Petersburg Times about a Tea Party summer camp supposedly being sponsored by the 912 Project, called the "Tampa Liberty School."
Behold, an example of Poe's Law in its purest possible form:
"'One example at Liberty: Children will win hard, wrapped candies to use as currency for a store, symbolizing the gold standard. On the second day, the 'banker' will issue paper money instead. Over time, students will realize their paper money buys less and less, while the candies retain their value.
'Some of the kids will fall for it,' Lukens said. 'Others kids will wise up.'
Another example: Starting in an austere room where they are made to sit quietly, symbolizing Europe, the children will pass through an obstacle course to arrive at a brightly decorated party room (the New World).
Red-white-and-blue confetti will be thrown. But afterward the kids will have to clean up the confetti, learning that with freedom comes responsibility.
Still another example: Children will blow bubbles from a single container of soapy solution, and then pop each other's bubbles with squirt guns in an arrangement that mimics socialism. They are to count how many bubbles they pop. Then they will work with individual bottles of solution and pop their own bubbles.
'What they will find out is that you can do a lot more with individual freedom,' Lukens said."
My first thought: No way this is for real. It's so insane -- as Alex Pareene over at Salon says, it anticipates every possible joke you could make and beats you to it -- that it just cannot be anything other than brilliant satire.
Because if it isn't -- we're even worse off than I thought.
Last weekend I attended an event here in Florida hosted by Crimestoppers of Broward County. We're talking an entire room full of law enforcement officials and supporters. In Broward Freaking County. On a massive ranch.
I bring this up only because while I was there, I was asked to sign a petition essentially telling new Florida governor and possible alien overlord Rick Scott to keep his big, spindly hands off funding for Crimestoppers and the police departments and organizations it works with. In fact, at one point, a speaker at the event implored the folks in the crowd to raise their voices so that they could be heard "all the way to Tallahassee."
My point is this: When you've lost a bunch of pick-up-driving South Florida cops who hold their annual gala at a place normally reserved for rodeos, you've lost everyone.
Yeah, guys like Scott Walker and John Kasich may be getting most of the press these days, but make no mistake -- when it comes to outright criminal behavior, Rick Scott makes them look like amateurs. He has from the very beginning.
Ladies and gentlemen meet "Dr." Terry Jones, pastor of the Dove World Outreach Church in Central Florida (of course) and author of the New York Times bestseller 666 weeks running, Islam Is of the Devil. Terry and his flock have been in the news quite a bit lately thanks to their highly publicized plan to burn a pile of Korans next Saturday, on the ninth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.
While Terry's strictly a tomato can when placed against heavyweight psychopaths like Fred Phelps, he's got a certain flair for the theatrical and he exudes the kind of confidence that can only come from believing that the world's going to end in a few years and you'll be one of the few sitting next to Jesus laughing at the undeserving as they fry on the Earth below. He holds court like your crotchety and half-senile grandfather, the one who inevitably hijacks every family gathering by forcing you to sit quietly at the kitchen table while he regales you with stories of killing slopes in Korea, the good old days when a white man had his own bathroom, and his singular understanding of why them Jews and Palesteens can't get along.
Oh, and there's that ridiculous moustache.
Here's Terry wearing a t-shirt that puts the final touch on his 70s-cop-show-baddie image and indiscriminately throwing around the word "nigger" to make some kind of point about something-or-other. He gets a few other people to say it -- including at least one girl who's actually kind of cute (call me, sweetie, I'll give you a second coming) -- then turns it over to Pastor Wayne Sapp, who appears to be sitting in front of a weather chromakey wall at a local TV station.
"Think of it as like Mayberry. That’s when I grew up -- the '60s. That's what life was like. I want Florida to be known for making those kinds of movies: Disney movies for kids and all that stuff. Like it used to be, you know?'
-- Florida State Representative Stephen Precourt on a new incentive program that would provide money and tax credit to entice "family friendly" films to shoot in Florida and would deny those funds to movies featuring "nontraditional family values"
Right. Because when I think Mayberry, I think the land of assholes, alligators and Amber Alerts.
And what is it with the right's seemingly never-ending quest to return to an idyllic time that existed only in their own imagination, anyway?
Am I the only one who thinks that maybe if the deep South had simply been allowed to successfully secede from the Union, we might be in much better shape these days? What the hell would we have lost: Alabama? Mississippi? Miami? NASCAR? Jesus? Insane apocalyptic ramblings? State and federal laws based on 2,000 year old superstition? Incest? Billy Ray Cyrus?
Does that really sound so bad?
If "Dixie" had gone its own way, within a hundred years the place probably would've looked a lot like the country depicted in Idiocracy.
By the way, do yourself a favor and read the indignant comments after the story above, and be impressed by the rise of internet access in America's trailer parks.
(Of course I'm joking about most of this. Still, countdown to comments from people calling me an "ignorant" asshole in 3... 2... 1...)
