Try to Vote, Plebes!

Wow, so a lot going on this morning.

First off -- RIP Neil Jay Berman.

Second, an actual Herald editorial expressing a real opinion:

While we’re at it, there are other aspects of our voting process that desperately need to be changed.

• Voter purges late in the election year. It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that the purge carried out in Florida targeted minority voters and other communities that favor Democrats. It was ill-crafted and designed to restrict voting rights, rather than guarantee them. This is contrary to the best American traditions.

• Fewer early voting days. Was it just a coincidence that the early-voting schedule pushed by Gov. Rick Scott eliminated the last Sunday before the election, a day traditionally used by black churches to get their congregations to vote? You’d have to believe in the tooth fairy to buy that.

• Long, perplexing ballots. This year’s ballot goes on and on, with 11 constitutional amendments written about as clearly as those manuals that “explain” how to assemble a complicated children’s toy with 23 moving parts. Let’s not do this again.

Voting is a right, as well as a duty. Too many Americans take it for granted. Do your part and vote, and let’s hope that next time around those who make the laws make voting easier instead of harder. 

Third, here's the lawsuit Kendall Coffey, Mike Olin, Bruce Rogow, and Seth Miles filed to keep the early voting sites open, pending before Judge Ungaro:

12. The voting facilities within these Counties were plainly inadequate to meet the
needs of County electors seeking to exercise their right to vote during the early voting period provided by Florida law.

13. The extraordinarily long lines deterred or prevented voters from waiting to vote.
Some voters left the polling sites upon learning of the expected wait, and others refused to line up altogether.

14. These long lines and extreme delays unduly and unjustifiably burdened the right to vote.

The complaint is only nine pages long and was prepared in a hurry, but can anyone seriously dispute the above three factual allegations?

Fourth, make fun of Spencer all you want (I certainly do!), but the kid has his heart in the right place:

"A Great Time For A Great Cause"

Fundraiser for Hurricane Sandy Victims Sponsored by Lawyers to the Rescue

Join Lawyers to the Rescue as we raise funds and awareness for victims of Hurricane Sandy. Money raised will be sent to the American Red Cross Hurricane Sandy Fund.

The event will include:
-Great Networking Opportunity
- Wine Tasting
- Free Food
- Music
- Prizes

Event Entrance Fee: $20.00 goes to the Red Cross Hurricane Sandy Relief Fund

To make a donation to this cause, please click on the link below:
http://www.lawyerstotherescue.org/HurricaneSandyRelief.html

I told you there was a lot going on today!

d more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/11/05/3079929/the-right-and-duty-to-vote.html#storylink=cpy

New Way to Represent Client: Send Tweet to Miami Herald!

All you social media quasi-lawyer types Tannebaum is always talking about, take note:  here is the intersection of law and Twitter, revealed:

An attorney representing the former University of Miami Hurricanes safety said Tuesday night that he plans to file an injunction later this week to reinstate Armstrong to the Hurricanes football team.

The Orlando-based attorney, Matt Morgan, sent a tweet to The Miami Herald on Tuesday, saying, "We do not agree with the way they have handled Ray Ray. A very talented athlete's career is at stake.'' 

Although my research is not yet complete, I'm pretty sure "Matt Morgan" is not the popular wrestler with a large Twitter following from Lake Mary, FL.

Actually, he is this guy -- hold on, Matt the Orlando lawyer has 2043 2044 followers!

(That may be more than the Herald nowadays).

Matt also has this great quote on his bio page:

The moral arc of the universe bends at the elbow of justice.
- Martin Luther King, Jr. 

Not bad, but I prefer this:

 

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/08/08/2938965/attorney-ray-ray-armstrong-plans.html#storylink=cpy

The Herald Recommends.....

Remember when a newspaper endorsement, from a powerful metropolitan paper led by someone like Lou Grant, really meant something and could easily swing a local election?

Me neither.

Indeed, if anyone listened to This American Life this weekend, with "local news" being generated for major American papers under fake American bylines by Filipinos working for pennies a day, it's increasingly hard to take advice from these struggling vestiges of a once glorious past.

Still, they persist and we sometimes pay attention:

For Miami-Dade County Court Group 28 The Miami-Herald recommends TANYA BRINKLEY.

Hey, we agree!

For Miami-Dade County Court Group 33 The Miami-Herald recommends TERETHA LUNDY THOMAS. 

Hey, we also agree!

Good job anonymous Filipino editorial writer -- you've certainly earned your twenty cents.

(Sorry about all that racism and early 20th Century waterboarding).

here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/07/02/2875067/the-herald-recommends.html#storylink=cpy

They Still Write Editorials?

I'm pretty sure that's what the interwebs need more of -- opinions.

Even so, this is a rare burst of clear-eyed advocacy from a Miami Herald editorial page often devoid of opinions worth discussing:

The commission should make smooth functioning of the court system a priority when it examines in detail the budget approved by the Legislature and sees what funds are available after the governor’s budget vetoes.

This, though, would be just a temporary patch. The bigger job is to put funding for the court clerks on a rational basis, one that complies with public expectation of good customer service at each court clerk’s office, litigants’ need for efficient handling of cases, and the constitution’s requirement of adequate financing. 

Ok, I guess it's still kinda milquetoast but remember, we are talking about the Herald editorial page.  

In other news, can you believe an undocumented immigrant actually wants to practice law in Florida?

The horrors:

Can an immigrant without a green card get a Florida Bar card?

Aspiring lawyer Jose Godinez-Samperio, 25, a Tampa-area resident, is hoping the answer is yes.

A native of Mexico who entered the United States legally with his parents 16 years ago on a tourist visa, Godinez-Samperio is a graduate of the Florida State University College of Law, the valedictorian of the Armwood High School class of 2004, an Eagle Scout — and an undocumented immigrant.

That last quality may keep him from achieving his dream.

The Florida Board of Bar Examiners, which grants membership to the Bar, has asked the state Supreme Court to determine whether it can accept someone who is not in the country legally. The Supreme Court flagged the case as "high profile" last week.

Certified Legal Legend Sandy D'Alemberte says yes:

"It is unfair to deny him the credentials he's earned," said D'Alemberte, noting that there's nothing in the "Rules of the Supreme Court Relating to Admissions to the Florida Bar" that requires applicants to prove their immigration status.

In fact, D'Alemberte said, Godinez-Samperio has been candid about his status at every opportunity, disclosing it on college and law school applications (his application to law school included an essay titled "The Consequences of my Criminal Childhood," although being in the country illegally is a civil infraction, not a crime).

Sandy is joined by former ABA Presidents Martha Barnett and Steve Zack.

Other the other hand, there are these guys:

"No one who has shown this guy's level of contempt for American law should be practicing law," said William Gheen, president of Americans for Legal Immigration, a political action committee that opposes amnesty for undocumented immigrants.

Tom Fitton, president of the conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch, agreed.

"He can't practice as a lawyer," Fitton said. "He is not legally able to work in the United States. … It seems to me that it would be an absurdity to give him a Bar card at this point."

Hmm, if "contempt for American law" was the standard I could think of quite a few lawyers and maybe a Supreme Court Justice or two that might fall afoul of that one.

But maybe I'm wrong.

As the old saying goes -- which side are you on?

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/04/15/2751284/the-price-of-justice.html#storylink=cpy

Judge Pando Flap -- Does Case Hold Water?

The Herald led its Saturday (least read?) edition with a front-pager on Judge Pando.

In addition to the letter she wrote on behalf of a pain clinic that regularly appears before her, there are allegations regarding a Ponzi schemer trying to set up a meeting so she would put in a good word for him before his Broward sentencing judge:

Pando’s name surfaced repeatedly in a series of phone calls tape-recorded at the Broward County Jail between racketeer Arturo Godinez and his wife. A Broward jury found Godinez guilty of fraud and conspiracy on Oct. 31 in a case involving the sale of sometimes bogus cancer and AIDS drugs to unsuspecting pharmacies and consumers. The next day, Godinez held the first of several conversations about how to recruit influential leaders to advocate for his release. Pando was one of them.

Let's put the letter issue aside for a moment and focus on these allegations.

From what I can tell, Judge Pando did not agree to meet with Godinez, but apparently was considering it, according to his wife:

Judith Godinez told her husband in one recorded conversation that a meeting had been scheduled between Pando, Pando’s father, Esteban Bencomo — who is referred to throughout the conversations by his nickname, “Papito” — and someone they call only “El Leader.”

In one conversation, Judith Godinez told her husband that Pando was willing to meet with representatives of the couple — but wanted to control who was present. “She’s not going to be comfortable talking in front of me, because I wanted to be present,” Judith Godinez told her husband, though the “me” she was referring to may also have been a family friend named Martica. “Later, we’ll see what she says, how she can help.” 

That's it?

Maybe I'm jaded, but this seems pretty thin to me.

What am I missing here?

As regards the letter,  I don't think she is helped by this statement by the pain clinic's president:

Through a lawyer, former U.S. Attorney Atlee Wampler, Florida Wellness’ president, Cereceda, issued a short statement praising Pando: “I have the highest respect for Judge Pando,” he said. “I am a regular contributor to her election campaigns. I believe she has an excellent judicial temperament. I strongly support Judge Pando’s re-election.”

I bet he does.

d more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/02/16/2649377_p3/dade-judge-tangled-up-in-probe.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/02/16/2649377/dade-judge-tangled-up-in-probe.html#storylink=misearch#storylink=cpy

What say you?

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/02/16/2649377/dade-judge-tangled-up-in-probe.html#storylink=misearch#storylink=cpy

Herald Writes Interesting Editorial!

Not only that, but they actually express a firm opinion:

Clearly, the Senate is not fulfilling its constitutional duty to confirm judges. Some 58 Obama administration nominees are pending in the Senate to fill the 95 vacancies. Republican senators have complained that there should be a nominee for every vacancy — fair enough — but that does not explain why so many of the nominations have been stalled for so long.

The Senate, of course, has a duty to ensure that nominees are qualified. No one wants a “fast-tracked” judge hearing cases. But it’s hard to escape the conclusion that partisan politics rather than the quality of the nominees is the root of the problem when even consensus candidates must wait for prolonged periods.

This Monday, for example, the Senate is expected to fill some of those vacancies when six of the nominations go to the floor for a vote, meaning there has been a preceding agreement not to block the vote.

That generally leads to confirmation. Of those six, five have been pending since May and June — and all of them were approved with a unanimous vote by Democratic and Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee. In other words, there is no question that the nominees have the qualifications to do the job — so why the delay?

Good question -- why the delay?

Here's a list of the six nominees confirmed.

(One good thing -- at least we're not Mississippi.)

BREAKING -- Massive Snow Storm Paralyzes Nation; Alan Kluger Reacts!

Herald reporters Doug Hanks and Hannah Sampson and I must think alike.

When I saw footage and read reports of the ferocious life-threatening winter storm barreling across the nation, closing icy snow-covered roads, downing power lines, crippling air travel and endangering hundreds of thousands of people across the United States, my first thought was:  how does all this impact Alan Kluger?

Fortunately, Doug and Hannah felt the same way:

Alan Kluger, founder of the Miami law firm Kluger Kaplan, spent Tuesday shuffling his calendar this week. He expected to be in Manhattan for client meetings. Instead, they're coming to him.

``A bunch of my New York clients, they came down to their houses in Boca,'' Kluger said Tuesday. ``They said: `I'm getting out.' I have a meeting in Boca tomorrow and one on Thursday.''

Good lord -- Alan had to shuffle his calendar (ed. note: actually, his secretary probably did this) and now has to hold a few meetings in Boca.

Did you hear me -- I said Boca!

Memo to crybabies in Egypt:  You're not the only ones with problems, ok?

(Oh I kid Alan, it's not his fault the Herald went to him for a quote on the storm, but seriously -- why go to Alan for a quote on the storm?)

Parsing the Herald's Dismissive Coverage of Stewart/Colbert's Rally

Given that Stewart's satiric message has always been directed to the mainstream media and their failure to (1) hold the crazies accountable; and (2) raise the level of discourse without lapsing into clichéd "he said-she said" hackery or alarmist stupidity, it's no wonder the MSM has pushed back so hard on his rally yesterday.

A fine example of the dismissive nature of the mainstream coverage appears in today's Herald, courtesy of McClatchy News Service.

Here's the first thing that caught my eye -- dismissing or minimizing the number of people in attendance:

[A] pair of comedians drew tens of thousands to the National Mall on Saturday with a blend of jokes and music meant to counter some of the anger and fear they see in the country.

Got it -- "comedians," they just make jokes and throw spitballs.

Would it be that hard, given the context of this event, to at least describe them as the NYT does -- as "political satirists"?

"Tens of thousands" is technically correct yet highly misleading.   That makes me think maybe 40 to 50 thousand showed up.  For that matter it would be technically correct to say "tens of hundreds."

Yet, although estimates vary, there is no question a fairer description would be "hundreds of thousands."

Who you gonna believe, me or your lying eyes?

Here's the part that really annoyed me:

The smell of marijuana wafted through the air at one area of the mall.

How utterly gratuitous!

Gratuitous, unless you were trying to reinforce the Fox News/O'Reilly meme that Stewart's audience is merely a bunch of  "stoned slackers."

So, to summarize, perhaps thirty thousand stoners showed up to listen to music and watch comedians make jokes.

Miami Herald: Less Is More.

So the Miami Herald decided to scrap the business section and collapse it as an occasional part of the already-dwindling local section, thereby continuing the reductions in coverage, staffing and resources that have plagued the Herald specifically and the newspaper business as a whole for at least a decade.

That's fine if economic necessity requires it.

But why try to put lipstick on a pig (remember that insanely asinine fake media controversy from 2008)?

Just look at the facacta way the Herald describes what is a pretty simple concept -- we're eliminating the business section entirely and collapsing a piece of it into the local section twice a week, without adding any pages to the newly combined local/business section:

Here's how to find business news:  Flip the B section over.  The Business section front you're accustomed to appears on the back, and stories jump back into the B section.  Stock tables appear intact on the inside back page.

What late night bunch of potheads dreamed this one up?

(OK Garvin, fess up!)

This is the other method they suggest:

Here's the other way to find business news:  grab a pair of gravity boots.  Hanging upside down, turn to the "back" of the B section.  DO NOT FLIP THE B SECTION OVER.  This is now the "front" of the Business section.  As blood drains to your head, you will slowly lose consciousness and think this is a perfectly acceptable way to get all the latest stock updates!

BTW, congrats to new Exec Editor Aminda Marques Gonzalez.  I truly hope you can right the ship and take the Herald in a positive, successful direction.

We're rooting for you.

Glenn Garvin Doesn't Read His Own Newspaper!

It's very hard to keep with with our local curmudgeonly TV critic cum 60s "silent majority" libertarian philosopher at large.


First he was handling the entire Herald newsroom.

Then he was apparently editing the New York Times.

Now it appears he stopped reading his own paper:

For all their frothing fulmination, neither the lawyers nor politicians nor journalists have been able to come up with any credible stories of people losing their homes despite faithfully paying their mortgages. They couldn't even find stories about people losing their homes despite being just a couple of payments behind.

That's because there aren't any.

Except the one that occupies the entire front page of today's newspaper!

Other than the fact that Glenn is completely wrong, he's totally right.

Did Threat of Lawsuit Cause Herald to Run Jeff Greene Correction?

We previously reported that Jeff Greene has retained defamation specialist L. Lin Wood to possibly bring suit against the Herald over some of its election coverage.

One of the contested articles dealt with Mike Tyson, coke, naked women, and Jeff Greene's yacht (don't those things always go together?):

In another story, the Times linked comments Mike Tyson made to Sports Illustrated in an interview published on July 28 to time the boxer spent aboard Greene's 145-foot yacht, describing the activity on the yacht as lavish, teeming with naked, drunken parties. Greene denies those claims.

By pure coincidence, the Herald ran a small "correction" this morning that does not appear to be on the Herald website:

Boxer Mike Tyson's July interview with Sports Illustrated, quoted in a front-page story on August 13, described his travels in Europe during the summer of 2005, not 2007 when he served as Jeff Greene's best man.  In addition, Tyson has since clarified that the 2005 events he described involving a drug dealer from Amsterdam did not occur aboard Greene's yacht and that "he didn't do drugs on the boat."

Hmm, my spidey sense tells me a few Herald lawyers had something to do with this correction.

Score one for Mr. Wood?

(You can read one of Lin's demand letters here).

Miami Herald Facing Possible Lawsuit Over Jeff Greene Coverage.

CNN is reporting that Bryan Cave litigator L. Lin Wood has been retained to possibly sue the Miami Herald and St. Pete Times over several articles on Jeff Greene that the candidate claims are defamatory:

Greene's lawyer has demanded the St. Petersburg Times and the Miami Herald publish the retractions to correct three articles the newspapers published earlier this month. The articles were written by St. Petersburg Times reporters and were first printed by the Tampa-area newspaper. The Miami Herald printed the articles shortly thereafter. The papers have a working partnership and often share resources to cover state news.

Times editor Neil Brown said last week that no retraction is forthcoming, and Greene is expected to follow through, potentially as early as Friday.

In one of the stories, first published on August 8, the Times reported that in 2006, Greene had sold California property to Delbert McConville, who is now in jail facing conspiracy and money laundering charges. Greene admits to selling McConville 300 condos, but insists that his connection to McConville ends there and that he was not a party to the dealings McConville engaged in that led him to jail.

In another story, the Times linked comments Mike Tyson made to Sports Illustrated in an interview published on July 28 to time the boxer spent aboard Greene's 145-foot yacht, describing the activity on the yacht as lavish, teeming with naked, drunken parties. Greene denies those claims.

In an August 16 letter to Miami Herald executive editor Anders Gyllenhaal, attorney L. Lin Wood, said the stories are "replete with false, misleading and defamatory statements of face concerning Mr. Greene."

Wood sent a similar letter to the top editors at the Times on August 11.

Both papers have endorsed Meek in the Democratic primary.

To paraphrase Steely Dan, Lin Wood is a major dude.  He previously represented accused Centennial Olympic Park bomber Richard Jewell, the parents of Jon Benet Ramsey, Howard K. Stern, and has been involved in many other high-profile defamation cases.

I'm not sure if the Herald will retain our own silver fox, Sandy Bohrer, to defend these claims, but if so we are looking at a powerhouse match up.

One question (and no offense to the highly qualified Mr. Wood) but couldn't Greene hire a Florida lawyer to prosecute these claims?

Some of us could use the work!  (I guess Lin will need local counsel).

Judge Seitz Did Not Abuse Her Discretion.

I thought it was pretty funny that the Herald misidentified a photo of Judge Seitz in an otherwise very flattering profile on Monday.

Note to Herald: Try to get these things right the first time.

In related Judge Seitz news, the 11th affirmed her today in a significant decision involving the Alien Tort Statute in a tragic case brought against the Palestinian Authority and the PLO.

Very interesting ruling (and congrats to the Judge for her inclusion in the book Women of True Grit!).

Parsing The Herald's Kindle Edition.

Happy wet Monday, kids.

If you're reading this in your office today -- hi Greenberg Gal!

It's no secret I'm a big fan of my Kindle.

I've fooled around with the iPad, and it's a fun device -- colors, Facebook, music, internet etc.

But if you are a reader, a lover of books, and you simply want a superior reading experience, you cannot beat the simplicity, functionality, and pleasant design of the Kindle. I actually prefer the reading screen to a conventional book, and I particularly enjoy having my NYT and WSJ waiting for me at 5 am each morning.

No ads, no messy newsprint, each article in its entirety, followed logically by the next one.

And when I travel I typically download the paper of whatever town I'm in -- whether it's the LA Times or the WP.

So I thought I'd give the Miami Herald Kindle edition a whirl.

Here's my four-word review:

It's embarrassingly bad. Seriously.

I don't think they are making much effort -- haphazard article selection, articles that repeat in different sections (national, local, sports), severely truncated articles, multiple typos and weird codes.

There appears to be very little thought behind it.

The NYT edition is state of the art, so it's probably not fair to compare the Herald edition to that elegant paper.

But they really ought to try harder.

Polk Salad Iqbal.

You know how the Herald always runs WP opinion columns two days after they have been published and long after they have been thoroughly discussed and dissected online?

Well that happened again with this stupid column by former Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson.

Gerson -- who helped mislead us into a costly and unnecessary war, who came up with the Orwellian phrase "regime change," who previously had phony vapors over Franken's old jokes -- is now very unhappy over Franken's speech about the Supreme Court to the ACS national convention (what I call the anti-Federalist Society).

It's funny that the Herald published Gerson's dishonest screed about the speech, but never actually covered the speech.

Oh well -- for those who want to evaluate it for yourself, you can see it here.

The best part was the way Gerson got mad over something Franken never said and Gerson just made up:

No, in Franken's view judges should be more like the Committee of Public Safety during the French Revolution -- an unelected group of super-legislators who issue binding verdicts based on their own advanced conceptions of justice and the class warfare.

Huh? You mean Franken wants the Supreme Court to issue orders to send thousands of people to the guillotine?

How totally French of him!

I must have missed that part of the speech.

Franken did say this:

In Stoneridge, it stripped shareholders of their ability to get their money back from the firms that helped defraud them.

In Conkright, it gave employers more leeway to deny workers their pension benefits.

In Leegin, it made it harder for small business owners to stop price fixing under the Sherman Act. Now, the burden is on them--small business owners--to show that price fixing will hurt competition.

In Iqbal, it made it harder for everybody to get their day in court.

In Exxon, it capped punitive damages resulting from the Exxon Valdez oil spill because, get this, having to own up to your mistakes creates "unpredictability" for corporations. Which, by the way, means that BP's liability may be capped because the Court doesn't want to cause an unpredictable impact on its future profitability.

In Rapanos, it cut huge swaths of wetlands out of the Clean Water Act. Wetlands that had been covered for 30 years.

You know what has a lot of wetlands? Minnesota. No, really. You know what else has a lot of wetlands? The Gulf Coast.

I have some problems with this speech, but Gerson is way over the top in his criticism.

BTW, most lawyers who advise large corporations will admit that the Roberts Court is more pro-business than prior Supreme Courts, and perhaps that's a good thing.

And, contrary to Gerson's ill-informed assertions, there is objective evidence supporting this perception:

For its study, the center took a look at 53 cases decided since Justice Samuel Alito joined the court early in 2006 and in which the Chamber of Commerce played a role.

The group won 64 percent of those cases and 71 percent of closely divided cases — those with five-justice majorities, the report said.

Alito has the highest support for the Chamber of Commerce's position, 75 percent overall and 100 percent in the close cases. Justice Anthony Kennedy supported the group's position 67 percent of the time and the other three conservatives, chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, were between Alito and Kennedy.

More on that here.

Wait a second -- 100 percent in close cases?

Maybe that's the kind of "fair and balanced" ump Gerson likes.

Your Useless and Pointless Knowledge

Let me ask you something -- what is the point of the Herald's five-minute summary, or whatever it's called -- that occupies a half page yet provides no new content of any kind?

Are there really people out there who are unable to scan a newspaper like the Herald in five minutes, without having a pointless summary that attempts to replicate what the Herald looks like on the internet?

Seriously, the paper's thin enough without having repetitive filler that serves no purpose whatsoever.

For that matter, I feel the same way about Tables of Contents and Authorities in briefs -- if your brief is 30 pages or less, and you are not in an appellate court that requires it, you are wasting everyone's time by clogging up the beginning of your document with something that no one ever looks at or refers to ever again.

Have you ever read a 25 page brief but suddenly went "where is Venetian Salami, I must find it immediately, I'm unable to simply skim the brief and find it quickly, there must be a mildly faster way -- YESSS!"

In other news, I heard Peter Valori on the radio the other day:

PETER VALORI, ATTORNEY, DAMIAN & VALORI LLP: Typically the person that you're trusting knows nothing of the fraud. They've been victimized themselves, but they just don't know it yet. So they make the perfect candidate to draw in new investors because they have no sense that what they're doing could potentially be harmful to their friend or family member.

Peter, you're a good guy and fine attorney, but come on, you definitely want to put your best face out there, know what I mean?

Glenn Garvin Makes Crude Sexual Joke About Lawyers That Also Involves Killing Them!

I know lawyer jokes are pretty hip.

In fact, they're probably about as cutting-edge as cracking wise about airplane food.

That, plus the traffic in L.A.

Anyway, I was intrigued by Herald Executive Editor Anders Gyllenhaal's column today on the Pulitzers, in which he notes the "depth, precision and good writing that is part of the newspaper tradition."

As an editor, I'm sure Anders is proud of The Garvinator's story today on the new TV season, which includes this shining example of depth, precision, and good writing:

But even jaded lovers of lawyer jokes (Q: How can you tell if a lawyer is well hung? A: You can't get a finger between the rope and his neck!) will be glad to know that there's adequate legal representation available if all the homidical women on Spanish-language TV need to cross over.

Ha ha, oh boy that's a knee-slapper!

Putting aside that the joke is apropos of nothing, what's pathetic is that this lame, inappropriate effort at "humor" is contained in an article that otherwise decries TV's "slouching towards Gomorrah" slide into crude, vulgar, dumbed-down and offensive programming.

(Not that that would ever happen to our hometown newspaper, of course.)

The Herald On Replacing Justice Stevens (Yawn)

Happy wet Monday, kids.

Did you see this controversial, bold, assertive Herald editorial on replacing Justice Stevens?

Neither did I.

Instead we got the usual opinion-free, can't we all get along, both-sides-are-to-blame, warmed-over Broderisms that reflect an alternate reality far apart from the one the rest of us inhabit.

Consider this hard-hitting statement:

Republicans, for their part, have an obligation to hold their fire unless there are well-founded reasons to object. If Mr. Obama makes a centrist choice, the nominee deserves to be treated as such.

Whoa!

Calm down there, buddy.

Any idea how to make this pipe dream a reality?

Mr. Obama no doubt believes that a president's prerogatives should be respected, barring a truly awful choice. He can help his own case -- as he did with Judge Sotomayor -- by avoiding the selection of an ideological firebrand.

But that contradicts the entire first section of the editorial, which is about how the right went after Sotomayor, "put [her] through the proverbial wringer for the sake of politics" and "found spurious reasons to vilify her character and disparage her judicial record" even though she was a well-respected jurist comfortably within the mainstream of American jurisprudence.

Is there anything at all in the air to suggest something different this time around?

Granted, the Herald's editorials have always been for the most part inoffensive, milque-toast expressions of conventional wisdom, tentatively expressed.

But this one literally adds zero to an important issue that requires an accurate -- as opposed to idealized -- understanding of today's political landscape.

If wishes were ponies.....

Glenn Garvin Almost Ruins Holocaust Remembrance Day

Leave it to Glenn Garvin to drop a big fat word turd on this most solemn of days by politicizing and performing a hatchet-job on the legitimate debate over the way the Anne Frank diary was popularized and presented to non-Jews in the mid-1950s.

Although Garvin references the 90s, his real beef is and has always been with the "identity politics" of the 60s -- the civil rights movement, women's lib, Stonewall, "Native American rights" (they wuz Indians when I was a kid!! -- F Troop anyone??) etc:

But it was in the 1990s, with the ascendance of identity politics -- in which individuals matter only insofar as they fit comfortably into groups ideologically constructed from ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation and the like -- that the tug of war over Anne's diary began.

Much of the vitriol took the guise of retroactive attacks on the 1950s play and film adaptations of the diary.

Wrong.

Wrong, wrong, wrong.

Anyone with even a casual familiarity with Holocaust survivor narratives knows that American publishing houses in the 1950s wanted nothing to do with stories about "real Jews," as Annie Hall's Grammy used to call them.

That's why Elie Wiesel could not get his original 800-plus page manuscript of Night published in the United States -- too "Jewish," too depressing.

Same with Primo Levi and his remarkable Survival in Auschwitz.

Garvin picks on a Frank Rich column from the mid-90s as if the debate emerged out of thin air. He selects Rich in particular to reinforce his "liberal NYT" wine-sipping narrative that is an essential part of Garvin's world view.

Again, you have to presume Garvin knows the true history of the debate over how to present Anne Frank's diary to a larger non-Jewish audience, but doesn't want his readers to know -- it was a debate that raged from the inception and is a fascinating, 30-year legal struggle that was brilliantly recounted in Lawrence Graver's 1997 account An Obsession with Anne Frank: Meyer Levin and the Diary.

Here is the Amazon review of this book (Rich reviewed it for the NYT), for a feel of the history that Garvin omits from his column:

An Obsession with Anne Frank: Meyer Levin and the Diary, by Lawrence Graver, is a work of disciplined, erudite storytelling about Meyer Levin's messy, passionate obsession with The Diary of Anne Frank. Levin, an American novelist and journalist, was among the figures instrumental in publishing and publicizing The Diary of Anne Frank in the United States. His 1952 review of the Diary in The New York Times raved, "Anne Frank's voice becomes the voice of six million vanished Jewish souls." Thanks in no small part to Levin's work, his proclamation came true: Anne Frank became one of the most famous figures in the world, an icon of the devastation of the Holocaust. Levin, by contrast, descended into a paralyzing and terminal despair when his attempts to become a central guardian of Anne Frank's legacy were rebuffed by Anne's father, Otto Frank. Most dramatically, Levin fought a bitter court battle when he felt he was cheated out of the opportunity to adapt Anne Frank's book for the stage, and was replaced by Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett, a more famous, more optimistic, and non-Jewish team of playwrights. Graver describes Levin's obsession with detailed attention to the role of popular culture in defining Jewish identity, and the ways that Anne Frank was and is still being politicized by Jews and gentiles around the world. In his characteristically spare, lucid style, Graver writes in the final chapter that "[Levin's] history testifies to the enormous difficulty, if not the impossibility, of finding an authentic way to bear witness to the Holocaust in a society governed by money, popular taste, media hype, democratic optimism, and a susceptibility to easy consolation."

I could go on, but it's too nice a day out -- I mean seriously, Garvin has no clue why they cast former alter boy Gregory Peck as the undercover Jew in 1947's Gentleman's Agreement?

It's true the Anne Frank story has universal elements, and that the Holocaust involved the systematic destruction of ethnic minorities, gays, communists, and others. And, however edited by her father, Anne Frank's diary remains one of the more moving and inspirational pieces of 20th century literature.

But Anne Frank and her family were selected for "deportation to the East" solely because of their Jewish identity, not in spite of it. Even Garvin celebrates how, in this new version, "the sharp edges have been restored to Anne's character."

Yet surely Garvin is aware that back in the 1950s, when this work first appeared, one of the "sharp edges" for American audiences was precisely Anne's Jewish identity.

I plan to watch the new version tonight, but thanks Glenn for bringing your usual nonsense into what should have been a straightforward TV movie review.

Is the New York Times Now Our Local Paper?

Wow what a glorious morning, huh?

Have you noticed that lately the NYT has more comprehensive and thorough coverage of South Florida issues than our local hometown paper?

Just today, I read about Obama's plan to allow oil drilling off the east coast of Florida (the Herald, by contrast, merely notes to the NYT story in a blog entry).

Then you had this incredible story that Gimleteye noted about how Florida restaurants no longer serve local fish (or maybe it depends on how you define "local"):

The postcard Florida experience: sun, fun and plenty of local seafood. It was the latter that brought Gary and Vicki Haller from Kansas to Wahoo’s here last week, with its waterfront views, toucan colors and promise of fresh food “from our docks.”

“We live in cow country,” Mr. Haller said. “Here we eat fish.”

But the fish in his “belly buster” sandwich actually traveled farther than he did. It was Pangasius, a freshwater catfish from Vietnam. The grouper and tuna were also imports, according to Wahoo’s managers. And the “local” label on the menu? It still applied, they insisted, because their distributor was down the road.

Finally you had this in-depth profile of the Wynwood area and its resurgence spurred by investor Tony Goldman:

Now, Mr. Goldman’s effort to work the same magic in Wynwood, a former industrial neighborhood here just north of downtown and a mile and a half west of Biscayne Bay, is starting, slowly, to bear fruit. Since 2004, he has spent some $35 million to buy about two dozen buildings.

On a recent tour, Mr. Goldman pointed out galleries that have sprouted in brightly painted cinderblock buildings once used as warehouses by shoe manufacturers; a former junkyard that now houses a stainless-steel sculpture park; and a new restaurant, Joey’s, which is named for his son and draws a fashionable crowd. Mr. Goldman has always used restaurants, whether the Greene Street Cafe in SoHo or Lucky’s in South Beach, to get people to talk about a neighborhood.

To provide an incentive to restaurateurs, the Goldmans persuaded Miami officials to ease parking-space requirements. Now Joey’s is one of seven recently opened lounges and restaurants in Wynwood. “He’s the perfect neighbor for us,” said Mera Rubell, an owner of the Rubell Family Collection, which operates out of a Wynwood warehouse. “Not only did he buy properties here, but now he’s bringing life and activity to them.”

All true, you might say, but what about Glenn Garvin?

Ok, you got me -- where else can you read anti-Census fear-mongering from our favorite local TV critic so loopy the Herald had to carry a public rebuke from the Arab American representative of the Census Advisory Committee?

(But Glenn covered the war in Nicaragua!)

You know, I started this morning in a good mood.