Kick Ass (20 page)

We in the media should come clean and explain our new guidelines for covering crime. Simply put: If it happens to a tourist, it’s a major story. If it happens to a local

well, tough luck.

As victims, tourists draw more sympathy. Locals get mugged and shot on a nightly basis; the presumption is that we ought to expect it. Tourists, however, arrive in Florida with a certain sunny innocence. The presumption is that criminals ought to cut them a break.

In fact, that seems to be happening. Metro-Dade Police report that robberies of tourists have declined sharply since last spring. The figures have drawn media notice and applause from the chambers of commerce.

Buried in the stories was the fact that the total number of robberies in Dade has actually increased, meaning the thugs are merely redirecting their felonious energies toward local residents. No one seems terribly concerned. The coverage of tourist crime offers a revealing lesson in competitive journalism.

Not all tourists are equal in the eyes of the media. Foreign tourists are more valuable than domestic tourists, news-wise. The more exotic the tourist, the bigger the story.

One rule is: The farther a person travels to come here, the more significant it is when he or she gets mugged. For example, the robbery of a British couple is automatically more newsworthy than the robbery of, say, golfers from Atlanta.

The accepted method of rating tourist crime is the well-established Fitz-Sanchez Scale, which relies on both geographic and cultural disparities:

” Category One Tourists are those from Great Britain, France, Germany, Spain, Scandinavia, Brazil, Chile, Australia, Japan and the Falkland Islands.

” Category Two Tourists are from Canada, the Bahamas, Colombia, Bolivia, Peru, Panama, Mexico and Jamaica.

” Category Three Tourists are from Nebraska, Kansas, Iowa, North Dakota, South Dakota, Maine and the Amish country of western Pennsylvania.

” Category Four Tourists are from the Sunbelt.

” Category Five Tourists are from New York, which means they’re practically local.

” Category Six Tourists are from elsewhere in Florida, and of marginal news value.

In our quest to report every single offense committed against tourists, we have conveniently broadened definitions. A “tourist” is no longer just a person who comes for vacation; it can also be somebody who’s down here to see relatives, or make airplane connections.

When we’re not really sure why they’re in Florida, we refer to them as “visitors.” This catch-all term suggests the same innocence as “tourists,” and generates the same public outrage.

Some locals complain that the new obsession with tourist crime is rooted mainly in economic panic. True, robbers tend to steal from our winter visitors the thing we Floridians cherish mosttheir money.

But only a hard-core cynic would insinuate that our interest in protecting tourists stems from anything but true compassion. Someday, if we’ve got any left over, we’ll show the same concern for the folks who live here year-round.

Blacking out Channel 7 unplugs the local color

June 5, 1994

Thousands of tourists are being deprived of one of South Florida’s greatest cultural treasures, the nightly newscast on WSVN-Channel 7.

To protest the station’s preoccupation with crime, some hotels have begun blocking WSVN’s news from their guests’ rooms. This stringent step is being taken to guard the tender sensibilities of visitors, in the same way that grownups lock the cable box so the kids won’t sneak a peek at the Playboy Channel.

The Continental Cos., which owns several local hotels, declared that it was fed up with WSVN’s nightly dose of violent video. Another hotelier complained that tourists “look at Channel 7, and they’re afraid to go out on the street.”

So what? Many folks who live here are afraid to go out on the streets, and it’s got nothing to do with Channel 7. It’s that evening lullaby of semiautomatic gunfire and police sirens that tends to discourage social excursions in some neighborhoods.

True, on a slow news day, anchor Rick Sanchez can make a routine domestic shooting sound like a sniper attack on an orphanage. But any out-of-towner who doesn’t recognize silly hype when he sees it deserves to be scared out of his trousers.

Queasy tourists we don’t need. Give us the tough ones. The wily and the battle-hardened. The adventurers.

The hotels’ contention that one reckless TV station can frighten off business is a backhanded compliment to Channel 7’s cold-blooded programming strategy; people do watch. On the other hand, there are nights when even MacNeil-Lehrer scares the hell out of me. The world can be a scary place.

Whether they’re from Oshkosh or Oslo, most of our tourists aren’t easily intimidated. Gun battle on South Beach? No problem. Tonight we’ll go to the Grove.

Whatever horrors might appear on the TV screen at six and eleven, these intrepid travelers won’t waste their precious vacations cowering in a $150 hotel room. They will put on bright telltale clothes. They will go outdoors. They will spend money.

Unless they’ve been living in a cave for the last 15 years, would-be tourists are well aware that Florida has guns, drugs, nuts and social unrest. To shield them completely from the daily flow, hotels would be forced to zap all local news off the cable.

Channel 7 merely offers a more elaborate smorgasbord than the others. Sure, it’s everything the critics say it issensationalistic, lubricious and irresponsibly gruesome. If Jeffrey Dahmer lived here, Channel 7 undoubtedly would be his favorite station.

Yet its hard-gore news format has drawn good ratings, worldwide press attention and imitators around the country. Like it or not, Channel 7 is famous.

That’s why hotels such as the Grand Bay in the Grove and the Pier House in Key West shoot themselves in the cash register by yanking Rick Sanchez off the cable: Channel 7 itself has become an exotic tourist attraction, to be mentioned in the same breath as Parrot Jungle or Everglades National Park.

People who come to South Florida expect to see blood, and Channel 7 is often the only place they can find it. Take that away, and you’ve got some mighty disappointed tourists.

Forget the cheap souvenirs. They want lurid anecdotes of shopping-mall shootouts and Dumpster dismemberments to take back home. Otherwise, what’s the point of risking a vacation in Miami?

If hotel owners were smart, they wouldn’t take the Channel 7 newscast off the tube. They’d put it on Spectravision and charge $7.50 to see it, just like they do with slasher movies.

Perfectly seasoned? Half-baked

August 20, 1995

Miami’s new tourist slogan was unveiled last week, to mixed reviews.

If you haven’t yet heard it, here goes: “Greater Miami & the Beaches: Perfectly Seasoned.”

The image will emblazon T-shirts, novelties and a fortune’s worth of worldwide advertising.

Lots of readers have phoned the newspaper to offer comments, half of them rather unflattering. Much of the criticism is aimed at the clunkiness and redundancy of the phrase “Greater Miami & the Beaches.”

Evidently the slogan’s authors are striving to reach the most feebleminded of potential visitorsthose who might come to Miami and not know there’s a beach, and those who might come to the beach and not know there’s a mainland.

I submit that we shouldn’t be trying to lure travelers who cannot independently deduce, from the names, that “Miami” and “Miami Beach” are in the same general locale. These are folks who’d be much safer in the firm, watchful custody of a bus line tour guide.

Another problem with the new ad slogan: Why must it say Greater Miami? The purpose of such a distinction is puzzling. Is there a “Lesser” Miami that we don’t know about? And, if so, why doesn’t it want tourism?

Perhaps the origin of the logo’s wordiness can be traced to the tide of the agency that commissioned itthe Greater Miami Convention & Visitors Bureau. (Note the “Greater” and, of course, the ampersand.)

It’s very possible the advertising firm that wrote the sloganTurkel Schwartz & Partners!was instructed to repeat the “greater,” no matter how awkward and pointless.

Don’t underestimate the civic pressure put on these harried, though well-paid, copy writers. Past tourist slogans became memorable for the wrong reasons.

Miami’s “See It Like a Native” campaign provoked a huffy reaction because the poster featured a beautiful snorkeler who had misplaced her bikini top. In hindsight, those were the days of innocence.

Later came Florida’s unintentionally ironic “The Rules Are Different Here”presented in the wake of riots, soaring homicide, immigration chaos, and open debate about animal sacrifice. While that particular slogan was quickly put to rest, it took years to recover from the snide jokes.

This time, clearly, the ad agency was under orders to be very, very careful. Puns, quips and metaphors undoubtedly were screened with an eye toward avoiding controversy.

The result was “Perfectly Seasoned,” which (although it evokes pot roast more than it does Ocean Drive) could’ve been worse.

Think about it. Once the agency decided to use cooking jargon in the tourism pitch, many less palatable expressions could have bubbled to the top:

MiamiMarinated in Magic!

Or: MiamiSauteed With Excitement!

Or even: MiamiNaw, That’s Just the Shrimp You’re Smelling …

Well, you get the idea. And while “Perfectly Seasoned” might sound half-baked, I understand what tourism promoters wanted in their new slogansomething different enough to be noticed, yet bland enough that it couldn’t possibly frighten people away.

Forget tourists, residents need crime warning

March 20, 1997

A Florida sheriff is in hot water for telling tourists to stay away because “it’s very dangerous” down here.

As if this is big news. As if anyone who hasn’t been living in a sinkhole doesn’t already know we’re the nation’s premier sun-gun-and-psycho destination.

Yet, judging from the harsh feedback, Lee County Sheriff John McDougall might as well have stomped on the state flag. For a public officeholder in Florida, spooking tourists is a mortal sin. It’s considered much worse than taking bribes.

“I would tell them not to come,” McDougall said last week on the Today show. “I wouldn’t tell anyone in my family to come to Florida right now. I think it’s very dangerous.”

The sheriff was referring to the ongoing release of hundreds of career felons from state prisons. He advised visitors to steer clear until the convicts committed new crimes and got rounded up again by lawmen.

No sooner had McDougall uttered the words than tourism-industry honchos launched a dyspeptic counterattack. The question is why.

Tourists are notoriously difficult to scare off, and it’s unlikely that the sheriffs melodramatic sound bite will have a big impact. After all, this isn’t a new rash of rental-car attacksit’s just another politician hungry for a headline.

The felons being released from prison were getting out anyway. The reason they’re being freed en masse is because other politicians kept them behind bars by retroactively applying tough new sentencing rules.

You can’t legally do that, as any second-year law student would know. So (to nobody’s surprise) the U.S. Supreme Court ordered the timely release of those prisoners finishing their terms under the old guidelines.

That was Sheriff McDougall’s excuse to rant. He wants a state amendment requiring inmates to serve 85 percent of their sentencesexactly what the new law already requires.

Oh well. A headline’s a headline.

The chamber-of-commerce types would’ve been wise to ignore McDougall’s TV performance.Those who ought to be concerned are the folks in Fort Myersthey’ve got a sheriff who’s implying that the life and property of a tourist is more valuable than that of a local.

Because whatever random perils face somebody who visits the Sunshine State for a week or two, violent crime statistically poses a much greater menace to those who live here.

If McDougall honestly meant what he said, then why warn only the tourists? He could save many more lives by encouraging his constituents to pack up their belongings and move out of this “very dangerous” place as soon as possible.

Save yourselves, people! Get out while you can!

The sheriff can quit worrying so much about the tourists. They come and they go, leaving behind billions of useful dollars.

Residents are by far the more frequent victims of homicides, assaults and robberies. Serious felonies have soared with the state’s exploding population, and few places are growing faster or more recklessly than McDougall’s own county.

You’ll know he is sincere about cutting crime when he speaks out in favor of capping growth. Scaring away visitors is a waste of time. Try scaring away the hordes of people who keep moving here to stay.

Not all of thema couple hundred thousand a year would be a start.

But the sheriff probably won’t do that. No politician is honest enough to tell potential voters to run for their lives.

Florida would be a more attractive place if they did. Less gridlock and urban stress. Much safer.

And the tourists? They’d keep coming in droves.

At Disney, it’s a wild, wild world

April 23, 1998

Good morning, bwanas! Today’s the day we finally open Disney’s new Animal Kingdom theme park for the world.

As tour guides, it’s your job to make sure all visitors have fun. Many of you have never worked with real live critters, so let’s go over the guidelines again.

Number one: If your safari bus should encounter our wild animals acting like, well, wild animals, do not under any circumstances attempt to disconnect them, deprogram them or try to locate the “off” button.

Remember, these are not the dancing country bearsand they’re probably not just dancing, anyway.

I know it’s a big adjustment for all of us here at Walt Disney World. In the old days, when a jungle beast went haywire we’d just replace a transistor. Not anymore.

The wildlife here at Animal Kingdom sometimes will engage in public behavior that our guests might find puzzling or even disturbingbehavior for which (I’m ashamed to say) a few of our human “cast members” have been occasionally reprimanded.