News & Notes

1.  Gang members arrested in Broward, via Paula McMahon.

2.  @_FloridaMan is the subject of this fun NY Times article by Lizette Alvarez.  A bunch of other Florida men are quoted -- Billy Corben, Roy Black, Dave Berry, and Carl Hiaasen:

California’s kumbaya vibe is absent here, and so is Texas’ ideological fervor. With so many transplants, allegiances lie elsewhere. New arrivals are often shocked to find that South Florida is segregated, cliquish, brazenly rude and typically indifferent to most annoyances, including its maniacal drivers.

“That’s the most common misconception about Florida — that we are a melting pot,” said Billy Corben, who has made several Florida-esque documentaries, including “Cocaine Cowboys,” about the rise of cocaine violence and capitalism here in the 1970s and 1980s. “We are more akin to a TV dinner, where sometimes the peas spill over into the mashed potatoes.”

“As long as the Champagne is flowing and the checks are clearing,” he added, “nobody asks a lot of questions here about anything.”

Drugs and the weather are also culprits. The steaminess adds to the seaminess. And outdoor living makes for easy viewing and recording. As Mr. Barry put it, people do drugs and act erratically elsewhere. “But it’s not warm outside all the time everywhere,” he said. “In Ohio, they stay indoors.”

Here, reinvention remains the national pastime, which is why hucksters and criminals do quite nicely.

“As they say,” Mr. Corben remarked, “Los Angeles is where you go when you want to be somebody. New York is where you go when you are somebody. Miami is where you go when you want to be somebody else.”

3.  The Steve Chaykin ethics seminar is this Friday at U.M.  Looks to be a good conference in spite of the fact that yours truly will be speaking on social media.  

4.  Bernie Roman is out as the Miccosukee's lawyer.  Via the DBR:

"We have been notified this morning … that we no longer represent the Miccosukee tribe and that I am no longer their tribal attorney," Roman said, according to a transcript of Thursday's hearing.