Sticks of Fire: a Tampa blog

Philly Fans are the worst.  Everyone outside of Philadelphia knows that.  But those who live in the city don’t believe it, or won’t admit it.  Why?

Because the newspapers up there don’t ever talk about it.  Check the Notes on the Rays, where they quote Maddon about Philly fans behavior:

Maddon said he has enjoyed the interchange with Phillies fans at the game. He even gave one fan some good-natured grief over the brand of beer he was drinking.

The Rays manager is a native of Hazleton, Luzerne County, and he has family members at the World Series. Maddon had one complaint about some fans.

“Throwing mustard packs at my granddaughter is not very cool,” he said. “If you want to have arguments about [beer], I’m good with that, but leave the families alone.”

That’s the entire story as published on philly.com, Philly newspapers online home.  Uh, that’s not exactly the story, Marc.  According to John Romano of the St. Pete Times, Philly fans are big-time jerks:

Children were cursed at, and one 9-year-old boy had beer poured on him. A Rays family member stayed locked in a bathroom stall because, he said, Phillies fans were banging on the walls and threatening him.

The thing is that most places will actually do something about that boorish behavior.  On the other hand, the entire Philadelphia nation seems to enjoy this reputation.  Apparently, there were only 12 reported ejections, and Romano says they are all to blame:

… the team, the police, the mayor’s office and the citizens allow their reputation to be lowered down to the level of knuckle-dragging Neanderthals because they condone this behavior year after year after year. Condone may not even be the right word. They revel in it.

Hey John, call out the newspapers, too!  In addition to stricter rules and greater enforcement (48 arrested!) at games, when locals don’t act right, we get editorials decrying the behavior.  Up in Philadelphia, the newspapers just sorta ignore it.  Unless it happens to their fans.

Then the Philadelphia Inquirer is compelled to write about those mean, mean Dodger fans in LA:

Dodgers fans “would go get beer and stand in front of us and not move - stay there like a second too long,” [Phillies fan Rob] Palmer said. “They booed a very attractive Phillie fan and her company away…”

Seriously - they wrote that holding up opposing fans for ONE SECOND was considered offensive behavior directed at Philly fans.

We all knew they were jerks, but apparently they are sissies, too.

I’ve mentioned all the times that Tampa Bay has played Philly’s sports teams in the playoffs.  Well just as many times, we’ve had the local media run the “Cuban Sandwich or Cheesesteak?” article, and this year is no exception.  Riveting stuff.

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Speaking of sandwiches…  It’s been a bad year for oldies DJ ‘Marvelous’ Marvin.  He got a knuckle sandwich in March, and this week, Mason Dixon downsized him from Q105.  You can hire Marvelous Marvin to DJ at your wedding reception.

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Speaking of job searches…  He could apply for a job at the Super Bowl.  S.A.F.E. Management wants to hire 2,000 people for Super Bowl security.  The local jobs will pay $8 to $10 per hour.  (I’m pausing here to give you enough time to consider this).

They are looking for any 2,000 people to fill a security job that will last a week and pay 10 bucks an hour before taxes.  Don’t you feel safe?

And assuming 40 hours at $10 for 2,000 people, you can be sure they are including $800,000 in those calculations for “Super Bowl Economic Boon,” even though about $250K of that will go straight to the IRS.  And who knows how much money is headed to Detroit, where S.A.F.E. (Security, Athletic Facilities & Events) Management is based?

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Speaking of security…  If the TSA assures us that our nearly-nude images cannot be copied, stored, or transmitted, then how did they get photos of the images printed in the newspapers?

We’re looking for voter guides from our local media outlets.  Something that can tell us about, say, Pete Gifford.

ABC Action News is “Taking Action for You,” and invites you to Democracy 2008, which can fill you in on all of the happenings in the presidential race and national politics.  I was unable to find a “local races” page.

10connects.com wants to help you “connect,” but not with local races.  Their election page is overwhelmed with stories about the presidential race.

MyFox Tampa Bay allows you to track political news - as long as it’s national.  Their Voter Info page are just links to local county elections web sites.

Luckily, the two daily newspapers as well as the 24 hour news station Bay News 9 have published real voting guides online for residents to reference and scan over for information about the candidates.

…though it’s easy to nitpick the shortcomings, the efforts of TBO, the Times, and BN9 (read about them after the jump) are far greater than those above.

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Great read:  If we decide the election, who are we?

In spite of the “election” reference, it is not just about politics.  It’s a great insight as to the paradox that is “the people of Tampa Bay.”

It helps that it is written by Ben Montgomery, one of the most talented writers in all the land.  I encourage you to read the whole bit, but check out these tidbits:

In the Tampa Bay area, we live at the vortex of bloodshed and sunshine and amusement and unpredictability, much like it must have been in the early days, before Plymouth Rock and Jamestown, when the first North American exploration by white men was launched right here. Panfilo de Narvaez, 1528.

We are diverse racially, economically, politically and ideologically, but the area is not so much a melting pot as it is a collection of tribes situated around a giant pool of saltwater.

We feed our homeless and drive them from public property, thumbs hooked on Tasers.

Our cities are brimming with Rhodes scholars and transvestlte prostltutes, wiccans and nudlsts, carnies and Southern Baptists, retirees in golf carts and military personnel from MacDill Air Force Base, where the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are run. Two of the Sept. 11 terrorists blended right in.

We have, according to a 2006 UCLA study, the fifth-highest percentage of gay, lesbian and bisexual residents of the top 50 metropolises in the country, behind San Francisco, Seattle, Boston and Portland, Ore. We also have a county commission that voted to ban county sponsorship of Gay Pride events.

There is much more to highlight our collective schizophrenia - go read the whole thing, and add your own examples here in the comments.

Maybe it should have been a dig on the local newspaper…

In their endorsement of Al Higginbotham, the Tampa Tribune had nothing to say about opponent Pete Gifford.  A google search suggests TBO.com has mentioned “Pete Gifford” exactly THREE times:

In a February 2008 list of BOCC primary candidates, 3 Hillsborough Commission Seats On Ballot In November; in a June 2008 list of candidates who qualified, Candidates Qualify For Elections; and in the endorsement of Al this week.

Did they attempt to interview him?  Did they even bother reading the Vote Pete Now website?  We have no idea - the Trib doesn’t say anything.

Let’s check Tampabay.com.  Google shows that “Pete Gifford” shows up three times on Tampabay.com:  in a June 2008 list of candidates who qualified, again in a list of general election candidates on the “Know Your Candidates” (ha!) page.  And he is included in the caption of a photo (not actually quoted in the story) at a meet the candidates event in Brandon in August 2008.

Did they attempt to interview him?  Did they even bother reading the Vote Pete Now website?  We have no idea - the St. Pete Times doesn’t say anything.

So, who is Pete Gifford?

Along with Kenndey Blvd., Rudy Giuliani, and Mike Alsott, we now have Fox 13 offering “Congratulaitons” to your Tampa Bay Rays.

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They say the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

It looks like The Tennessee Tribune is laying some asphalt.

In the hopes of encouraging their citizens to vote in 2008, the weekly newspaper that reaches to the heart of Tennessee’s Black community has printed thousands of names of Nashville Citizens Registered to Vote in the Last Presidential Election Yet Have Never Voted.

Newschannel 5 interviewed the publisher of the registered non-voters:

“We have people over here who won’t go out and vote,” said Rosetta Miller-Perry, president and publisher of the Tennessee Tribune. “It’s ridiculous. It really hurts.”

… The paper plans to publish the names of voters in four to five districts with predominately African-American voters in them.

“Sometimes when you embarrass people they do the right thing,” Miller-Perry said.

The paper published a list during the 2006 Senate race. She said in one district voter turnout went from 37 percent to 65 percent after the list was published.

“We need to live up to the civil rights that have been given to us,” she said.

Indeed we do, Ms. Miller-Perry.

(And, yes, I’m completely ignoring the likelihood that she is motivated by the fact that most of the people in the district she is “outing” would likely vote for the Democratic candidate - see the “it really hurts” comment.)

But I’m afraid this goes a bit too far.

Oh, I was briefly tempted to go grab a similar list of Tampans, but of the thousands of names (and addresses) printed in Nashville, I would imagine that hundreds of these people have legitimate reasons for not voting.  And I don’t think you can call out an entire group of people in a public forum like this.

But most importantly, the right to vote also includes a right not to vote, and therefore these people have an expectation of some privacy in that matter.

I’d rather ask them face to face, anyway.

You have to wonder if the Tampa Tribune is going for some sort of world’s record in poor decision making. After the week they had, how else would you explain the puff piece Q & A with Buccaneers tight end Jerramy Stevens in Anwar Richardson’s “Wide Right” column published on Sunday?

Stevens, who has a history of arrests for assault with a deadly weapon, marijuana possession, sexual assault and drunk driving (if you want details, click here, but prepare for a long read… and to be thoroughly sickened) is in his first season with the Buccaneers.

“I can remember the worst beating I got. It wasn’t painful because of the physical part, but it was painful because of the trauma of the situation. When I was a little, I set these trees on fire by my house and I called the fire department. I was putting it out, and right as I was getting it out, my dad pulled up and that trauma from the look in his eye lasted a lifetime for me.”

(Cross posted at Ridiculously inconsistent trickle of consciousness)

Jennifer Howe is now the FORMER weekend anchor for Tampa Bay’s 10, and their new chief meteorologist is already dressing for Florida weather.

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Wayne Garcia says that beginning Monday, the Tampa Tribune print product will include only two sections, News / sports / whatever and classifieds / comics.

In the same blog post, we hear that at least four more editorial employees have been let go, and an update on the reorganization.

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CL Senior Editor John Sugg weighs in on the CL bankruptcy news.