Saturday, June 11, 2011

What a difference a few years make

"'Course I'm respectable. I'm old. Politicians, ugly buildings, and whores all get respectable if they last long enough." -John Huston as Noah Cross in "Chinatown," 1974

Former Miami mayor Maurice Ferre, who turns 76 on June 23, is, apparently - in the eyes of some at the Miami Herald - old enough to be considered "respectable" again. It wasn't always that way.

Did you catch the former mayor's little op-ed in the Herald last Wednesday?

The one in which he lectured Herald readers on their civic duty?
Miami-Dade will be facing difficult times and complex decisions in 2012. We need a mayor who is honest, constant, consistent, dependable and predictable.

We need an honest, fair, steady hand with good judgment, an active veto pen, a livable budget, with an administrative team of excellence. Beware of theatrical, “charismatic” or negative candidates. We need true leadership.
I love the Herald. I really do.

Most people read the Herald for news. I read it for laughs, however unintentional they may be.

Seriously Myriam, did you, or anyone on the editorial board, bother doing any research on Maurice Ferre before you asked him to write that column?

Asking Ferre to write about "negative candidates" and "leadership" is like asking Anthony Weiner to write a column on the dangers of Internet porn.

In Nov. 1983, a Miami News editorial said of Ferre: "for the past decade it has been Ferre more than any other individual who has made Miami's political system as ill as it is."

The editorial went on to say that Ferre "was instrumental in conducting one of the most vicious and divisive political campaigns in Miami history."

-from the Miami News, Nov. 16, 1983


And if you need more proof of how Ferre was viewed at the time, check out the cartoon below - that ran the same day as the News editorial - by Miami News cartoonist Don Wright, showing a victorious Maurice Ferre popping his head out of a garbage heap while giving the "V" for victory sign.

Maurice Ferre? You can't be serious, Myriam!

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