Bob Norman broke the news that he is leaving New Times for WPLG-TV (Channel 10). This is great news for crooked politicians for I doubt Norman will ever be as effective on television as he has been these last 13 years in a throwaway paper that nobody reads – except for everybody who gives a damn what is going on in government.
Let’s correct that. Most people read Norman (pictured left, 2006) on his Internet blog, The Daily Pulp. That avoided the social stigma of being seen carrying around New Times, which might suggest you read all the lowlife ads that sustain this odd but important paper. The blog drew many comments; in fact the comments were part of the package which built a following as Norman broke just about every important story in recent years. They ranged from abuses at Broward Health (when it was the North Broward Hospital District) to Scott Rothstein’s sensational Ponzi antics, to misconduct by any number of elected officials, some of who are not yet in jail.
Many of the comments were silly, obscene and unfair. They were also almost always anonymous, which made for a forum on public affairs with a sort of candor that is never possible when people are held responsible for what they say. Some of the comments were highly informed. Norman built a network of followers who were also reliable sources. His more provocative posts drew hundreds of comments. Posters sometimes used names of public officials, who usually reacted by saying, “it ain’t me” writing this stuff. It was both the strength and the weakness of the blog. Those Norman outed could always tell themselves nobody reads this stuff, and if they do they don’t believe it. So it can be ignored as Pulp fiction.
Of course, it wasn’t ignored. Norman screamed foul so loud and often that eventually the Broward political system imploded, first with the feds and more recently with the state attorney, who after years of saying “leave that one for the feds” has now become aggressive in rooting out corruption. Some would call that self preservation. Norman ridiculed State Attorney Mike Satz for years, challenging him to do what state attorneys are elected to do, but because they are part of the same club, often find exposing friends an uncomfortable task.
His success led Norman to TV appearances. He’s pretty good, and in his parting announcement he said he has developed a taste for the form. But one of the advantages of working for the New Times was a certain protection from frightened editors, as well as a limited immunity from law suits, on the theory that most people did not take his medium that seriously, so proving damages might be tough. And there’s the advertising angle. Nothing Norman wrote in New Times was likely to provoke massage parlors or sex enhancers to cancel their schedules.
Not so with television. Again, a double edge, for with the clout of a major station comes the danger of alienating the money changers and scaring the station manager silly when lawyers begin calling. It is one thing to appear on screen as an occasionally muckraking celebrity guest and actually do your muckraking on the tube on a regular basis. Bob Norman has obviously thought this through, and it will be interesting to see how it plays out.
One thing seems certain. The weird chemistry that made The Daily Pulp a must-read for many people is gone. Other blogs in New Times never had that following. We also wonder how much money has to do with Norman’s departure. He obviously didn’t take a pay cut. And New Times has been cutting back with the economy. When Gold Coast covered the paper four years ago, its issues sometimes ran over 100 pages. Today, about half that.
Connection?
It began with the uncontrollable – the terrible tornados that spun through the South and devastated so many towns, including the beautiful college town of Tuscaloosa, Ala. But then, as if seeking escape, all TV news channels switched en masse to one of the most controllable forms of human endeavor – the royal wedding.
This is the week of the royals, with the big wedding and all the red jacketed, silver helmeted blokes on horses. It is only fitting that we recall Gold Coast magazine’s experience with royals, or something like that. There was a time when it was not unusual to have some obscure royal as honorary chairman of fancy affairs. Prince No Account from Nowhere, or Countess Somebody Unpronounceable, would be fussed over pretty good, although nobody seemed to know exactly who they were.Thus it was not all that difficult for Prince Michael of Austria to wow Gold Coast society in the early 1970s. The prince (the left-most individual in the photo) would show up at a ball wearing this outfit with so many medals it would make Hermann Goering envious. He was usually accompanied by his equerry, a smiling little beauty himself. Prince Michael made Gold Coast magazine a few times, usually photographed with leading local philanthropists. He particularly liked to be seen at Le Club International on the Intracoastal. Le Club was well named to host a prince.
Prince Michael knew his place. One night a prominent social reporter attempted small talk over cocktails. “Tell me,” she said, “what does a prince do with his time?” His nose took off, and he replied without looking at the woman. “Madame, ladies of the press do not speak to royalty unless priorly addressed.”
Even as he was arranging knighthoods for local chaps and performing other miracles suited for a prince, nobody seemed to question why an Austrian prince often slipped from his haughty tone into what seemed like a New York accent. That mystery was explained when Prince Michael was arrested for running a stolen exotic car ring. It turned out his real name was Michael Waldbaum from Miami Beach. When asked in jail why he called himself Prince Michael of Austria, he replied: “I just thought it sounded better than Michael Waldbaum.”
We don’t recall ever actually meeting the prince, but we did meet another royal from the U.K. He was identified as Prince Edward of the English royal family, and he was in Fort Lauderdale for an event aboard the super sailboat Zeus, which was built for a design speed of 26 knots under sail. Now that is flat-out flying, and we aren’t aware that conditions ever permitted Zeus to hit that speed. Nonetheless, it was an amazing high-tech craft, good enough to attract royalty. The owner of the boat was a prominent Englishman. He ran the money, or something like that.
Well, it turned out that Prince Edward’s real name, for those of us chastened by the Prince Michael saga, was Prince Edward. The real one, and he turned out to be a prince of a guy, extremely good at small talk. Everybody had a picture taken with him, and a typical conversation went something like this:
Prince Edward: “Delated to meet you. And where are you from?”
Meetee: “Here in Fort Lauderdale.”
Prince Edward: “Really. From Fort Lauderdale? “
“Yes.”
“That’s wonderful.”
He made it sound as if meeting someone from Fort Lauderdale in Fort Lauderdale was like encountering a martian in Mexico. But the point is he made everyone feel that it was his undiluted fortune to meet them, a quality Prince Michael singularly lacked.
Everybody left the party saying what a fine fellow Prince Edward seemed to be. The late Joe Millsaps had the best small-talk line of the night.
“What do you say when you meet a prince?” said Millsaps. “Hey prince, if you have a little time, I have a helluva real estate deal you should look at.”
The Civil War began last week – 150 years ago. Predictably there has been a renewal of the historic debate over the cause of the Civil War. Liberals for the most part say it was caused by slavery. Many conservatives, particularly in the south, argue that it was about states' rights. The Neutral Party, which is the one here, says it was both.
Slavery was the economic cause of the war; it was the underpinning of the southern agricultural economy. The dispute between the states over slavery began with the Constitution, and continued right up to Fort Sumter. Andrew Jackson’s presidency, 30 years before the shooting actually started, was especially contentious. From a state which eventually went with the South, he backed down other southerners who were threatening to dissolve the union.
Slavery, however, was not the only cause of war, or more precisely it was not the only reason men went to battle. Overwhelmingly, soldiers fought for their neighborhoods, whether they thought slavery was a good thing or not. The current issue of Gold Coast has a Fort Lauderdale Centennial salute which includes the story of P.N. Bryan, who came to South Florida to build part of Henry Flagler’s FEC Railway. He had been in the Civil War, fighting with a Florida outfit, but he always told people that none of the men in his unit owned slaves, or fought to preserve slavery. Like most men on either side, he fought for his state.
That’s where states rights comes in. The 1860s were a far different time. Lincoln at Gettysburg noted the union was a young enterprise, and states which 87 years before had been separate colonies had not yet lost their parochial identity. Many did not think the federal government was their boss, and certainly the northern states had no right to tell the southern states how to live. Each state had retained a certain sense of independence. The great Civil War historian Shelby Foote put it well. Before the war, he wrote, the expression was “The United States are…” but after the war it became “The United States is…” The great war which disunited a nation came to represent a more perfect union.
The immigrants of that era told the story. Irish who settled in the North fought for the Union. The Irish Brigade, men from New York, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania, became one of the most celebrated units of the conflict. Yet Irishmen who had settled in the South usually fought for their states, sometimes in all Irish units. Both groups had come from a place where they had been the next thing to slaves under British rule. They were the same people, who could be expected to share common values, but they saw the war from different street corners. The much admired Confederate Gen. Patrick Cleburne was Irish born and had settled in Arkansas. He felt welcomed as a newcomer to America, and became successful, so his loyalty was to his friends and neighbors. Yet late in the war he became suspect in the Confederacy by proposing that the South free slaves and enlist black soldiers, in effect recognizing them as equals. Robert E. Lee, incidentally, agreed with that idea. Cleburne died in the battle of Franklin, Tenn.
The war was filled with such ambivalence, all the way to the top. Lincoln did not oppose the South to destroy slavery, not at first. And Robert E. Lee opposed secession and had a benign attitude toward slaves who worked in his home. Still, he felt his higher loyalty was to his native state of Virginia. Gen. John Pemberton, Confederate commander at Vicksburg, was born in Philadelphia but had moved south when he married a southern woman. He also spent much of his military life in the South, including participation in Florida during the Seminole War of the 1830s. After the Civil War, when his wife died, he returned north and is buried in Laurel Hill Cemetery in Philadelphia.
One of the poignant stories of Gettysburg is a young soldier named Wesley Culp, who died in the attack on Culp’s Hill, part of his uncle’s property. But he wasn’t wearing blue. Although he grew up in Gettysburg, he had moved to Virginia three years before the war when his employer moved a business there. He died for his new state, fighting an army in which his brother was serving.
The debate over the cause of the war will doubtless continue for the next four years, but it should be noted that the cause of the war and the reason men fought so bravely are not the same. Today the Confederate flag is sometimes likened to the Nazi Swastika. Part of that is due to the rednecks who enjoy flaunting it. But it was not originally a symbol of racism, at least not to men who fought and died for it.
Michael Connelly was in town last weekend. He did a book signing at the Barnes & Noble off Federal Highway, then attended the 75th anniversary dinner of St. Thomas Aquinas High School, his alma mater.
I’ve taken an interest in Connelly’s success as a crime story writer, partly because I made a minor contribution to his career. In the early 1980s I got a call from his father, also Michael Connelly, a former Philadelphian who at the time was working for Arvida, busily leasing out Boca Raton’s Town Center. He asked if I knew anybody at the Sun-Sentinel. His son was working for the newspaper in Daytona Beach and wanted to get back to Fort Lauderdale.
I did know people at the Sun-Sentinel. Joe Jennings, with whom I had worked at a suburban Philadelphia paper, was the city editor. A few years before that Bill Bondurant, at the time the managing editor, had recalled that I worked in Chester, Pa., in the 1960s and wondered if I knew Joe Jennings, who had applied for work. I gave Joe a strong recommendation, which he deserved, despite the fact that he used to kill some of my best columns on the grounds that they were massively libelous.
As a young columnist, I was desperate for approval. From the back of the news room I would watch Joe’s reaction when he read my stuff. His shoulders would shake in laughter. Then he came back and said: “Funniest thing I ever read Bern. It ain’t running.”
Anyway, I told Joe I did not know young Connelly, and had never read a line of his work, but I knew his parents and, judging by them, he had to be a great guy with exceptional talent. Joe Jennings set up the interview, Michael Connelly got the job, and a few years later he was part of a team nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. I actually arranged another interview at the same time for a young fellow who had done some interning for us at the magazine. He was pretty good. But he never showed up for the interview.
I eventually got to know the younger Connelly. The newspaper people used to meet on Friday nights at Poet’s (now Mango’s) on Las Olas, and for awhile he was a regular.
Michael Connelly moved to Los Angeles in the late 80s, and a few years later he burst upon the literary scene (at least the crime story genre) with Black Echo. It was the beginning of fame. Many books later people marvel at his knowledge of police work and the minds of criminals. He has a great sense for the small details that bring people and places alive. Sadly, his father never lived to see it. He died just as his son was making it big. His mother did, however, and by the time she was called about seven years ago she knew her son was going down in history, along with such names as Raymond Chandler and John D. MacDonald, as a master of a special form of literature.
Recently I learned from one of his school buddies that Connelly had the playful habit of throwing in faintly disguised names of some of his old Fort Lauderdale acquaintances. We all got a free copy of his latest book, The Fifth Witness at the St. Thomas Aquinas dinner. I read the first few pages when I got home. Right there in the opening scene a murder victim’s name is Mitchell Bondurant. We already mentioned Bill Bondurant and his son is named Michael. Both are quite alive.
As for the other guy who never showed up for the interview, he became a chef. Pretty good, it is said. The last time I saw him he said he’d still like to do some writing.
With Florida schools so much in the news, it is useful to compare our educational condition with conditions elsewhere. Take Philadelphia, where this is being written. Now, there are many nice things about Philadelphia, including cheese steaks, Boathouse Row and colonial history. Where I sit is two blocks from what was once known as the King’s Road. It runs from Chestnut Hill, on the northwest border of the city, down through Germantown and into the heart of the city.
At one time it was the path wealthy people took to escape to what was then country and a safe distance from the Yellow Fever epidemics which invaded the city in the summer. It was also the route that George Washington’s army took to engage the British at the 1777 battle of Germantown. It was an ambitious attack, designed to hold the British in place while other forces surrounded the redcoats. A rare fog helped foil the plan. The enveloping forces got lost and the British fought off the main body.
Although Germantown was a victory for the British, it was encouraging to the revolutionary movement that the Continental Army, still largely untrained and inexperienced, was able to stand up to the enemy in a large-scale engagement. Washington’s forces retreated intact back up what is now Germantown Avenue to spend the historic winter at Valley Forge. And just before Germantown, at distant Saratoga, another part of the Continental army soundly whipped a British force. The combined events had a great impact in Europe, especially France, which would soon come to the aid of the American Revolution. The trumpets of success began to echo throughout the colonies.
The neighborhood, in the beginning named after German immigrants who settled there in the 1700s, prospered over two centuries, a mix of upper and middle class. But decay set in. As a kid I could have walked to three Catholic schools. All have closed. Whereas the old neighborhoods closer to Center City are enjoying gentrification, with professionals reclaiming what were once near slums, Germantown is still on the way down.
Unlike Valley Forge, which is a famous national park, the Battle of Germantown is not noted by pleasant highlands or monuments. Some buildings that got shot up are still standing, but the city grew around the place. It prospered for two centuries and then decay set in. It is said you were safer between the Continental and British lines than you are walking the streets of Germantown today. But you may be safer on the streets than inside the schools of Philadelphia.
The Philadelphia Inquirer, formerly affiliated with The Miami Herald, spent a year looking at violence in the schools, and the results are stunning. Look for the Inky, as ex-patriots call it, to be nominated for the big prize on this series. The numbers: In the last school year, 690 teachers were assaulted. In the last five years, the number is 4,000. That’s teachers. The paper has also reported student-to-student violence, including sexual assaults. Some schools have several events a day, and cynics think a lot of this stuff is not even reported.
It is not just the frequency of the violence, it is the breadth of the problem. Students as young as 5 have been accused of assaults. Some of the assaults are racist. Asian students in south Philadelphia, once “Rocky” turf, have been targets where they are minorities in mostly black environments.
Black kids are often victims. One mother whose son got jumped by a gang refused to send him back to the school. Fortunately, he got transferred to a safer environment. A teacher summed up the problem, pointing out that one of the most badly behaved kids saw his mother murdered, with a baby on her lap, when he was very young. They grow up in a life of violence, she lamented, so why should school be different?
Pennsylvania, like Florida, has an ongoing debate about vouchers or other programs which help students escape troubled schools in favor of environments in which they can actually learn something. Ironically, many of those schools to which they can flee are barely hanging on.
The kids who need them most can’t afford them.
What would a smart fellow like Washington do today? Back when he worked for the British in the French and Indian War he was known to hang troublemakers. Today that would be politically unacceptable, and he might even get beat up for his trouble.
Washington, D.C. – Spring began with a flower, winter counter attacked, and last Sunday morning the temperature was exactly at freezing and a light coat of snow covered the roofs and windshields of cars. It was a strange end to a strange winter, north and south. People walking the streets all wore hats and bulky jackets, yet the cherry blossoms were blooming and golden daffodils and an occasional tulip popped from the frosty little lawns of the Capitol Hill neighborhood.
Considering the weather, the Eastern Market was busy by mid-morning. This is a Washington institution, dating to 1873 when Washington had a series of city-owned markets scattered in its then growing neighborhoods. The market concept was envisioned almost a century earlier by Pierre L’Enfant, when he laid out the plan for the capital. All the other markets are gone, and the Eastern Market almost joined them, but was twice saved by community preservationists, first in the 1930s when the other markets closed, and then in the 1950s. At the time super markets and corner groceries were making the market obsolete. Yet its obsolescence, joined with a building designed by a famous architect, brought it back to life. Capitol Hill was at the time somewhat obsolete itself, running down fast, but gentrification was on the way and it seemed sensible to retain what was historic and charming.
It’s a classic market. Indoors are booths selling just about every kind of food, many varieties of meats, fish, pastries, coffees. The market moves outside on weekends, when a street is closed, and then there is also food, especially fruit, but a little bit of everything – arts and crafts, unusual clothing, a stand specializing in crepes. People stand in line for 20 minutes to buy these. You can purchase everything but a zoning change – all of it sold by people who come from many cultures, all nicer and more helpful than the next person. On the streets around the market are cozy cafes, bars, coffee houses. It’s a place with thousands of regular customers, including those who drop in early in the day for breakfast, but also visitors who have heard of its reputation. It is popular with young families, many of whom work for government or related companies, who have poured into this old neighborhood. On weekends the kids are entertained by musicians in the original old building.
In the crisp cold air scented by the aroma of near residential fire places, thoughts head south to balmy Fort Lauderdale, and Las Olas Boulevard, specifically the Hyde Park property in front of the Stranahan House. The old supermarket, razed to make room for a large condo, would have made an ideal site for such a facility.
The condominium project was delayed by litigation after the city passed a bond issue that would have given the developer four times what it paid for the property a few years earlier. It likely would have been a disaster for the developer, who would never admit that. Instead the property sits idle, unlikely to be acted on for years. The city wanted the property as a park, a green compliment to the historic Stranahan House.
We wonder if the city might be able to use the economy to reopen negotiations. If not a park, a market with the style of Washington’s would be a wonderful addition to Las Olas, offsetting the disaster that befell the street when the Riverside Hotel expansion collapsed, a classic error of knocking stuff down without the money to replace it, leaving a gap where the heart of the action once stood.
It probably will not happen, but it is aromatic to think so.
It isn't plagiarism if you cite the source, and today we steal from The Miami Herald's Fred Grimm, who today devoted his column to criticizing our new governor for omitting beach replenishment from his budget. There has been a chorus of boos as officials around the state realize that one of Florida's greatest assets is now an endangered species. Next to the warm sun, the ocean and beach are what keeps tourists coming year after year. And anyone who has lived near a beach knows that it isn't forever. Storms and other natural elements wear beaches away, sometimes very drastically. After the hurricanes of a few years back, some beaches were like small cliffs, a mini-version of California, where bluffs often plummet to the sea.
How important are the beaches? Grimm quoted an expert saying that every dollar spent on beach preservation returns $8 in tourism and the like.
The good news in Grimm's piece came at the end, where he reported that the Senate Government Appropriations Committee seemed to ignore the governor by budgeting $16 million for 12 beach restoration projects. We have a feeling that this is going to turn into a pattern with this governor, in which legislators hearing the howls from home are going to get around his stated desire to save the state by killing what makes it work.
The Sun-Sentinel today had its own story on Tallahassee travail. It detailed the effort, this time in the legislature, to make doing business in the state easier by eliminating regulations that some businesses don't like. The idea is to override the power of local municipalities to impose restrictions on all sorts of things. It was a very long article, far beyond the attention span of the average Sun-Sentinel subscriber, but some of the points legislators (lobbyists is more accurate) make seem sensible. Others, however, are scary, and seem to forecast what many fear about this governor.
Example: Fertilizer interests want to invalidate local rules restricting the sale and use of fertilizer. This at a time when one of Florida's greatest environmental problems, which we have been fighting for years, is the pollution of Lake Okeechobee, and by extension the estuaries on both coasts, as well as the longer distance effects on the Everglades. Fertilizer may be great food for crops, but it is poison to everything else.
It is hard to believe such damaging legislation could be considered right after the state manage to get a very trimmed down program to buy U.S. Sugar land to begin correct damage to the Everglades which began 100 years ago and has gotten worse as land meant to be swamp was drained for agriculture. Swamp should never have become farmland, but 100 years ago few realized it. Today we do understand, just as we understand that dunes never should have been replaced by tall buildings close to the water's edge.
It appears that this administration, and those elected officials who support it, are willing to enact laws to kill laws — to seek a short term financial gain and leave the problems they create to the next generation, or the next administration.
The front page headline in today’s Sun-Sentinel jumped off the page: “Properties near beach suddenly are hot.”Scott Wyman’s piece revealed that two separate investors have spent $39 million to buy up property in the same areas where luxury high rises were built just before the real estate bust. Even at bargain prices, this is welcome news for it shows that some people are regaining big-time confidence that the world has not ended.
It also reinforced an impression we have had for some time – namely that the older eastside neighborhoods of Fort Lauderdale and neighboring towns have done better in the recession than less desirable locations to the west. Studies often lump Miami-Dade and Fort Lauderdale, which is not valid. Miami had a condo market absurdly overbuilt, and sprawling poorer neighborhoods where people got mortgages they never could afford. Most Fort Lauderdale residents wouldn't go to Miami on a bet – unless the bet is on a sports team.
They same distinction exists in Fort Lauderdale, which has its share of poor neighborhoods and some new western communities which should never have been built. Our impression is that eastern communities have not seen the same rate of foreclosures or people forced to sell with drastic losses.
We asked an expert, Jack McCabe of McCabe Research and Consulting in Deerfield Beach. “It is generally true that oceanfront and waterfront property have fared better during the downturn,” he says. “And older established neighborhoods on the east side have also done better, although in some those sections people refinanced their homes and that led to trouble.”
He points out that situations vary greatly, even in the same location.
McCabe adds: “We are nearing the bottom, but it might be a year to 18 months before we get there. And then when we see values increase it will be at the rate of inflation for a few years. I think we’ll hit a period of hyper inflation in next four to five years due to our $14 trillion national debt. Generally values rise at or above the rate of inflation. The flip side is that interest rates may go so high that it will shrink the pool of buyers and have a negative effect on inflation. It’s a double-edge sword in essence.” Jack McCabe is not always optimistic, but he's usually right.
It must have been 12 years ago, maybe more, when I got a call from the insurance company. The guy was irritated. He wanted to know why I had not reported an accident.
“What accident?” I replied. “I haven’t had an accident since the Civil War." He went on to describe an accident involving a woman driver, who happened to have my daughter’s name. I still did not know what he was talking about. My daughter never drives my car, I told him.
He went on, giving me the the date, time and location of the accident. I think it was on Commercial Boulevard. Slowly, memory cut in. As the insurance guy bombarded me with figures, I began to vaguely recall an incident. My daughter had borrowed the car and she called to say a strange thing had happened. She was almost in an accident. A beat-up car filled with people who did not speak English (probably Haitians) had almost hit her. She thought the other driver was trying to hit her, cutting her off, but missed. Just a light tap. No damage. The other car was so beat up it didn’t count. The cops came and ticketed the other car because the driver had no license. I forgot about it until the insurance company called.
Memory revived, I told him I did not report it because it wasn’t an accident. Then he told me a bunch of claims had been filed. I told him right off this must be a scam. Nobody had been hurt that day. He told me insurance companies usually paid such claims, even though they doubted them, because they did not trust juries, who sometimes gave huge awards to people with mysterious whiplash injuries. The insurance guy scared me by saying my insurance could be cancelled, even though I had not filed a claim since the Spanish-American War. When the insurance guy supported the claim in writing, I followed up by calling a doctor’s office listed on the accident report. No answer.
Being scared, I went on record with a letter explaining I had not reported an accident that never occurred. I saved the insurance guy’s name and a few months later, I read about a ring that had staged false accidents, and one of the names was the doctor on my non-accident, I called the insurance guy. He was delighted, and wanted all the details of the bustees.
This rant comes from an editorial in today’s The Miami Herald, citing a fake accident ring that was busted in Dade County last week. The Herald reported 25 people arrested, involving a staged accident in which an insurance company paid out $80,000. The Herald wondered why, and added an angry aside about medicare fraud in Dade County, and asked why the criminals manage to stay ahead of enforcement on such matters. Why indeed? When the fraud is so transparent, with dozens, sometimes hundreds of complaints coming overnight from the same source, where is the oversight?
For perspective, and in the interest of accuracy, I just checked with my daughter. Her fake accident occurred almost 20 years ago. When will we ever learn?
