My screenshot of U.S. Rep. Frederica Wilson, new FL-24, on the July 31, 2011 episode of WPLG-TV/Channel 10 Miami's This Week in South Florida, with host Michael Putney. She was a no-show this past Sunday morning when she was supposed to meet at the Pembroke Park TV studio with her Democratic Party primary opponent. Surprise! Photo by South Beach Hoosier.
Cowardly cipher and U.S. Rep. Frederica Wilson (new FL-24) is a deliberate no-show at Channel 10's 'This Week in South Florida with Michael Putney.' Did her hats refuse to let her go and throw themselves in front of her door because they knew no-bargain-himself Rudy Moise WOULD show-up? Another South Florida mystery that will have an unhappy ending!
The poverty of Wilson's ideas and her ideals shows themselves once again -absent!Curious observers, South Florida bloggers and regular voters were left to wonder if perhaps her large collection of hats banded together and refused to let her go, and literally threw themselves in front of her door at home to keep her there once they heard that no-bargain-himself Rudy Moise WOULD show-up?
Rudy Moise?
Seriously?
This isn't "Who's afraid of Virgina Woolf?"
No, the real question is whoever is afraid of debating Rudy Moise, whom I rightly bashed four years ago in this space during the 2008 Democratic Party primary that was full of jokers and no aces -or whatever you'd call what actually happens on Sunday morning public policy TV shows- is seriously lacking in both smarts and moxie.
And yet, Wilson was a no-show, echoing recent public remarks of hers that she wasn't being treated fairly by the South Florida news media.
Fairly?
OMG!
That's rich considering the extent to which the South Florida news media, esp. female reporters, indulge her and treat Wilson, Debbie Wasserman-Schultz and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen like Easter Eggs made of 24-carat gold -with kid gloves.
Yet even that sort of deferential treatment is NOT up to the standards that Wilson thinks she's entitled to -what a delusional woman!
And just as delusional are her Democratic Party allies and acolytes scattered around South Florida who for reasons that are hard to figure, have swallowed the Kool-Aid and never seem to tire of making excuses for her odd words and actions, and her even more frequent absences from the job she was elected to, where Wilson has one of THE highest absentee rates in the entire current Congress, almost four times higher than average.
(For the record, I've never lived in an area of the United States before where the female reporters were so consistently deferential to elected officials, esp. to women officials. Sometimes, if you didn't know better, it's almost like they're auditioning to be press secretary. Jonetta Rose Barras, whom I read and listened to on WAMU-FM's "D.C. Politics Hour" for all 15 years I was in D.C. 1988-2003, would positively lacerate the current crop of pols, male and female, and eat the current wimpy female reporters down here for breakfast -or a late morning snack. Especially at the Herald! Sadly, there's nobody even remotely like her down here, cause boy could we ever use about two dozen of her clones scattered around the area to change the current sleepwalking news ethos down here.)
In the 19 months that she has been in office, Wilson's said nothing and done nothing of substance, and if she had health problems again, her staff would function just as well and hardly anyone would be the wiser.
To me, having grown-up down here and having been intimately involved with the Democratic Party in Dade County starting in 1976, and having lived and worked in the Washington, D.C,. area for 15 years and having come to know many congressman and their staffs very well, practically knowing the House and Senate buildings like the palm of my hand, Wilson, sadly, is, in part, the logical result of years of declining news standards and so many experiences reporters leaving.
People with institutional knowledge of people, places and things who wouldn't put up with BS from anyone, much less, elected officials like her who think they can skate.
In short, the old-fashioned reporters who would do many stories in a day, even if you only saw one actually air on the local evening newscast.
Compared to many other large cities where TV reporters and their investigative mind-set literally infuse a station's DNA despite the normal staff turnover that occurs, because, for better or worse, this has been a launching pad for careers, we have a very small number of reporters who don't need to be asked to set people straight on the facts and the history of the area when someone starts dissembling.
(It's the news version of the unfortunate phenomenon we've seen in sports coverage and sports radio in the Miami area the past twenty years, where there are simply far too many people from New York and New Jersey running things and getting air-time who came down here after Hurricane Andrew, and whose knowledge of South Florida sports history comes almost entirely second-hand thru ESPN or Sunday or Monday Night NFL telecasts. Not that this wasn't always a second-tier sports town, though, because it was, but the Herald's sports section decline for the past 15 years sure hasn't helped things, and is just one of the more tangible signs of the decline. So much technology to make things better for readers, yet so much backwardness and lack of feel for the area. And the four English language local TV sports coverage for a typical week, collectively, is worse than what the old WTVJ-TV Channel 4 of sports director Bernie Rosen would produce on a single 6 p.m. Friday night telecast before a big Dolphins game, when the tension and excitement around town was palpable. Now, well, no thanks! It's worse than awful!)
If this no-show by Wilson were actually surprising news, I'd have posted this Sunday afternoon after the show aired and her craven refusal to show-up and be subjected to some scrutiny would get the good once-over it deserves.
But it was no surprise that she was a no-show, since she's one of the biggest no-shows in Congress when it comes to votes, as I've mentioned here previously, as well as in the Herald.
It's really a damn shame that the City of Aventura in Northeast Miami-County isn't part of her new FL-24/old FL-17 Congressional District like it ought to be, and is instead, like before the recent redistricting, part of Debbie Wasserman-Schultz's.
Then we could see what happens when some of the many, many people in Aventura who have the smarts, political savvy and financial means to put their money where their mouth is -and then some!- could blitz the area with deadly precise commercials detailing Wilson's many failures and deconstruct the fact that in Washington, she is a nobody with no influence and no knowledge that anybody else in Congress respects or admires.
She's a walking, talking cliche and seemingly afraid of having smart people ask hard questions where she can't weasel her way out with preposterous statements.
Very sad.
IF she had shown-up, and I never thought she would once I heard Michael Putney say on Saturday night's telecast -or was it Friday's?- that he'd have Wilson and Moise in studio for his Sunday show, I'd have posted screen grabs and given you the link to watch the show yourself, wherever you are in the world.
Citizens in the new FL-24 with low social mobility and with bleak economic prospects deserve better than Wilson in Congress, and at least deserved an opponent who could bring home the fact how unsuccessful and unpersuasive Frederica Wilson is in Washington, D.C.
Chronicle her career arc in Washington this far as Congresswoman as circus clown...
If only...
Now, after her win Tuesday night, they are stuck with one of the least-effective members of Congress for another two years.
My condolences,
I used to be you, but now that I'm in the new FL-23, I can vote against DWS for the first time in 83 days, and vote against her I will.
With enthusiasm.
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Some recent -but not all- past posts about Rep. Frederica Wilson are here:
TUESDAY, AUGUST 2, 2011
NOT Breaking News: Rep. Frederica Wilson still holds common sense, FL-17 constituents & taxpayers 'hostage': Spend, spend, spend and MORE TAXES!
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 2, 2011
SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 18, 2011
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 22, 2011
