I was born and raised in Florida. Spent my first 21 years there, went to college there, even met Mrs. Carpetbagger there. I mention this because when I see pieces that marvel at Florida’s unique ability to thrust itself into the national headlines, as the New York Times did yesterday and Tom Tomorrow does today, I just have to laugh. No matter what outsiders think of the state, no one can truly appreciate how ridiculous Florida is until you spend a considerable amount of time there.
California used to be the capital of cultural, political and environmental crises, the place that baffled and mesmerized with its vivid goings-on. But while Florida still has a smaller population – not only than California but New York and Texas, too – its rapidly changing demographics and politics, combined with the fact that it is still so young, make for a potent mix.
“California looks like a staid old New England state at this point,” said James Kane, chief pollster for Florida Voter, a nonpartisan polling group. “In some respects people here get embarrassed, but there is a certain amount of pride that we are not like any other state.”
That’s true; there’s no place quite like Florida. That’s not necessarily a complement.
Despite knowing better, I’ve come to wonder if the state is actually cursed. I escaped left Florida in 1995, and have been back only sporadically since, but have been amazed at how the state continues to serve as a magnet for insanity. In fact, it’s no longer even surprising; I’ve come to expect national tragedies and fiascos to all tie back to the state of my birth.
In 1999, the world was captivated at the Elian Gonzalez controversy. A year later, everyone was astonished at the state’s inability to count presidential votes. Where’d the original anthrax letters get sent? To an office building in Florida. On Sept. 11, 2001, terrorists hijacked airplanes and killed 3,000 people. Where’d they take flying lessons? Where else? Florida.
So when Terri Schiavo’s fate became the subject of national debate, was it any wonder where she lived? It had to be Florida.
How, exactly, did this tropical state manage to become such an attraction for disaster? The NYT suggested it has something to do with the transient nature of the state’s population.
[M]ost Floridians are not from Florida. If you moved from Boston, Cleveland or New York, Havana or Caracas or San Juan, watching high drama in your backyard feels not so different from watching from a relaxed distance, Mr. Kane said.
“It’s such a transient place that there’s not much sense of ownership,” he said. “The feeling might be, ‘I’ve moved to a state that has all these crazies living here. But not me.’ ” […]
“We have more intense collisions between gray hairs and brown hairs, Midwest people and Northeast people, money and nonmoney,” said James Twitchell, a professor of English and advertising at the University of Florida. “The barriers are not very high, so the collisions can occur as if you’re on one of those little electric cars at the fair, banging into things.”
On the other hand, the St. Petersburg Times’ Mike Wilson wrote a couple of years ago that it’s more of a genetic problem.
Friends in other states expect me to defend Florida in times like these. But like a parent making excuses for an aberrant teenager, justifying it is the best I can do. Look, this isn’t Boston, founded on intellect and the principles of religious freedom. This is Florida, founded by hucksters and luckless dreamers. Eccentricity is in its DNA.
I honestly can’t say what it is about the state that has turned it into such a decadent destination, but I find it hard to take issue with its notoriety and lunacy. It has a reputation — which is well deserved.
Wilson, for example, traveled to Guatemala in the early 1990s on assignment. While there, he spoke with locals who say they couldn’t imagine living in Florida. It was, in their minds, “too dangerous” and too overwrought with “bad people.”
Guatemala was in its 25th year of a civil war at the time.