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Excerpts from the Tribune editorial department's bloggers. thinking out loud

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The Tampa Tribune

Published: March 29, 2009

Call The Waaaambulance
Brian Blair wants his reputation back. And which reputation would that be, I wonder? The one he had when he got paid to deceive the public? Oh - let me clarify that. Of course I'm talking about his stint as a professional wrestler, not his term on the County Commission. Is the reputation he seeks to have restored the one he has as a litigant against a local restaurant, where he sought damages for a fall he took there? ...

Blair has a long history of faking it - from the wrestling ring to the courtroom to the Commission Chambers - and he's pretty good at it. Now he's crying crocodile tears over being maligned during the campaign he recently lost. Life in the public eye is no picnic, as anyone who has ever been elected to a public office can attest. You need a thick skin.

Whining and crying about something someone says about you will not get you anything but more publicity, and more people wondering if the allegations are true. ... By dragging his tantrum into the courts, Brian Blair will do more lasting damage to whatever shreds of dignity he might have left than if he had just let it be. My advice: man up, Brian, and if you are the community-minded guy you say you are, show us by finding something worthwhile to do with your time.

Posted By Kris DiGiovanni

Heel Thyself

Today, I tried on far too many shoes for my own good.

Shoe-shopping has never belonged among favorite pastimes. Even so, I appreciate the ingenuity of such effective torture devices. Consider, for instance, the raised heel: Elegant. Sophisticated. But since when does sophistication demand heroism?

Other tootsie torments more fitting in the Tower of London than in the shopping aisle: If you insist on elongating a heel, then why squeeze it to a width incompatible with stability? You've already agonized my arch - why twist my ankle, too? If the human foot does not end in a razor-sharp toe, then why pretend it does? If padding inside the shoe cushions the foot, then why do so few shoes include it?

I'm not sure whether shoe-designers qualify as sadists. In accepting their ridiculous whims, though, consumers qualify as masochists.

Posted by Nicole Yunger Halpern

Fiscal Facts

The other day I experienced a surreal moment: as my ears rang with the cries of senators calling for those who received contracted AIG bonuses to commit hari-kari, I saw a panelist on The View rant about Bernard Madoff's wife owning a $39,000 grand piano. I then skimmed a newspaper article about a local woman who was suing a "wealthy philanthropist" because she fell off a horse after it was confronted by his renegade donkey.

Suddenly it occurred to me that it's now politically correct to denounce the rich. But when it comes to the law-abiding wealthy, we should probably sheathe our slings and arrows ... because the wealthiest 1 percent of the United States' population earn 19 percent of the income but pay 37 percent of the income tax, while the top 10 percent pay 68 percent of our tab.

America is the land of opportunity; the place where people who work hard can enjoy the fruits of their labor. It is - or should be - a place where two parties can enter into a legal, binding contract and have no fear of interference from the government.

Instead, we see our elected officials scrambling to punish AIG employees who received contracted bonuses for which they worked.

And while no one wants to see a swindler go unpunished, the Madoffs donated over $100,000 to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee ... where is the hue and cry to see that money returned to the hapless victims of Madoff's pyramid scheme?

Posted by Angela Hunt

Read our citizen bloggers daily on TBO.com and Sundays in the Tribune's Views section.

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