Wednesday, October 22, 2008

Obama's Black & White Cookies in Broward Lack Sufficient Salsa

Was going thru the latest campaign dispatches from our friends at the Central Florida Political Pulse blog of the Orlando Sentinel, and came across the following story on Obama's recent visit to the Deli Den on Sterling Road in next door Hollywood, Breaking news: Obama's off the bus again, posted by Jim Stratton on Oct 21, 2008 4:22:59 PM http://blogs.orlandosentinel.com/news_politics/2008/10/breaking-news-o.html which compelled me to write a response on their website concerning both Black & White Cookies, ethnic voting trends and bad journalism as malpracticed in South Florida in the year 2008, topics which have been on my mind since at least the August primary.
Below is a slightly longer version of that post.
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Haven't been up to the Deli Den on Stirling Road in two years, but for my money, nobody- but-nobody ever made Black & White cookies as full of sugar-filled delight like the Wolfie's Deli Bakery connected to the Rascal House at NE 163rd Street & NE 14th Avenue in North Miami Beach, across the street from the old 163rd Street Shopping Center. http://www.browardpalmbeach.com/1998-08-13/restaurants/worth-the-wait/

I used to buy those cookies at least twice a week for myself and my friends while walking to my 7 A.M. class at NMB, when I knew we needed an extra bit of energy, especially after late-running Monday Night Football games, back before the VCR changed sleeping patterns of high school students. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Miami_Beach_Senior_High_School

Their kitchen's early morning cooking was like an olafactory alarm bell set for 6 A.M, that enveloped the whole neighborhood with the sweet smell of delicious goodies that were now fresh and available. Not unlike the way the Kentucky Fried Chicken on NE 15th Avenue did in the afternoon on the way home, making it impossible to walk home without thinking of chicken.


Though I lived four blocks south of there on NE 159th Street, on windy days that smell would come wafting down the street and hit me like a hammer the moment I stepped out of the house, as I made my way to JFK Junior High or North Miami Beach Senior High School, and I know it had the same effect on other neighborhood kids.


Though I and the other kids who lined-up inside Wolfie's to place our order would always say we'd wait 'till we got to school to start munching them, I'd usually give in to tempation and start munching while I was walking thru the empty 163rd Street Shopping Center on my way to school, somewhere just past the front of the Burdine's I worked at, along the side of the two-story J.C. Penney's and then down the steps of the back of Penney's and thru the massive parking lot/bus Dade bus depot on the NW corner of the shopping center, across the street from the two schools I was at from 1973-'79.

I think I could still walk that route with my eyes closed if it were there, so many thousands of times times did I walk that route to school, sporting events, plays and concerts.



Even as the national MSM, Miami Herald, South Florida Sun-Sentinel and Miami-based local TV continue their chronic mis-adventures in political mis-representation and LCD reporting, they NEVER ask pointed questions of well-known Broward political leaders like Dem honcho and lobbyist Mitch Caesar, on why Broward Jewish Dems in their condo strongholds CONSISTENTLY refuse to vote and support well-qualified Hispanic-surnamed candidates, as if it's not completely predictable that this'll result in bad social and political consequences for everyone here in Broward in the future.

I've heard Caesar say that Hispanics were supposed to a "growth target" for Broward Dems, but you sure don't make yourself more attractive when you just wink at this troubling voting trend, as if nobody else around notices it.
We do.


Maybe it's yet another manifestation of how truly sorry the South Florida media is down here in the year 2008, that the reporters, editors and news directors are much more afraid of losing access to him and his pithy comments, than they are to subjecting him to the sort of tough questioning they'd give anyone else, especially a businessman.


Meanwhile, the Central Florida Political Pulse continues "keeping it real" by taking names and calling 'em as they see 'em.



Frankly, I get more honest insight from their daily CFPP blog posts on the myriad ups and downs all over the state, than anything the Herald, Sun-Sentinel or local TV mis-reports, since they continue to treat Central Florida and the rest of the state with the worst kind of know-it-all attitude, witness their positively dreadful reporting on the Second Amendment, guns & Walt Disney World story, or their lack of reporting on the many political problems associated with creating a smart, useful and well-managed Central Florida commuter train, along with the CSX Corp. and Trial Lawyers angle tossed in for good measure.


(To refresh yourself on that issue, see my July 3rd post, Where's the Disney story in the Miami Herald?
http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2008/07/wheres-disney-story-in-miami-herald.html and the Orlando Sentinel story that got to the heart of the matter, Walt Disney World fires back on guns at work by Scott Powers and Jason Garcia
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/business/orl-disneyguns0308jul03,0,197883.story

The Herald's first story was an AP dispatch on July 3rd, followed by a superficial six-sentence AP follow-up on July 9th about WDW firing an employee. It wasn't until July 11th, eight days after the story broke, that an actual Herald reporter -Marc Caputo- wrote anything about the story. Disney's gun stance draws fire - Walt Disney World said its employees are exempt from a law that lets workers keep guns in their cars.
So that's how the state's largest newspaper covers the largest private employer in the state!)


For all of South Florida's often valid complaints about the parochial, shallow and and simplistic way the national media misreports the positive and negative realities of social and political life in South Florida to the rest of the nation and the world, their two largest newspapers do their own dwindling number of readers no favors by treating the rest of the state as a neverending source of "oddities" to be mocked, forever painting it with the same broad, stereotype-heavy brush full of condescendsion that their own columnists decry when the focus is on us.



Thank goodness for the Central Florida Political Pulse!http://blogs.orlandosentinel.com/news_politics/