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Politics : Electoral College 2000 - Ahead of the Curve -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Carolyn who wrote (2696)	11/19/2000 4:09:48 PM
From: sandintoes	Respond to of 6710

I haven't talked to them yet. We got in last night, and today , I've been online. I'll let you know. I did see one humorous article in the Pensacola News Journal.. pensacolanewsjournal.com Pensacola is the good Florida; Palm Beach County is Flori-duh By Mark O'Brien News Journal columnist Thanks to all the election hijinks in Palm Beach County, we now find ourselves considered part of the State of Flori-duh. All Floridians are targeted as voting-impaired by comedians, commentators and other out-of- staters who don't grasp reality: Pensacola is not only many miles but also a few cultures away from Palm Beach County, land of the butterfly ballot. It's a common misconception among people unaware of Florida's size and multiple personalities. Key West, Palm Beach and Pensacola have little in common besides state government. You see it when Northerners come to visit Pensacola. They don't grasp our geography. ``Hey, I have a friend in Fort Lauderdale. Let's drive over and visit him after supper tonight.'' Fort Walton, yes; Fort Lauderdale, no. Or out-of-staters call to comment on typical Florida news: The Miami mayor's race stolen with bogus ballots. The federal prosecutor in South Florida accused of biting a stripper. The mayor of Hialeah Gardens convicted of seeking a hit man to kill her ex-husband. Hey, that's the Other Florida, you say. Our Florida isn't anywhere near as strange as the rest of the Sunshine State. No problems with recounts in Santa Rosa or Escambia counties; no pregnant chads; no flying squads of lawyers. Sure, we have our quirks - UFO sightings, tractor pulls, and an official or two who have been packed off to prison. But when we vote we use straight-arrow ballots and we can spell out the difference among Gore, Buchanan, Bush and Nader. Many folks don't realize that Our Florida is much different from the Other Florida (OK, you can say it: Our Florida is much better than the Other Florida). Our problem: We have an identity crisis. Our region has all sorts of nicknames, although none seem to resonate with a big audience: West Florida, Northwest Florida, the Panhandle, Florida As It Used To Be, Florida's Last Frontier, the Western Gate to the Sunshine State, and, worst of all, That Place between Tallahassee and Mobile. We're remote from the Other Florida, and few of us care to travel that way, because the further south you go the more Northern the atmosphere becomes. Maybe we'll go as far as Tallahassee or Gainesville, perhaps even Orlando for a brief visit. But most of us prefer to stay in our end of the state, far from canyons of condominiums, geezer gridlock, and those baffling butterfly ballots. This is not to say that the Other Florida is all bad; it often seems that only people in that end of the state can win the lottery. In some ways, we have more in common with our neighbors in Alabama. They share our pace of life and love of Southern cooking, and they, too, still like to refight the Civil War. Alabamians have such Southern hospitality that they made a standing offer to annex our chunk of Florida, but the Other Florida won't allow it. The Other Florida wants our tax money; besides, we have lots of prisons - one of our steadiest industries - and the Other Florida has a surplus of criminals who need longterm lockups. So it seems inevitable that Our Florida will remain a part of the Other Florida. Let's just hope that folks remember it wasn't us, but the people in Palm Beach County, who put the duh in Flori-duh.