Life is a beach. Or is it?9.Teil.
Also in this series:
Bush against Bush (Apr 30, `04)
Kerry, the Yankee muchacho (May 7, `04)
You have the right to be misinformed (May 8, `04) 1.-3.Teil 08.05.05
An American tragedy (May 11, 04) #16184
In the heart of Bushland (May 12, 04) #16186
The war of the snuff videos (May 13, `04) #16338
The Iraq gold rush (May 14, `04) #16340
The new beat generation (May 15, `04) #16342
Taliban in Texas: Big Oil hankers for old pals (May 18, `04) #16567
FORT LAUDERDALE, Florida - Early on Sunday, a 10-story building was imploded in this aspiring, subtropical Venice. Call it Ground Zero by the beach.
It was a drill: the building had been bombed by "terrorists" and people were still trapped inside, so 200 specialists including a federal tactical response team, firefighters and paramedics from all over South Florida had to rescue 30 mannequins by all means available. Members of the tactical response team had working experience on the Oklahoma City bombing and on the attacks of September 11, 2001. This mini-September 11 did indeed look like September 11, not only because of the symphony of beeps that go off after a firefighter is motionless for more than 30 seconds, but because the controlled implosion looked eerily similar to the collapse of both Word Trade Center towers. Locals didn`t - or preferred not to - make the connection. They opted for having their photos taken beside this South Florida heap of concrete, steel and glass that soon will be replaced by a supermarket.
There will be no hanging chads in 2004. And no suspicious Supreme Court ruling. But Florida remains a key swing state. The re-election campaign of President George W Bush counts on the formidable regimenting machine of brother Jeb, the state governor. The campaign of Democratic challenger John Kerry will pull out all stops to capture the absolute majority of the key Latino, African-American and Jewish votes.
With more than 3,000 hours of sunshine a year and myriad opportunities for deep sea fishing, speed-boating, sailing, windsurfing, Jet-Skiing, water-skiing, parasailing and diving their way into instant gratification, one might assume residents of this mouth-watering paradise rescued from the swamps in the early 20th century would have no time for politics. Wrong. When asked who is their favorite Bush in office, the answer is not W or Jeb. It`s Delsa. Delsa Bush is a single mother born in Mississippi who recently became the first black woman to be appointed chief of police in neighboring West Palm Beach.
It`s true that the major local attraction is the wonderfully tacky International Swimming Hall of Fame (the pool is great, though). It`s true that some fabulous Art Deco heritage is drowned in a swamp of man-made "exotic landscapes". Its true mausoleums to the fine art of lap dancing break new barriers in the swank-meets-sleaze department. It`s true that an avalanche of Botox specialists ("10 years to get it ... 10 minutes to get rid of it"), micro-dermabrasion, breast implants, invisible hair surgery, mesotherapy, face lifts, eye lifts, tummy tucks, nasal surgery and labia minora reduction can only be summarized by this slogan of a cosmetic surgery boutique: "Transform your body or your money back."
But politics is high on the collective agenda. Here`s a sample of local public opinion.
# On Abu Ghraib: "That soldier who released the pictures of Iraqi prisoners being abused should be held responsible for the death of Nick Berg. He is a traitor" (a Floridian Latino). "We should not have had female soldiers in Abu Ghraib in the first place. This offends Muslim religious beliefs as much as the humiliation did" (a Floridian WASP).
# On jobs: "The president`s re-election is not the most important issue. Education, health care, jobs and the economy all pale in importance to this crisis of the armed forces. If he were to apply all his energies to helping the military crisis, he would gain far more votes than by campaigning" (a black unemployed Floridian).
# On the state of the union: "Borders closing, steady censorship of ideas and greedy motives for siege operations lead me to believe that George Orwell`s fantastic novel Nineteen Eighty-Four is soon to become a reality. Perhaps if we think about the laws we allow to pass, the US can continue to boast that it is a free nation" (a Jewish Floridian).
In the not-subdued glamour of Seven Isles Drive, or Lauderdale as Little Venice, inside a Mediterranean mansion with all the trappings and a 75-foot (23-meter) mega-yacht parked outside (there are 40,000 resident yachts, more per capita than anywhere in the United States; 100 marinas; and a labyrinth of almost 500 kilometers of inland waterways), a retired multimillionaire says the whole Iraq thing is "a non-issue. We should get our troops out and stop this mess. We`re running huge deficits. Our credibility is in tatters. This is very bad for business. Wanna go for a boat ride?"
Further north, far away from the maze of waterfront inns rented for the day or for the season at modicum prizes, on Cap`s Place, a quintessential Florida hangout in business since 1929 that drew Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill in their time, it`s quite something to find a daiquiri faithful in a somber mood: "I`d say that the myth that America is exceptional in moral terms, high above the rest of the world, something backed by the economic and military might of the US, that is gone, buddy."
The beautiful and the damned
South Florida, like the rest of America, is still feeling the shock waves of what Seymour Hersh of the New Yorker - once again - has exposed (Newsweek is following the same path): how an ultra-secret unit of 200 Pentagon insiders conducted a black operation against high-value al-Qaeda targets that then ran amok when transferred against the Iraqi resistance. General Geoffrey Miller himself - the former head of Guantanamo - recently said on the record that the counter-insurgency process in Iraq was "Gitmoized". The statement by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld`s spokesman Larry Di Rita that the "assertions ... are outlandish, conspiratorial, and filled with error and anonymous conjecture" is being described as "a classic non-denial denial".
There`s widespread speculation among the chattering classes that this may become the nail in Rumsfeld`s coffin - and as each day Iraq becomes an increasingly major factor in the presidential election, it may play all the way to November. At this past weekend`s meeting of the American Association for Public Opinion research, Douglas Strand, a political scientist at the University of California at Berkeley, said that "Iraq is sucking the life out of other issue deliberations". Bush`s approval on Iraq is now down at 35 percent: it was 44 percent in April. His overall job approval is now down to 42 percent.
How could Bush not have suspected something was rotten at Abu Ghraib? Part of the answer may lie in an insider account published by the Washington Times on Bush`s reading habits. Bush says: "My antennae are finely attuned. I can figure out what so-called `news` pieces are going to be full of opinion, as opposed to news. So I`m keenly aware of what`s in the papers, kind of the issue du jour. But I`m also aware of the facts." The problem is that the "facts" come from the newspapers themselves, delivered every day to the president in ultra-digested - and edited - form. Andrew Card, the White House chief of staff, the first person to see Bush in the morning, gives him "a quick overview and [gets] a little reaction from him. Frequently, I find that his reaction kind of reflects Laura Bush`s take."
So First Lady Laura Bush apparently reads most of each newspaper, while Bush only reads the sports pages - every day. Bush, in his own words, likes to "have a clear outlook. It can be a frustrating experience to pay attention to somebody`s false opinion or somebody`s characterization, which simply isn`t true." A conclusion is inevitable: Bush sees reading as an exercise on finding bias by the so-called "liberal media". So he reads practically nothing, as a way of preserving his "clear outlook" and not having to confront it with a critical point of view. In other words: by denying any form of criticism, his view remains the Absolute Truth.
South Florida is flocking in droves to watch Troy, in which Brad Pitt as a mask-sword-and-sandals Terminator makes a mockery of legendary Greek hero Achilles, if not Homer himself, in their tombs. Pitt strikes endless poses as if he`s playing for an audience at a South Florida Muscle Beach. There`s no pathos, except in the plight of Trojan Prince Hector (Eric Bana) and Trojan King Priam (Peter O`Toole, chewing up everybody on screen with his Shakespearean gravitas).
A comparison with Iraq is inevitable. Troy - like Baghdad - was invaded because of power, not a flimsy excuse (Prince Paris escaping with Helen of Sparta; weapons of mass destruction). The Trojans fight to their death, as the Iraqi resistance will. But unlike Homer`s account of the Trojan tragedy, there`s nothing larger than life in Iraq, only sordidness: Saddam Hussein running away, the Pentagon buying the Republican Guards, Bush declaring the war "over", Abu Ghraib, and now F-16s bombing holy Karbala, which for any Shi`ite in the world is worse than any Terminator nightmare from hell. There`s no sense of sacrifice (Hector), no sense of tragedy (Priam), no sense of hubris (Achilles). And most of all no one seems to merit the line Achilles delivers to Priam as he drags home the slain body of his son Prince Hector: "You`re a much better king than the one I`m fighting this war for."
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May 19, 2004