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Morally Courageous Don't Come Around Often

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The Tampa Tribune

Published: September 24, 2008

Hillsborough County Commissioner Jim Norman's proposal to rename the Moral Courage Award after the late Ralph Hughes is now reality. Norman's had, as we know, worse ideas, but this one is bad. Unless political agenda is somehow synonymous with moral courage.

If there had to be any kind of name change, then it would have been more appropriate to have called it the Gadfly Award, which often applies, or maybe the Self-Interest Award, which also has applied in the past. Or simply an Attaboy Award for those who merely do their job, but do it well enough.

Better yet, the Moral Courage Award appellation should have been kept as it was and then bestowed (RARELY but) meaningfully. That would be in keeping with what former Hillsborough County Commissioner Jan Platt intended when she initiated it in 1992: honoring those who had guts - not gall - and stood up against the intimidating forces of corruption and abusive power. Let's face it; the truly morally courageous don't come around that often.

Even Ralph Hughes might have agreed.

• We all, quite naturally, like to think the best of our democracy, especially when it's confronted by forces antithetical to its very premise. But in practice, of course, democracy is only as good as the process and the people who are consequently elected.

Which brings us - somehow - to Rachel Burgin, the heavily favored Republican candidate for the Florida House District 56 seat - the one previously held by GOP Rep. Trey Traviesa. When Traviesa surprisingly dropped out at the last minute - and the Democratic competition was a token, concession candidate - that left Burgin, an ambitious former Traviesa aide, as the choice of party leaders. And the de facto, odds-on favorite.

She's 26, lacks a college degree and lives with her parents. But she has been a White House intern and an effective staffer for Traviesa and Hillsborough County Commissioner Brian Blair. She is, by all accounts, a real "people person" and adept at waving signs, handing out fliers and ringing door bells.

To be fair, Burgin might yet be a meaningfully qualified candidate for the state Legislature. But right now, she's no (former state Rep.) Sandy Murman, among those passed over for the energetic, grass-roots savvy, Traviesa acolyte.

The voters of District 56 deserve better.

• Gertrude Stein once chided Oakland, Calif., where she spent her childhood, for its identity-challenged ambience. Her observation: "There is no there there" remains a classic. Residents of Tampa, which has long lacked a readily identifiable, central gathering, celebrating, rallying, entertaining, communing venue, understand.

Which makes the prospect of what Curtis Hixon Waterfront Park can be truly special.

The $12-million project, funded mostly via Community Investment Tax dollars, will be completed next year - and is expected to be its own destination along the downtown riverfront.

Because of budget cutbacks, however, plans for iconic fountains had to be initially scrapped. But now they're back - thanks to a philanthropic gift from the nonprofit F.E. Lykes Foundation. The $1 million donation will underwrite a giant misting fountain at the Ashley Drive gateway and two smaller ones along the riverfront.

The fountains are precisely what the park - any prominent park worth its municipal charge - needed. Moreover, the critical role of the private sector has been underscored in a dramatically aesthetic way - one that will assure that there will, indeed, be a "there" right there in downtown Tampa.

• I remember the first time I encountered Charlie Arnade, the singular USF international affairs professor who died recently at 81. It was in the 1970s, and he was a last-minute substitute instructor in a Russian history course on USF's St. Petersburg campus.

He spoke English with a hybrid European accent that was - I later learned - totally befitting one born in Germany but raised in China, Bolivia and Switzerland. He wore a dashiki.

Without a lesson plan, he winged it with mesmerizing stories - from cultural crucibles in Arabic countries to the "Rape of Nanking" to a chance encounter with Che Guevara. Somehow, he wove them into a uniquely memorable, geopolitical lesson.

Later, as a journalist and the USF media relations manager, I was privy to another side of professor Arnade. He was much more than a Fulbright scholar who specialized in Latin American studies.

He pulled no punches and spoke the truth as he knew it. Back in the day, he was not afraid to protest against segregation. In the mid-1990s, he was an outspoken campus contrarian about the priorities represented by the prospect of big-time football at USF. Academic freedom was no mere abstraction.

Arnade, who was a founding professor at USF, was one of those notably learned, eccentric and colorful characters that universities can never have enough of. Moreover, much of what he knew and taught was what he had literally lived. He was one of a kind.

Joe O'Neill is a South Tampa writer who can be contacted at moesez@aol.com or www .opinionstogoonline.com.

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