Emerson, Lake & Palmer - Lucky Man (1970) http://youtu.be/hwCWCJLm6M0
South Florida's lazy, incurious and amnesia-prone news media has made 36-year incumbent Broward States Attorney Michael Satz the luckiest man in 2012 Florida politics by making him the man who ISN'T there -and neither are any stories about his opponents. Why?In an election year like this, with so very much at stake, South Florida's news media has taken yet another opportunity to show us that the vast majority of them are nothing like watchdogs, but rather sycophantic lapdogs that like being given scraps from the powerful and the well-heeled, and lapdogs that never bark at that.
Unfortunately, there's a price to be paid for that, and it's a very expensive one with real world negative consequences for Broward citizens like me and many people I know here who want to end the culture of corruption that permeates so much of Broward County's political, govt. and civic life.
People like me who want the Quality-of-Life to improve and that includes having an actual living -and-breathing civic society here that isn't just a club house of the wealthy and the powerful.
That is to say, a Broward civic society unlike our present one, where powerful people all throughout the county who have a connection to one another, continually make excuses for political miscreants in our midst and look the other way so they don't have to say something publicly.
Or, as seems to be more the case the last year or so, actually pretend that they don't know some inconvenient things that they DO know, so that way they can pretend that they don't really know that some pols down here don't follow the rules or play by the rules.
And to pick a self-evident issue I've mentioned here frequently, pretend they DON'T know that some elected officials don't even really live full-time in their legislative districts, like Florida State Rep. Joe Gibbons, so therefore they don't have to publicly chastise them, ostracize them and hold them publicly accountable.
But how can you in good conscience be a "representative" if you don't actually rub shoulders daily with the very people you're supposed to represent, people like me, whom Gibbons is supposed to represent?
That question never seems to occur to Broward's current civic society, who are not really "big idea" people to begin with.
So the result is that Florida State Rep. Joe Gibbons keeps getting a renewable hall-pass and the news media -except Bob Norman- ignores it, despite how preposterous it is.
In short, I want this area to be attractive to dynamic Fortune 500 companies to actually have operations down here withyout having to pay to play, and employ college-educated people who want to feel like they live in a real community and contribute to the betterment of the area.
Twenty-two weeks before the November election, and five months into a new year where there has been plenty of opportunity to do so if they had really wanted to, the South Florida news media have collectively, conveniently and consistently neglected to mention that in Florida's most ethically and politically corrupt county, Broward County, home of "fixers" large and small, Satz, the one elected person actually responsible for prosecuting corrupt elected officials and government employees and the well-heeled nexus of insiderdom that drives so many of the (bad) decision that take place here -lawyers, lobbyists and their campaign bundlers- is, himself, running for re-election in November.
And has connections to many of them.
Satz has a lot to be held accountable for, but in a way that would be almost unimaginable and shocking in another Top 40 media market, and even many small towns, where real journalism competition makes readers and viewers the real winners, Satz isn't held to account.
Not by a long shot.
As of today, 22 weeks until the election, NOT one South Florida TV station and neither the Miami Herald or South Florida Sun-Sentinel have done a single serious story -let alone several- about Broward States Attorney Michael Satz and the two people who aim to replace him after 36 years in office: Democrat Chris Mancini and Republican Jim Lewis.
How bad is it?
Well, consider the following
Satz has NOT been mentioned by name in the alternative Broward NewTimes, in print or their blogs, in over 17 months...
Really.
See for yourself: http://www.browardpalmbeach.com/search/results/keyword:Satz/type:all/
This was the last one:
The Daily Pulp
Sack Satz, Says Exonerated Domain Entrepreneur
Danny Pryor ? Let's say you really, really don't like somebody in a position of power. What do you do? Send letters? Pass on some dirt to New Times (yes, please)? Testify to the county commission? Deliver dog poo? Well, if your specialty happen...
By Stefan Kamph, October 15, 2010 @ 8:27 am
In March, the Sun-Sentinel brought up Satz and his Democratic primary opponent Chris Mancini together in a story about a legal maneuver by Mancini on behalf of a former elected officials that was in prison, but it was not an election story
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/crime/fl-eggelletion-prison-term-20120314,0,1655789.story
But simply being mentioned in a a story is not what concerned voters want at this point.
And the Miami Herald?
Jesus, the Herald.
Where to even start with them and their editors and management?
I mean it's Broward County, and you and I and everyone else paying close attention know that despite the fact that it's both foolish and counter-intuitive from both an economic and journalism level, since 35-40% of its readers are located here, under the current regime at One Herald Plaza, they are completely dis-interested in anything going on in Broward County.
We're all persona non grata until McClatchy Corp. brings in new people who will use a little common sense and prescience to take advantage of all the stories all around them that they consciously ignore or are too blind to see.
Don't hold your breath on THAT happening anytime soon before it's too late.
As I've written here so many times over the years, and for good reason, the Herald has proven thru their own actions -and lack of words- that they are NOT the friend of Broward's civic activists or Broward's taxpayers.
And every Sunday, in their feeble choice of the few Broward-related stories they run in the so-called Local & State section, they show how little they think or care about Broward County.
They do the same with their crappy four-page Issues & Ideas section that never ever has a Broward-related column, Guest Op-Ed or essay.
Month-after-month, year-after-year, unlike their treatment of Cuba.
Not to One Herald Plaza: Don't think for even a moment that Broward County commissioners Sue Gunzburger, Barbara Sharief and Chip LaMarca aren't already hip to the way your newspaper ignores the people, issues and personalities of this county.
Trust me.
So, since that's our bleak media landscape, sort of like the lunar surface, when do you think going to run the sort of meaty, fact-filled articles and analysis re Mike Satz that readers desperately want, and even used to expect?
Given the media geniuses involved at the Herald, the same people who, as I wrote here at the time, completely ignored the FL-17 congressional race in 2010 for most of the year and who made room for some banal pieces a month before the primary, you wouldn't be wrong to think that they're going to post it on the Fourth of July weekend, when nobody reads the newspaper.
Yes, the Fourth of July, the holiday where news stories go to die, when the JV team runs things while the well-known names and faces head out-of-town.
Not that any of the local Miami-area TV stations have anything to brag about on the Mike Satz front, considering how much "filler" they put on the air labeled as news that is anything but, even while ignoring stories that are right in front of them.
No matter how you add it up, the grand total of stories on the Broward States Attorney race in the year 2012 for WFOR-TV/News4, WTVJ-TV/NBC6, WSVN-TV/News7 and WPLG-TV/Local10 is ZERO.
I've been checking their archives over-and-over for months.
By the way, for those of you who are the slightest bit curious, based on my own conversations with knowledgeable and well-informed people in Broward County -and especially the popular sentiment in Hallandale Beach- IF there aren't any meaningful indictments at Hallandale Beach City Hall by the end of July, HB's well-informed voters will almost certainly vote overwhelmingly to send Satz packing on Election Day.
Justifiably so, too, given what we have had to deal with at Hallandale Beach City Hall for years.
How preposterous is is that after all those years in office, it's not just Broward voters, but rather most of the TV reporters in South Florida under 40 who know nothing about him and would not even recognize him if he stood next to them on an elevator?
Which means that if an articulate and dynamic opponent uses easily-understood fact-based anecdotes to show how little he has done, and define him during the campaign before he has a chance to define himself, Satz can be knocked-over much easier than you think.
Much easier!
Lots of well-informed Black voters in Broward County that I know and talk to regularly are more than ready to show Mike Satz the door with a kick on his way out
And the Broward County PBA is supporting Satz because... of what, exactly?
