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 Scarborough Country
As I write this from my expensive bunker in the decaying Gulf Coast city where I brood and make easy money until my trip to the New Hampshire Primary, the smell of crap wafts through my windows again.
For some reason, probably connected to some sleazy, backroom deal, the sellout burghers of Pensacola built the city’s turd plant downtown. Close enough (they erroneously calculated) near the city’s crumbling black neighborhoods and upwind and far enough away from the elegant homes of North Hill and Seville Quarter.
Now thanks to neglect, unplanned growth and just bad chemistry, tons of raw sewage being cooked and theoretically “treated” before being dumped into rotting Pensacola Bay, farts away from concrete pools 24/7 into the lungs of rich and poor alike.
Welcome to Scarborough Country.
Down here where the angry, creepy bloodlust of the Old South slumbers fitfully and paranoia is omnipresent, politics remain a treacherous pursuit of the crafty and powerful.
And as it was in New Hampshire, I’m drawn to the stories of naked power, madness and sometimes unexplained death that permeate this place, a foolish region where power, status and greed is all.
In the mix of course is journalism, where, as in New Hampshire, corruption and awful consequences abound for unlucky journos caught in the web spun by the powerful.
But this tale is about Scarborough Country; the mythical land created by MSNBC and ruled by one Joe Scarborough, former congressman, former legal counsel to a whack- job abortion doctor killer, and now broadcast big shot in the backwater from hell.
Scarborough Country is a state of mind proclaimed a bumper sticker on a huge, lumbering SUV I saw on Three Mile Bridge the other day. The sticker was accompanied by two others saying, W: Still the President and One cross, three nails = 4GVN.
In this TV-realm fantasy, regular Joes tell the truth every night, even if it means pissing on the fortunes of trembling, dry drunk presidents. “Is Bush an idiot?” Scarborough asked viewers last year, leaving many wondering if it was a trick question. Certainly it was one Joe asked and then ducked with forced amnesia when the long knives came out.
Anyway, here in the Country, the myth is sold that plain-speaking conservatives are respected and fools and lying liberals are exposed and damned for all to see. This is a Red State paradise where conservatives sleep the sleep of the just and await the Second Coming of Jesus, or even better, Ronald Reagan, the story goes.
But, sometimes prophets in their own Country hath no honor.
Joe, who never lost an election as a congressman (and never faced serious opposition either) got his ass whipped recently as campaign manager for brother George’s bid for a seat in the world’s most fucked-up Legislature, the one that passed a law declaring Terri Schiavo’s corpse alive.
Despite winning the endorsement from the flaccid Gannett daily and spending more than a hundred grand on full-page ads in the paper featuring George, a local sport with no portfolio, posing with his wife and Jeb Bush in a bid for the family values and fanatic Christian vote, the Scarborough campaign for a simple Florida House seat tanked.
Fact is, Joe couldn’t pull it off for his bro. George lost the primary to a mere city councilor who went on to Tallahassee to propose a bill legalizing prayer in the schools. The defeat no doubt unhinged the proud Scarborough family and doubtless led to vicious recriminations and buckets of blood.
The harsh truth here is that some people in the Country just don’t like the Scarboroughs. See, Joe is from Georgia and has connections with the infamous “Downtown Crowd,” the hard-eyed men accused by cranky letter writers to the daily fishwrap of running the joint behind closed doors. Unforgiving rednecks still remember Joe’s abrupt departure from Congress in 2001.
And Joe of course, is no regular Joe.
After leaving Congress, he sold out and signed on with insanely powerful law firms in Pensacola and is wealthy, tall and good-looking, even though his eyes have Fox’s Carl Cameron’s fetal-alcohol squint thing going on.
Down here, where scantily-clad chicks toss dead fish across the sandy border of Florida and Alabama at the annual “Mullet Toss” orgy attended by thousands of drunken, joyous rednecks, Joe is a superstar.
The long-legged, blue-eyed, busty blondes overflowing the Country--- from the waitresses at the innumerable Waffle Houses to the babes swinging from the brass poles at Sammy’s. A Gentlemen’s Club to the wealthy honeys residing in Gulf-side mansions--- love celebs like Joe.
Without doubt, he’s a charismatic dude.
Three years ago I caught his aw-shucks act at a breakfast in a rundown Pensacola neighborhood honoring Florida civil rights leader H.K. Matthews. While everybody was dressed nice, Joe blew in wearing his casual Saturday rich-guy clothes and talked off the cuff about his respect for the man.
Naturally, the assembly of NAACP members nodding politely to Joe’s sincere homage had no idea that while in Congress he passed on a constituent’s request to the IRS to strip the NAACP of its tax-exempt status. They loved they guy.
Anyway, you need to know that Scarborough Country is not really a state of mind and does not span the First Congressional District of Florida that Joe ruled unopposed from 1994 to 2001.
The rural counties of Florida’s First District abound with sleepy towns named Mossy Head, Graceville and Chipley and are inhabited by good, decent people who have voted Democratic since the district was created a century ago. These are fine New Deal Democrats, who hate lawyers, love Jesus and sneak a little moonshine now and then.
There amid the pines and swamps, cults of foot-washing and snake-handling primitive Baptists can be found worshipping every Wednesday and Sunday. (You might think the feet-washers’ hygienic ritual reenacts Jesus’ humble ministrations to the Apostles before the Last Supper, but you would be partially incorrect. The ritual is designed to detect the cloven feet of demons trying to infiltrate the sect.)
No, Scarborough Country is just Escambia County, a pretentious dump more Alabama than Florida, a snake-infested, overdeveloped dive peopled by the very poor and the nouveau rich.
Pensacola is the Country’s capital and a place of contradictions.
Here anti-war demonstrations draw about 15 gentle freaks to Martin Luther King Square while Bible Belt bullshit events such as “Gracefest” attracts thousands of hopped-up, young fundamentalists who love the president and have chosen blowjobs over premarital sex in their abstinence pledges.
Preachers scream The Book of Revelation on city street corners every other day and crack-addled whores snag horny community college boys in the Brownsville district.
Highly disturbing and repulsive is the upper crust’s devotion to satanic cults and Mardi Gras crewes glorifying murderous 16th century Spanish conquistadors, the extermination of indigenous tribes and the sickening couplings of arthritic geezers and nubile teenagers.
The initiation ceremonies of these crewes are so arcane, so nefarious, that they make Skull and Bones’ rites look like a Friday night circle jerk in a neighborhood tree house.
Crewe initiates are usually middle-aged alcoholics who work as stock brokers, Realtors, public relations professionals and utility company executives. They like to dress up in gay costumes and spend thousands on huge, garishly decorated barge-like floats bedecked by working cannons that careen around Pensacola streets during festival time making an awful din.
Most strange is the perverted homage to Tristan de Luna, the hapless conquistador who founded Pensacola in 1559 only to see it blown away in a hurricane the same year. Each year, various cults organize a costumed ball, a royal court and a re-creation of de Luna’s landing on Pensacola beach. Until the very eve of the ball, the locals are kept guessing which old fart rich guy will be unveiled as “Tristan de Luna” and which 19-year-old babe will be his consort.
Adding to the madness is the Maoki Indian crewe, a gaggle of bleach-blonde broads dressed in expensive and revealing “redskin” costumes displaying plenty of cleavage, but hiding belly liposuction scars and cellulite-ripped asses. With 120 millimeter ciggies dangling from their wrinkled mouths, these southern belles prance about howling and moaning like wild animals during the de Luna festival.
Each year as the Maokis greet de Luna at his beach landing, a solemn band of actual Native Americans hold silent vigil and ignore drunken taunts from white folks who have been drinking $2 Bushwhackers all morning. Creeks, Cherokees and Apaches distribute pamphlets explaining that the indigenous people of the Country were not named Maoki and lived in fear of the plundering conquistador. Presumably, the native people would have gladly capped de Luna’s fat ass with a poisoned arrow given half a chance.
Oh well, like the Maokis, the grim reality of the Country is obscured by Joe and the fantasies spun by the Chamber of Commerce.
Christ, the “Redneck Riviera” Joe gasses about on television is just a stretch of debris-filled beach, bitch-slapped nearly three years ago by Hurricane Ivan and now brimming with sky high condos for rich Atlanta couples that visit twice a year.
Except for some so-so strip joints and funky bars, the “Riviera” is a wasteland of evangelical churches, unrelenting urban blight and crushing poverty. The place is lousy with newly-rich house flippers about to lose it all, crooked contractors, oily real estate brokers and attorneys. The rest of the populace is dirt poor families making $36,000 a year. Nearly 3,000 homeless people “live” in Escambia County.
It’s an uptight place too.
For Christ’s sakes, just the other day a freaked out cracker fired a nautical flare at a soccer Mom’s SUV that cut him off, apparently trying to set it ablaze with babies on board. And recently some guy set a hapless citizen afire on a city sidewalk, apparent retribution for some fucked-up deal.
That’s right. Escambia County and the city of Pensacola are corrupt, evil places. Don’t go there. Ever.
More blacks have been shocked to death in county and city jails here than any place in the world. Naturally, the local coroner blames these frequent tragedies on “excited delirium,” a medical condition invented by Taser International Inc. that works quite well quashing wrongful death lawsuits in the Country.
In the first three weeks of April in separate incidents, three deputy sheriffs were relieved of duty after allegedly tasering a handcuffed woman, beating a prone suspect and stealing nearly a grand from two citizens during a routine traffic stop.
Bad cops, county commissioners and faith healers are routinely rounded up and jailed. The local paper is a mix of church news, escort service ads and puff pieces about lawyers, realtors, developers and other greedy bastards.
Escambia County has six Superfund sites, one of the dirtiest power plants in the nation and a variety of sleazy industrial players who killed Pensacola Bay 40 years ago, and continue to spew toxic shit into the water and air. It’s not just crap you inhale when you dine on the decks of the expensive waterfront restaurants. Toluene, lead, ammonia, mercury, and other bad things fill the air. This Country is lethal.
So are its politics.
Sad is the saga of Willie Junior, a black Escambia County commissioner who owned a groovy funeral home featuring a drive-thru viewing room. The innovation allowed thousands to sip a Miller High Life and pray for the soul of the departed in the air conditioned comfort and privacy of their vehicles.
Willie faced years in prison for taking bribes and obstructing justice, but before he could tattle about fellow crooks, his decomposing body was found jammed under a shotgun shack’s crawlspace, conveniently located near some pills and a few bottles of Heineken, his favorite adult beverage.
Most odd was the coroner’s report that Willie died from guzzling antifreeze. Good God. Here’s a man with ample opportunity to drive his enormous, gas-guzzling automobile into any number of bridge abutments and he sips antifreeze to meet his maker? Frankly, friends and family suspect Willie died suspiciously.
The Country, with all the money changing hands and real estate being gobbled up and developed by hard-eyed men reminds me of the sick, violent vibe Phoenix had after Don Bolles got blown up in a hotel parking lot in the late ‘70s. It’s creepy as hell, especially for a journalist.
What makes me paranoid as I write is Joe’s recent attempt to move on from his goofy congressional days as a Newt Gingrich buttboy and stake out national fame as a television personality and author.
As his local political reputation croaks with George’s defeat, he’s hell-bent on rewriting history from his old days as a GOP hack as his national status rises on cable television. And frankly, it smells like Joe is getting ready to run for U.S. Senate on a Scarborough Country ticket. So a cleanup squad is busy at work,
One chapter from his congressional days Joe wants deleted from the Internet is the July 2001 death of Lori Klausutis, an attractive aide working in his Fort Walton Beach office. Lori’s body was found slumped near a desk one morning. Later, a coroner with a dubious past, ruled her death accidental and said she had fainted and hit her head on a desk.
Now Joe wasn’t even in the district at the time, but that didn’t stop certain evil people comparing him to California Democratic Congressman Gary Condit who had his own dead aide situation with Chandra Levy. But despite the ton of shit that rained on Condit, Joe’s misfortune escaped with barely a mention in the national press. Joe’s hometown newspaper and TV station in Pensacola basically ignored Lori’s death.
Meanwhile, in the years that followed, any journalist or politician barely mentioning Lori’s death is in danger of casting Joe in a “false light” causing embarrassment and damage to his reputation, according to his attorney.
Yes, even if you print the truth that Lori died and her death created a controversy for Joe, you might get sued. False light is a legal basis in Florida for libel suits and a mindfuck for journalists made possible by the whorish legislature and currently providing sleazy lawyers millions in ill-gotten gains.
Joe is not amused that six years later, Lori’s death is still out there festering and fouling Wikipedia and numerous web sites with various references to that tragic day.
He’s unleashed Levin firm colleague Michael Papantonio of Pensacola and Robert Kennedy Jr. (hosts on their very own Air America show) on a comely Alabama blogger named Lisa Casey who sorts the whole story out on allhatandnocattle.net.
A letter posted on her website from Papantonio, a “liberal” Democrat who, along with Kennedy (who is listed on the letterhead as one of the firm’s lawyers), does its best to scare the shit out of her to delete all mentions of Lori and Scarborough.
In a nice touch, Casey has ignored the muscle and left others to point out the delicious irony of it all. Air America blurts that Kennedy and Papantonio “bring their battle for justice to the airwaves” and “take on corporate crooks, polluters, hypocritical preachers and ugly politicians.”
Of course the Air America hype has nothing to do with reality. Papantonio and Kennedy’s squeeze on All Hat No Cattle is all about helping GOP Joe, and if it’s hypocrisy to some that they are slamming the little guy free press, well, fuck it.
Meanwhile, Papantonio’s nastygram to All Hat No Cattle might be working magic across the Web. Searches for Joe and Lori at national newspapers and blogs usually come up with a message saying they are no longer extant.
See, here in Escambia County it’s all about pushing back against anyone who has the balls to call you on your shit. And Jack, you better be ready with a weapon or a ton of blackmail if you want to survive.
Take that evil witch Katherine Harris for example. When Joe toyed with running for U.S. Senate last year, Harris made it clear to Joe’s supporters that the dead aide story would be shoved up his ass in any primary campaign, reported the Miami Herald.
The paper said an indignant Joe was ready to sue Harris but eventually bagged it. God knows what really happened, but Joe eventually got his revenge.
Harris, the Jeb Bush tool who stole the 2000 presidential election, is beloved by GOP voters in the Country. They gave her 49 percent of the vote against incumbent Democrat Bill Nelson while the rest of the state sent her to hairy hell oblivion.
Harris, with her trashy makeup, large breasts and love of Jesus, got them creaming in their well-worn jeans here in the Country. So did W, even though he wasn’t on the ballot last November.
In fact, while the rest of the nation shunned him like a leper, the Country went into hysterical fits of joy last November when a shell-shocked Bush came to Pensacola to boost slick, Century 21 blazer-wearing Republican U.S. Rep. Jeff Miller.
Miller’s Democratic opponent, 30-year military veteran and union carpenter Joe Roberts, was shunned by Howard Dean and powerful Florida Democrats, and had little money to wage an effective campaign. But despite the treachery, Roberts’ grassroots campaign was gaining steam and threatening Miller, so Bush came.
Yep, while Conrad Burns dissolved in fury, Rick Santorum whimpered like a cur and George Allen slipped in his own macaca, Bush chose Pensacola to campaign for a safe congressional seat.
Yep, as his bankrupt party crashed and burned, Bush blasted through town with lame-duck brother in tow to revel in the applause of Muslim-hating Christians hauled into the Civic Center by the thousands by preachers of the dozens of fundamentalist mega-churches here.
Katherine was in town too, but Jeb wouldn’t allow her to share the stage with his brother. She was relegated to the cheap seats. No doubt Joe made that happen.
Also missing from the stage was gubernatorial Republican candidate (now governor) Charlie Crist, who was running like a madman from nasty reports that accused him of having gay, wanton sex with a Harris campaign aide.
Crist’s alleged homosexual love urges were ignored by gay-hating Country voters, though some later gnashed their teeth and wailed like rabid dogs after learning too late that they had offended God by electing a gay man.
When Harris eventually imploded and faded away like a gnat on a runway, Joe had the last laugh.
That’s life in the Country.
~ Niles Youngblood
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