Florida Man

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The Guardian:
It is one of the nation’s favorite jokes – with an entire state as the punchline. And at its center stands Florida Man, the mythical yet mercurial figure whose bizarre real-world antics have come to personify the perceived craziness of life in the Sunshine State.
Briefly, back in the spring, Florida Man became a global social media phenomenon. Internet users were encouraged to Google the phrase along with their birth date to see just what shenanigans involving nakedness, alcohol, exotic wild animals, or sometimes all three, Florida Man had got up to on their special day.
Millions around the world were enthralled to discover tales of drunken Florida citizens crashing their lawnmowers into police cars, pulling alligators from their yoga pants during routine traffic stops or setting fire to their houses while trying to barbecue cookies in the nude.

But if the Florida Man challenge has faded from the collective psyche, Florida Man as a newsmaker clearly has not. Already this week he has picked a fight with a tree, dumped live catfish on a woman’s lawn while posing as an FBI agent and been arrested for shooting hoops in a public park in the buff.

And only last month the Easter Bunny was caught brawling on a sidewalk in Orlando.
Little wonder, perhaps, that some are attempting to monetize the concept by trademarking the term Florida Man and selling T-shirts and coffee mugs, and a cable network is pressing ahead with plans to give the state’s most dysfunctional superhero his own primetime TV show.
“You find weird stuff going on anywhere you find people, but Florida is absolutely the gold standard,” said Craig Pittman, a Tampa Bay Times journalist and author of the New York Times bestseller Oh! Florida.
Florida Man, Pittman says: “could be anyone from the 21 million people in Florida, male or female. It’s become this all-encompassing stereotype of a bungling, often inebriated person and doing something ridiculous or clearly insane, and the very least incongruous.
“You can trace it back to the 2000 election recount. Until then we didn’t have that kind of reputation, then the three weeks we spent trying to figure out who the president was going to be based on people squinting at little hanging chads in Palm Beach county convinced people that maybe the folks in Florida are not as bright as we thought.”
From then, Florida’s reputation as the weirdest, wildest, wackiest state was secure. In 2001, the news aggregation site fark.com gave the state its own topic tagline. Twitter’s @_floridaman handle launched in 2013 and is closing in on half a million followers.

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31 thoughts on “Florida Man”

  2. reposting pogo’s comment this morning from last thread:

    Eugenie Robinson has an interesting column at WaPo today. An excerpt:

     

     
    Justin Amash finally said out loudwhat many other Republicans know but will only whisper: “President Trump engaged in specific actions and a pattern of behavior that meet the threshold for impeachment.” Amash’s party may never forgive him. His nation ought to thank him.

    The Michigan congressman on Saturday became the first significant GOP official to acknowledge the clear implication of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s report. Every Republican member of Congress should be pressed for an on-the-record response. How does the president’s conduct not amount to obstruction of justice? Where does the Constitution give Congress the right not to act?

    Democrats should be asked these questions, too. I understand that many, apparently including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), think that starting impeachment proceedings would damage the party’s prospects in the 2020 election. But isn’t duty supposed to take precedence over political expediency? It clearly did for Amash, whose reward for his principled stance was a Twitter blast from Trump and a primary challenge for his seat.
    [continues]

     

    Interesting take on the Amash dust up.

     

  3. more on amash in wapo’s ” Republicans caught between Trump and reluctance to penalize Rep. Amash after ‘impeachable conduct’ declaration“

    […]

    Amash continued presenting those views Monday, issuing a fresh series of tweets arguing that his critics are “resting their argument on several falsehoods.”

    [continues]

  4. Reposting Pogo’s last post from the prior thread:
    And just in time for the Memorial Day weekend WaPo searches for the best hotdog out there– ranking 15 so you don’t have to. And the best one was – drumroll, please – not one you’d necessarily predict. Here’s a hint – you’ll have to have a membership to buy these. Enjoy.

  5. pogo, you know the very best hot dog is whatever comes charred just so from over a campfire right after a long afternoon’s fun at your favorite beach or riverside park

  6. interesting when you think of all those fox listeners hearing the audience applause throughout and the standing ovation at the end

    the hill:

    Fox News’s town hall with Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg was watched by 1.1 million total viewers on Sunday night, according to Nielsen Media Research.

    The event, co-moderated by “Fox News Sunday” anchor Chris Wallace, also delivered 172,000 viewers in the key 25- to 54-year-old demographic that advertisers covet most.

    The audience in total viewers was a 22 percent increase when compared with the 2019 average of regular programming in the 7 p.m. time slot in which the Buttigieg town hall aired.

    The numbers of total viewers and younger demographic categories placed Fox News at the top of the cable news ratings race during the hour the event aired from 6:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m.

    [continues]

  7. mediaite:

    Pete Buttigieg received a standing ovation from the crowd at the end of his Fox News town hall in Claremont, New Hampshire Sunday night.

     

    The South Bend, Indiana Mayor and 2020 presidential candidate drew raucous applause throughout his town hall with Fox News anchor Chris Wallace, particularly when he dismissed President Donald Trump’s tweets: “I don’t care,” Buttigieg remarked when asked how he felt about the missives.

     

    At the end of the town hall, Wallace gave him time for a closing statement:

     

    Look, what we’re trying to do here is different. Because the moment that we’re in is different. I get that a millennial, midwestern mayor is not what leaps to mind when you think about a prototypical candidate for president. But I also think we’re living — if it’s hard to figure out what’s going on right now, it’s because we are living on one of those blank pages in between chapters of American history. And what comes next could be ugly or it could be amazing. And I believe running for office is an act of hope, and so is voting for somebody, and supporting somebody and volunteering for somebody. I hope you’ll join me in making sure that that next era is better than any we’ve had so far.

    “Thank you, mayor,” Wallace replied, as the audience began to stand in applause, surprising the anchor. “Wow, a standing ovation,” he remarked.

     

    Buttigieg spent the town hall deftly handling Wallace’s pointed questions on a host of issues from fiscal policy to late term abortions. The South Bend, Indiana mayor also addressed an elephant in the room: a split amongst 2020 Democrats over whether they should appear on Fox News, after Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) said she would refuse. Buttigieg said he believes much of the Fox News audience tunes in “in good faith,” but blasted the network’s opinion hosts during his appearance, singling out Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham.

     

  9. farewell to an old friend and a really fine florida man in the best sense as reported by politico’s florida playbook this morning:

    RIP: Sandy D’Alemberte, who died at the age of 85 on Monday, was a giant in Florida’s political, legal and higher education circles. He began his career as a legislator from Miami-Dade County and he was one of the architects of an overhaul of Florida’s judicial system that remains in place today. D’Alemberte went on to be dean of the Florida State University law school, president of the American Bar Association and then president of FSU for nearly a decade. He was a champion of open government who paved the way for cameras to be used in the state’s courtrooms.

  10. wapo on the financial records handover decision:

    […]

    “It is simply not fathomable,” the judge wrote, “that a Constitution that grants Congress the power to remove a President for reasons including criminal behavior would deny Congress the power to investigate him for unlawful conduct — past or present — even without formally opening an impeachment inquiry.”

    […]

    Mehta’s ruling drew comparisons between Trump and President James Buchanan, whom historians have blamed for failing to prevent the Civil War and who is generally considered one of the country’s worst leaders. Buchanan, too, complained bitterly about “harassing” congressional inquiries.

    Mehta noted that Congress also launched an investigation into the conduct of Bill Clinton before he entered the White House.

     

    “Congress plainly views itself as having sweeping authority to investigate illegal conduct of a President, before and after taking office,” he wrote. “This court is not prepared to roll back the tide of history.”

     

    The judge gave the White House a week to formally appeal the decision, adding that “the President is subject to the same legal standard as any other litigant that does not prevail.”

     

    An appeal could test decades of legal precedent that has upheld Congress’s right to investigate — a legal battle that is just one part of a broader effort by House Democrats to examine Trump’s finances, his campaign and allegations that he sought to obstruct justice in special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s Russia investigation.

    n the Mazars case, Mehta cut down Trump’s lawyers’ complaint that Congress was usurping the Justice Department’s powers to investigate “dubious and partisan” allegations of private conduct by inquiring into whether Trump misled his lenders by inflating his net worth.

     

    Rather, Mehta said, a congressional investigation into illegal conduct before and during a president’s time in office fits “comfortably” with Congress’s broad investigative powers, which include an “informing function,” or the power to expose corruption.

     

     

    Trump, his three eldest children and his company also are attempting to block a subpoena, issued by the House Financial Services Committee, seeking Trump’s bank records from Deutsche Bank AG and Capital One. A federal judge in Manhattan is set to hear that case Wednesday.

    [continues]

  11. Florida’s most enduring, most robust constitutional tradition is its absolute commitment to ‘Government in the Sunshine.’ Never heard of it? Google it and get an education.

  12. I’ve loved vacationing in Florida…  I would never want to live there.  I LOVE the changing of the seasons…  I HATE hot and humid weather.  I’m also not that much into flat terrain and shopping malls.  But… hey…  a good time can be had there.

  17. For a state with open government, Florida sure suffers from swarms of crooked politicians. We spent much of the ’11-’12 winter in Ft Lauderdale, where the mayor & council members who weren’t going to trial in criminal court had already been sentenced. 

  18. “For a state with open government, Florida sure suffers from swarms of crooked politicians.”

    X-r,  that’s the sun shining on them and making it easier to spot them. more likely to be reported.  bet just as many if not more crooked pols are hiding in the shadows in other states.  those states need to turn over the rocks and open the locked filing cabinets…. crooked politicians will scurry forth like when  light is turned on in a dark kitchen the roaches scatter.

  19. The good news is that trumputin has to reset daily. If it’s not a loss in federal court, it’s a dictator snubbing him, a pal getting perp-walked, a new WH leak, a republican pol thumbing his nose, new revelations about his unsavory family members, or yet another of the don’s crimes uncovered by WaPo, NYTI, or the WSJ.

  23. Ms Pat, regarding yours of 2:55. I hope you’re right for Floridian’s sakes. However, the likelihood that the pro-global warming party will realize its dream of a sunken Florida increases each year that it controls state ballot boxes and russian access to them.

  26. Ben Carson certainly had his ignorance on display.  Absolute proof that success in one area does not guarantee success elsewhere.  These days no one would want him prowling around their brain since he seems to have lost his mind.

  28. betsy or ben ? A choice too hard.
    Throw in barr, mnuchin, and the scoundrel at Interior.

  29. Mrs. P & I were listening to ole Ben on the way home tonight. She literally did not believe me when I told her he was a brain surgeon before he became HUD Secretary. 

  30. Well now, the IRS legal department actually wrote the memo before SFB and his minions, ummmm appointees, could bury it. 

    A confidential Internal Revenue Service legal memo says tax returns must be given to Congress unless the president takes the rare step of asserting executive privilege, according to a copy of the memo obtained by The Washington Post.
     
    The memo contradicts the Trump administration’s justification for denying lawmakers’ request for President Trump’s tax returns, exposing fissures in the executive branch.
     
    Trump has refused to turn over his tax returns but has not invoked executive privilege. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has instead denied the returns by arguing there is no legislative purpose for demanding them.
     
    But according to the IRS memo, which has not been previously reported, the disclosure of tax returns to the committee “is mandatory, requiring the Secretary to disclose returns, and return information, requested by the tax-writing Chairs.”

    This sounds important, no?  I’m looking for the ambiguity but it somehow escapes me. Curious. 

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