There are a lot of books written that nobody reads. There are a few that everybody reads. It is not always the best book that gets the readers. As often, it is the book that gets the best promotion – the one whose author appears on television shows, or better still, has his or her own TV show and can promote the book with shameless frequency. Thus Chris Matthews and Bill O’Reilly are pretty much doomed to best-sellers when they write books on John F. Kennedy.
However, if you don’t have your own TV show, it never hurts to have your own magazine. Thus, for the last year we have been promoting a book, off and on, on the history of regional magazines, such as this one. We had hoped that with sufficient mention, someday we would actually publish it.
That day is now. The book is a history of a remarkable time when a group of which we were lucky to be a part, invented what is basically a new media – the city/regional magazine. It happened in Philadelphia in the 1960s, or even the 1950s, if you want to pick a date when the present publisher joined his father in what was then a little-known business magazine. Many people think New York Magazine was the first of its kind, but it did not come along until the late 1960s.
There have been other regional magazines – Palm Beach Life, dates to 1906 and there are a few other magazines devoted to lifestyle or travel which go back years. But they were not city magazines as we know the form today. They did not, as Philadelphia did in the 1960s, put the city’s top newspaper investigative reporter in jail for extortion. They did not so embarrass his publisher to the extent that one of the most powerful men in American newspapering, Walter Annenberg, decided to sell to Knight Ridder (who then published The Miami Herald) and leave town.
And most significantly, they did not begin the challenge to the Warren Commission that has resulted – 50 years later – in the widespread acceptance that a conspiracy of U.S. government figures was behind the murder of a president. That story has long been close to home, for it followed Gaeton Fonzi to Florida when he was a partner in this magazine in the 1970s. He later worked five years as a federal investigator when the JFK probe was reopened. His conclusion was that if our CIA did not orchestrate President Kennedy’s murder, it certainly did its best to cover it up.
His book, The Last Investigation, originally appeared as two long pieces in our magazines. It influenced so many subsequent researchers that upon his death last August, The New York Timescited it as one of the most important among hundreds of books written about the assassination.
Fonzi and others wrote such powerful stories, over a 10-year period, gained national recognition and made Philadelphiaa powerful influence in its city. They also inspired people in other cities to imitate the success of Philadelphia. Today there are hundreds of local magazines, including our company’s six in Florida, which all do the kinds of things that began in Philadelphia. That’s all part of the book.
While it is mostly about that pioneering era in the north, it will hold some interest in places such as here, Boston, Texas, California, even Denver, where people formerly associated with Philadelphia magazine got their inspiration.
Not all traditions need be traditional. One that fits that rule is the traditional rebuttal speech after a presidential State of the Union address. Traditionally, it is delivered by a distinguished member of the party opposite from that of the president. It therefore ensures that the speaker will be a loser, so to speak.
The purpose, of course, is the American sense of fairness. If you give a president an hour to hurl propaganda, it only seems right that a propagandist from the other side gets a few minutes to say the guy you just heard is full of propaganda. The other purpose is to hold the audience looking in on the State of the Union for another 20 minutes or so, in which the networks might sell some more advertising. Now as traditions go, this one is not very old. It doesn't compare, for instance, with the recent decision of the U.S. Army to go back to the traditional two-tone blue uniforms the Yankees wore in the Civil War.
The problem, as most people sense when they switch the channel immediately after the president gives his or her friends a good photo op, is that the rebutallist will have had virtually no time to prepare remarks because he or she has no idea what the president was going to say. This is the reason that the president, if a good sport, will get down on his knees and crawl out of the room, hugging and kissing every dude or dudess who wants to get on camera with him. This gives the rebuttalist a few more seconds to make sure he doesn’t rebut something the president did not say. Clearly, that is a challenge, and the rebuttal must be prepared in advance, pretty much guessing that a tiger won’t change its stripes. Or a zebra for that matter.
So we had, just last week, our own Sen. Marco Rubio trying to put down President Obama on various points, even if he did not know what points the president made, and even – as some have noted – if he agrees with some of the points that he is by tradition compelled to disagree with. A candid speaker might begin:
“Good evening, my fellow Americans. I don’t know what the other fellow just said but believe me, he’s out to lunch…”
Now Marco Rubio did not have a good night, what with the water thing and all, which only made him look sillier than he makes himself look when he rewrites his family history and tries to poor mouth his current status when everybody knows that anybody who wins an important office in Florida quickly becomes upper-middle class without doing anything actionable. It just goes with the territory.
That said, the evening did not make Rubio seem presidential, and it might even do him a favor by stopping the talk about him running for the big job in four years. The bigger favor, however, would be taking the whole notion of the rebuttal speech and throwing it in the traditional wastebasket.
Prediction: Tonight, in his State of the Union address, the president will call for national unity, especially among the estimated 11 to 12 million illegal immigrants, a number which is probably only marginally higher than the number of illegal big snakes in the Everglades.
2nd Prediction: Congress will at last come to a consensus and find a path for people illegally in this country to become legal. This will probably not happen tonight, partly because Senator Marco Rubio, in his rebuttal speech, will be forced to disagree with the president, even if he agrees with everything he hears. And how do you do a rebuttal, right after a speech you don’t know anything about?
3rd Prediction: In the interest of sportsmanship, President Obama, or one of his PR guys, will have slipped Rubio a confidential copy of the president’s address – including suggested rebuttal points. One of those points will not be suggesting that Rubio and other Republicans stop using party credit cards, funded by campaign contributions, to live on, which is sending one of their boys to jail as we speak.
4th Prediction: Within a few months, there will be an agreement among the parties to find a path for 12 million or so illegal immigrants to become legal. Which will do absolutely nothing but encourage all their relatives, a number probably under 100 million, to get here as fast as they can to take advantage of this victory. As long as they can do this, people will come for a better life, same as all our ancestors did in ages past. The only difference is that our ancestors – or at least this writer’s – came here legally (partly because illegal immigration had not yet been invented) and the first thing they did was go up the hill at Fredericksburg, waving their Irish flags, and got slaughtered.
5th Prediction: When this crisis is resolved, there will be a reaction. Thoughtful people will get rid of the notion that any baby born in this country is an American citizen, even though a pregnant woman came here for exactly that purpose. This will lead to similar uprisings in Europe where the same thing is happening. Nations will be so upset that civil wars may break out.
6th Prediction: Some political nut will propose that we all go back a few hundred years and re-enact the colonial era, when advanced societies took over primitive ones and tried to teach the natives how to live, a failed concept that resulted in people emigrating to the societies they overthrew.
7th Prediction: This is the lucky seven. None of these predictions will come true, and we will just kick the can down the road for another thousand years.
Chuck Malkus’ book is out. The Ultimate Ponzi by the long-time Fort Lauderdale public relations man summarizes the Scott Rothstein story. I have not read it, or at least not much of it, but I did look at the pictures. Malkus was kind enough to send me an inscribed copy, but I did not know why until Jack Drury, also a long-time Fort Lauderdale public relations man, called with the intelligence that I am in it.
Sure enough, I am quoted from a column that appeared at the time of Rothstein’s arrest in 2009. It deals with Rothstein’s crashing a reception in Washington, D.C. It was after the swearing in of George LeMieux, for his brief term as Florida’s U.S. senator. Nobody had invited Rothstein. LeMieux and people around him were suspicious of Rothstein’s flashy style and flaunting of new wealth. But Rothstein came anyway. It was the kind of event he needed to be part of, to show people how important and politically connected he was.
There is only one thing wrong with Malkus’ account, but it is hardly his fault. He said I wrote the piece. My name was on it, but I never said I was at the party, and the description of what happened was actually given to me, word for word, by Mark McCormick, who is no relation to me except my son. Mark dabbles in Republican politics, or at least did at the time, and was friendly with LeMieux and those supporting him. He was an eyewitnesses to Rothstein’s appearance that day. He was aware, of course, as were many on the fringe of politics, that Rothstein was a deeply suspicious figure. Mark had an instinct that something was going to blow up.
He was hardly alone. Rothstein had made our list of “50 Most Powerful” people about six months earlier. In truth, we were wary of including him on that select list. Most of those on it have never been indicted. And I never had heard his name until shortly before our survey of power. But when I heard it, I heard it all over the place. Lawyers, financial people, anyone following politics, were all asking the same question: where was this guy, who nobody even knew a few years before, suddenly getting all this money? Most of Rothstein’s legal associates have claimed they had no idea that anything was wrong at his firm. Yet outside the firm, anyone with an IQ marginally higher than your average fire hydrant, sensed that something had to be wrong. People like George LeMieux were giving him wide berth.
There was speculation that that he was running drugs, big time, or into an extremely lucrative pornography empire. At that point the only people suspecting a Ponzi scheme were those who would emerge as victims. And that did not take long. What has taken longer has been the effort to “clawback” as much money as possible.
If there is any good that has come out of this situation, it has been an economic stimulus for the legal profession. With more than 100 victims and so many organizations – including many non-profits forced to return gifts made by Rothstein – there has been a blizzard of legal activity. There are something like 60 cases in federal court, and hearings at the bankruptcy court are jammed with lawyers, sometimes nobody but lawyers, all of them making five bills an hour minimum. And they are getting money back, mostly from banks Rothstein used to establish his credibility.
Attorney William Scherer got there early, almost from the day the deal broke. To date he has recovered up to $220 million for his clients, and still has three active lawsuits.
The most recent victim of private attorneys and federal prosecutors has been Rothstein’s wife (maybe?) Kim. She is not in Malkus’ book, except about 1,000 times, with photos on every other page with her absurdly fixed smile. She just got nailed for trying to hide some ill-gotten jewelry. It wasn’t much, only about $1 million worth. Pocket change, by Scott Rothstein’s standards. But it might be enough to pay a few legal fees.
The fatal crash of a Tri-Rail train into a car last week reminds us, as if we needed reminding, of the dangers of all the grade crossings on South Florida’s railroads. As we have noted before, this is a subject of particular importance as Florida East Coast Railway plans to initiate, on its own dime, passenger service between Miami and Orlando.
Through no fault of its own, the CSX line, which Tri-Rail uses, is much safer than the FEC. Most of the South Florida grade crossings were eliminated on the CSX when I-95 was built. Still it has had some terrible accidents on the relatively few which remain. That includes the inferno at Cypress Creek years back when a fuel truck was stuck in traffic, and the courageous driver died trying to get his vehicle out of the way of an Amtrak train.
The FEC has hundreds of crossings. In Fort Lauderdale alone there are at least 10 in a span of a few miles. With plans to run a fast passenger service on an hourly basis beginning two years from now, one can only grimly guess at the lurking dangers. These passenger trains will be in addition to the freight already using those tracks, and if Amtrak and Tri-Rail decide to move trains to the FEC, it will become a very busy rail line. The latter move makes total sense, for the trains would then serve the busy downtowns along the way. Both Tri-Rail and Amtrak are too far from business districts to realize their potential.
A move east to the FEC makes sense in every way but safety. To do the job properly those trains will have to go a lot faster through urban areas than the lumbering freights, which despite only moving at around 35 miles an hour, already have their share of accidents. One can only imagine the frustration of drivers being constantly stopped by crossing gates as all the new trains roll by. The temptation for cars to beat the train, which causes accidents now, will be much greater. And the outcry from those living near those crossings over the blaring horns of engines can only intensify.
One can hardly blame the railroads for this situation. The iron rails were there before the roads crossing them. But unlike most northern cities, which either elevated or lowered railroads more than a century ago, Florida just let crossing after crossing be constructed at grade level. In fact we can think of only a few bridges over the FEC all the way from Miami to Fort Pierce.
The FEC needs to be rebuilt, eliminating at least some crossings to permit trains to have sections of a few miles where they can get up to speed. That is expensive, especially in the downtowns where businesses would be most affected. It is safe to say the FEC knows this better than anybody, and probably knows it can’t go it alone.
Safe to say, but extremely unsafe to do nothing. There is a price of progress, but it should not be in human lives.
There is a bit of discussion about changing the name of Broward County to Fort Lauderdale County. If done, there should be some public benefit, namely naming rights. Former Joe Robbie Stadium Fort Lauderdale County, Browning Automatic Rifle Fort Lauderdale County – something that could produce serious revenue – would be appropriate.
Miami-Dade County has already made the move, but nobody goes there anyway, so what’s the difference? Maybe we should let Cook County change its name to Chicago County and see how that works out before we shatter tradition. One thing that can’t be argued is that, in terms of world approval, Fort Lauderdale means something; Broward doesn’t. That’s exactly what Gulfstream Media Group is arguing right now to protect the name Fort Lauderdale, which is our magazine directed to the tourist market. We took it 15 years ago after the Chamber of Commerce stopped using it. It is especially important in the Internet age as people seek vacation pleasure and information about this area. They don’t search the word Broward. Or Pembroke Park or Dania either. Maybe Pompano Beach and Hollywood get some hits.
The current dialogue reminds one of the event some years back when a New York couple bought a place in Boca Highlands or Boca Lovely or one of those silly development names trading on the image of Boca Raton. They told all their upwardly mobile northern friends that they were living in tony Boca Raton. Then comes their first mail and it has a Delray Beach address. So they sued. We forget how that turned out, but the story was amusing to Delray residents, who would not trade their classic low-key resort for the glitz and nouveau of Boca Raton.
There was another debate over a city name in the 1980s that stretched far beyond South Florida. Hollywood, Calif., made a move to stop other places from using the name Hollywood, presumably to protect its image as home to movie stars and their work. Hollywood, Fla., in what someday might be known as The Former Joe Robbie Fort Lauderdale County, appeared to be a prime target. This, despite the fact that our Hollywood was founded way back in 1925, not long after the California entity gave up its independence to become part of Los Angeles.
Hollywood, Fla., took the lead in pushing back, even arranging a big meeting of representatives from other Hollywoods around the country. That took place on Hollywood’s beach, of course. It was an entertaining day, and good press for Hollywood. The star performer was the mayor of Hollywood, Ga., a good old boy who drew on hillbilly Latin to make his point.
“Ad sudum tudulas paney ad,” he exclaimed. English translation: “I’d sue them to the last penny I had.” Nobody sued, but a good time was had by all.
Those of us who have studied the assassination, and the mounting evidence of a government conspiracy, found that hard to believe and expected that sooner or later they would revise those comments. Sen. Edward Kennedy never did, and Robert Kennedy himself was dead for most that time. Now, at last, the silence has been broken by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. In an interview in Dallas he said his father doubted the lone assassin theory and thought the Warren Commission did a “shoddy” job. He also alluded to the involvement of organized crime and rogue CIA figures.
His comments give vast credence to what has been apparent for years. There is evidence that from the day it happened Robert Kennedy sensed a conspiracy and suspected who was behind it. It has been revealed that his first call was to John McCone, director of the CIA, wanting to know if the agency had been involved. McCone said no, but he would not know. As a Kennedy appointee, replacing the fired Allen Dulles, he was out of the loop. Dulles, meanwhile, wound up a key figure on the Warren Commision.
The Warren Commission was not merely shoddy. It was fixed, controlled by the FBI and people close to the CIA, such as Dulles. And recent books, notably David Talbot’s Brothers and James Douglass’ JFK and the Unspeakable have made it clear that the Kennedys knew that by saying they had not read the report, they gave themselves an out. Researchers have also learned that three of the seven members of the commission, including Sen. Richard Russell of Georgia, did not even want to sign the report that Lee Harvey Oswald was a lone assassin.
Those reluctant members did not know, but might have suspected, what researchers have concluded based on recently declassified documents and witnesses who have come forth over the years: Oswald was likely a government operative for both the CIA and FBI. That puts an entirely different face on the crime of the century. Pennsylvania Sen. Richard Schweiker, who reopened the investigation in the mid-1970s, certainly had that opinion, saying Oswald “had the fingerprints of intelligence all over him.”
It was Schweiker who hired Gaeton Fonzi, at the time a partner in Gold Coast magazine, to look into possible Oswald connections to the CIA-sponsored anti-Castro groups in South Florida. Fonzi made a link between Oswald and a highly placed CIA officer, and reported it in Gold Coast in articles that later became the book The Last Investigation. In 1980 his work was largely ignored. But over the years it became the basis for many other researchers and it elevated Fonzi to an iconic status among those seeking the truth about JFK’s death. Such was his place in history that Fonzi’s death last August was covered by The New York Times, and newspapers around the world. The guess here is that Robert Kennedy Jr. has heard of him.
The tailgater could not have been better executed. There must have been a hundred Notre Dame grads and friends, including a prominent alum we failed to mention in our previous post about the clout of Notre Dame in South Florida. That would be Paul Flanigan, ’79, owner of the Quarterdeck restaurants. He and has wife mingled with fellow Domers under pleasant skies. Anyway, it was a great night for the Irish. Then the game began.
The first mistake Irish coach Brian Kelly made was electing to kick off and give Alabama the ball. It quickly became apparent that Notre Dame’s only chance in this game was to keep Bama’s offense off the field. And that might have been possible early in the game before the momentum became irreversible. There were several questionable calls early in the game – at least the Notre Dame stands thought so. One was the long pass to a receiver who the replay showed was in bounds. The refs thought otherwise. The other was the fumble on a fair catch deep in Alabama’s territory. Those two calls might have, we say again might have, given Notre Dame a score in the first quarter to keep them in contention.
But the decisions went the other way, and after the second touchdown there was no stopping the Crimson Tide. Most impressive were their running backs, and for the next three weeks (it seemed that long with all the commercial breaks and interruptions for various awards which mar big games) Alabama seemed to have three Jim Browns, taking turns shredding an Irish defense that had been much praised during the regular season. These guys were big, fast, surprisingly agile and determined. Bama runners found holes when they appeared, and if they didn’t, they made them themselves with brute force. Time and again Notre Dame players made a hit at the line of scrimmage, and even in the backfield, only to be swatted away like meddling insects. That just did not happen in Notre Dame’s previous 12 wins.
Alabama was superb in every phase of the game, but the lopsided score was largely a credit to the running game. This morning’s papers were surprisingly kind to Notre Dame, so much so that the headlines and extensive coverage were not the most depressing news of the day.
Here we change mood. There was a story about a Florida Atlantic University professor who blogged that he questioned the recent mass shooting of children at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut. He questioned the circumstances of this appalling tragedy, even wondering if it happened at all, suggesting it might have been a conspiracy to justify gun control. He said the behavior of investigators was strange, and no photos were shown to prove the event occurred as reported. How astoundingly ghoulish.
We are not making this up, and FAU was quick to distance itself from the man’s ideas. We don’t know how he feels about the Holocaust. Probably not as strong. After all, in that instance there were photos.
There is a woman in Tallahassee who makes $300,000 a year, maybe a little more, working for organizations that promote laws enabling people to murder 26 people in minutes, including 20 children. But that is not important. What is important is that this blog, if read by anybody, almost never produces comment, but this one will. You can ask almost any columnist what produces reaction, and they will tell you anything on gun control. It is right in there with Jimmy Breslin’s suggestion that dogs in New York be thrown in front of subways. The reaction from dog lovers was furious, but not orchestrated. Breslin’s outburst was too bizarre for a planned counter-offensive. But reaction to gun control is clearly organized, probably written by design by members of the National Rifle Association, who rarely give a real name.
They will write, as one moron from Texas who had the guts to appear on national TV said in reaction to the recent tragedy that had the school principal been armed, those kids would be alive. Now that is important, but unfortunately, too tame, too limited.
On a hunch, this blog has been interrupted to check out today’s Palm Beach Post and its excellent columnist, Frank Cerabino. A few months back he told us that one topic that always stirs emotions is guns.
Sure as hell, Cerabino (pronounced Chur-a-bino) is writing today about guns, which assures, as he will be the first to admit, a bombardment of reactions, mostly attacking him for daring to link Florida’s absurdly permissive gun laws to such a sad event.
Back on topic. The guy from Texas says school principals should be armed. Wonderful idea, but limited. Why not give all the kids guns?
Imagine, a high school with 2,000 kids, and every one packing a gun that shoots 100 rounds. As Cerabino writes today, there are people in positions of importance in Florida who boast that the state is a leader in concealed weapons permits. Just imagine the fun they would
have if all our school children were armed. Armed, but not dangerous, of course. What could be safer than everybody in this great country carrying a machine gun? Who would have the nerve to throw the first volley?
But since we are so outgunned when it comes to this topic, perhaps it is time to organize a group to resist the gun lobby. Maybe even find somebody willing to stand up for sanity for $300,000 a year. You might for a few takers for that thankless job.
Too bad it isn’t 25 years ago. That was a time when the lass editing this column was barely alive, if at all. It was also a time when a reporter, noting that plans were underway for a commuter train from Miami to Palm Beach, called the Florida East Coast Railway to find out why that railway, the perfect track through the old downtowns along the way, did not want the new service on its tracks. Asking for the company’s public relations department, he was told there was none. He was told somebody would call him back.
Somebody did, about two weeks later, and the somebody turned out to be the president of the FEC. An amiable fellow in a gruff sort of way, he said the FEC was a freight railroad, and wanted no passenger trains. Period. Today, after two changes of ownership (the current owner is Florida East Coast Industries), the answer would have been quite different, and had it come 25 years ago, all the money and energy that went into building Tri-Rail on the western CSX – the double tracking, the modern stations with overpasses and the improved signals – would have been directed to the FEC and Tri-Rail would serve the heart of downtowns along its route, and be a much busier service. And after 25 years, the economic development associated with it would be impressive.
Well, as the papers are telling us with increasing enthusiasm, that is beginning to happen. The first shot was the FEC’s announcement of a fast train from Miami to Orlando. The press has carried maps of prospective station locations, and land purchases by the railroad in the most important locations, including downtown Miami and West Palm Beach. Not only does the FEC, or its parent company Florida East Coast Industries, want passenger service, it wants it so badly it is willing to pay for it. That is pretty much unheard of these days. Just about all the rail commuter lines and long distance passenger service has been taken over by Amtrak or regional authorities like Tri-Rail. But the FEC is willing to foot the bill and the reason appears to be not so much the joy of running a train from South Florida to Orlando’s Disney World, but rather the enhanced value of the railroad’s considerable property along the route.
Almost immediately after the FEC’s announcement of its privately funded venture, All Aboard Florida, the very publicly funded Tri-Rail began discussing moving some trains over to the FEC tracks. That only makes sense, and initially need not be too costly if it uses an existing connection between the two tracks in the Pompano Beach area, and piggybacks the stations the FEC plans for Fort Lauderdale and Miami. North of Fort Lauderdale, Tri-Rail on its present tracks is useful. There is considerable commercial activity along the I-95 corridor in Palm Beach County. Existing stations, such as one near the Cypress Creek office complex, are nicely positioned. Tri-Rail need not abandon its present infrastructure, for it serves the Miami International Airport, but it would be less busy.
Ultimately Tri-Rail could expand north on the FEC. That would likely involve public/private financing to upgrade the railroad for much heavier and faster traffic. Some grade crossings, numerous on the FEC, would have to be eliminated or made safer, which would be a great benefit for the railroad’s freight activity. There has also been consideration of Amtrak running some long-distance trains on the FEC, especially north of Palm Beach where its coastal route to Jacksonville is far more direct than Amtrak’s current route through the center of the state. These other uses of its tracks are welcomed by Florida East Coast Industries, a sea change from 25 years ago.
After years of everybody knowing this transportation revolution needed to happen, it appears to be underway, and fast, maybe within two years. And yet the long-range benefits far exceed the short-term value of a good rail system. Areas near proposed stations are often seedy or undeveloped. We can foresee an explosion of office, hotel and high-rise residential development all along the FEC corridor. This has happened in many places where rail service has been modernized. Our guess is the FEC sees it more clearly than anybody.
This could be a big financial story for all of Florida’s east coast, maybe the biggest story since, well, since Henry Flager brought his railroad through more than 100 years ago.
