Carl Hiassen

[telebob x]

http://www.miami.com/herald/content/opinion/columnists/hiaasen/index.htm

>From: "Wayne Johnson" <cadaobh2@brgnet.com>
>To: "telebob x" <telebob98@hotmail.com>
>Subject: RE: Carl Hiassen
>Date: Fri, 9 Nov 2001 10:59:08 -0500
>
>Who are what is a Carl Hiassen?  Never heard of him/it?
>
>Wayne
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: austin-ghetto-list-admin@pairlist.net
>[mailto:austin-ghetto-list-admin@pairlist.net]On Behalf Of telebob x
>Sent: Thursday, November 08, 2001 8:18 PM
>To: austin-ghetto-list@pairlist.net
>Subject: Re: Carl Hiassen
>
>
>By Todd Leopold
>CNN
>
>(CNN) -- A city official known as "Mayor Loco." A con artist who performs
>plastic surgery on several patients before being unmasked. An extortionist
>who threatens housepets. A commissioner who sees pornography in a photo of
>vegetables.
>
>Sound like characters from a Carl Hiassen novel?
>
>Try characters from Carl Hiassen's real life.
>
>These people -- and assorted real estate developers, convicted felons,
>government officials, Bible thumpers, and theme-park executives, some of
>whom are difficult to tell apart from the others -- make up the cast of
>characters in "Paradise Screwed" (Putnam), a collection of Hiassen's Miami
>Herald columns. Southern California may have a reputation as the flake
>capital of the United States, but based on Hiassen's work, the swampy
>flatlands of Florida seems to have oozed past the Golden State when it 
>comes
>to offering a slough of greed, corruption, chicanery, and flat-out bizarre
>behavior.
>
>What is it about a state that attracts such a motley crew?
>
>"I can't explain it," the 48-year-old author of "Sick Puppy" and "Strip
>Tease" says in a phone interview from his home in the Florida Keys. "I 
>think
>in the old days, the nexus of weirdness ran through Southern California, 
>and
>to a degree New York City. I think it's changed so that every bizarre story
>in the country now has a Florida connection. I don't know why, except it
>must be some inversion of magnetic poles or something. It's very, very
>strange."
>
>A voice of 'reasonable and proper disgust'
>That strangeness has been good for Hiassen. He seldom has to work hard to
>come up with ideas for columns -- or novels, for that matter. Granted, 
>there
>are those rare mornings when there are no indictments, no dead voters, and
>south Florida looks like "a normal place."
>
>Most of the time, though, goofy events abound, and "It's like shooting fish
>in a barrel."
>
>
>His take on the Sunshine State: "All paths of slime and disreputability 
>seem
>to lead here."
>
>Hiassen says the line with an overlay of jokiness, but underneath, he's 
>dead
>serious. A Florida native, he's genuinely upset about the depletion and
>abuse of the state's natural resources, and has taken on Disney -- a bete
>noire he blames for a host of ills -- in both his columns and a book-length
>essay, "Team Rodent: How Disney Devours the World."
>
>Hiassen makes no apologies for his aggressive tone.
>
>"By and large, (the topics are) something that has now gotten the attention
>of the general media down here, but nobody is coming out and saying the
>obvious thing -- (like) 'the guy's a crook,'" he says. "That's where I come
>in. You have to have some voice of reasonable and proper disgust over these
>things. ... That's the great thing about having your own column. You can be
>irreverent when everyone else is trying to be Peter Jennings."
>
>He credits luminaries such as Jimmy Breslin, Mike Royko and Murray Kempton
>as influences. From them, he learned not to be afraid and to say exactly
>what he's thinking, Hiassen says.
>
>"When you're given a newspaper column, you're not being paid to sit on a
>fence and scratch your chin and say 'On the one hand this' and 'On the 
>other
>hand that,'" he says. "You're getting paid for your opinion. So don't be a
>candy-ass about it: What do you think?"
>
>An 'honor and privilege'
>Hiassen still writes two columns a week for the Herald. The rest of the
>time, he's working on a book, he says.
>
>He had help going through the 15 years' worth that make up "Paradise
>Screwed." A friend at the University of Florida, Diane Stevenson -- she'd
>edited a previous collection of Hiassen's work -- did the initial culling,
>and then the two of them selected the 200 or so pieces for the book.
>
>Re-reading the columns was enlightening, he says.
>
>"Some of the lowlifes (I wrote about) are still skulking around. They're
>just as sleazy as I predicted," Hiassen says, noting that he once worried
>that he was too harsh on some people. No longer. "I should have drop-kicked
>some of these people another 10 yards."
>
>In some cases, he gets that chance in his novels. His new one, "Basket
>Case," is due in January, and this time he takes on the hand that feeds him
>-- corporate media. "I won't be making any friends in the corporate 
>suites,"
>he says.
>
>By now, Hiassen could easily retire from newspapers and write his novels.
>Most of his works have been bestsellers, and Hollywood has snapped up a
>couple, too.
>
>Sure, Hiassen says, he's pondered giving up the life of an ink-stained
>wretch, but that's all.
>
>"Good satire comes from anger. It comes from a sense of injustice, that
>there are wrongs in the world that need to be fixed," he says. "And what
>better place to get that well of venom and outrage boiling than a newsroom,
>because you're on the front lines. ... (I) have this tremendous honor and
>privilege and this forum of writing a column, and I'm pretty lucky because 
>I
>work for a darn good newspaper, and by and large they leave me alone.
>
>"When that day comes (that it's time to go), I'll be happy to step aside,"
>he adds. "But right now, I still get off a good one now and then, and
>there's so much that needs to be written about."
>
>
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