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Irony Puts Sting In Life's Little Jokes

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The Tampa Tribune

Published: November 12, 2007

Irony is a useful tool in framing perspectives. It can be mildly amusing when your dentist's name is Dr. Paine or your lawyer is Crooks, or perhaps you've heard of the plumber named Leake?

It skewers ideas in ways no human ridicule can touch. Consider this: On Jan. 21, 2002, the Newspaper Association of America named Kmart "Retailer of the Year." The very next day, headlines across the country bellowed about the impending bankruptcy of Kmart - the largest retailing bankruptcy ever.

Oh, the ever-humbling power of irony! When the St. Petersburg Times published an in-depth report on Florida's woeful education system in December 2001, they included a map of the United States that showed what each state spends per student. Three of the states on the map were mislabeled, leading many readers to write in and ask whether the editors, reporters and graphic artists were educated in Florida.

Irony reared its maddening head again recently. On Halloween (of course!) there was a story buried in the paper about a 2 percent surcharge being placed on every homeowner and commercial insurance policy written in Florida.

The reason for the surcharge, according to the Florida Insurance Guaranty Association, is to pay for the claims associated with the worst insurance failure in the state's history, Poe Financial. Three insurance companies under the Poe Financial umbrella got soaked with $750 million in claims following eight hurricanes that hit the state in two years.

The ironic part of the story is that Poe is named after its founder, William Poe, a distinguished resident of Tampa, former mayor, (previously) successful businessman and principled activist for community causes.

In 1997 Poe put up $750,000 of his own money to wage a legal fight against the use of taxpayers' money to go toward a private business that would benefit from playing in what is now Raymond James Stadium. His earnest argument against the constitutionality of stadium funding lost, and the $168.5 million facility went forward.

Two years later, William Poe was honored for his principled stand, receiving Hillsborough County's Moral Courage Award for his failed efforts toward saving money for taxpayers in Hillsborough County.

Now, 10 years after Poe's honorable stand, every person in the state who pays property insurance will be taxed 2 percent to fix the mess left by a private business. The amount raised by this surcharge (tax) will come to about $340 million, just three slim millions more than building two Raymond James stadiums.

There's no consolation in this lesson. That's the way it is with irony sometimes. It just is what it is.

Poe's a good man who made some bad business decisions. We all want our hurricanes to be weak and our football teams to be powerful, but sometimes the reverse is true. Some folks (insurance executives) bet on weak storms, and other folks bet on strong teams. The hope is that they aren't the ones paying when the dust clears.

But irony ensures that someone will pay, and when it comes to this matter involving millions of dollars based on a bad weather bet, the amount will surely be a ballpark figure or two.

The writer, who lives in Lutz, is president of JC Audiology Inc. He is a former Tribune community columnist.

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