-- This little ditty by the Palm Beach Post's Andrew Marra may be the worst news City Place has had. Not because a woman hanged herself out in the open. But because nobody even noticed until the afternoon.
After the jump: McDonald's fighting obesity, Reinhard, Bigoney, Venezuelan ant-Semitism, abortion debacle, and torture in Argentina.
-- Also in the Post over the weekend, Stacey Singer writes about McDonald's giving a big grant to Scripps to finance research on obesity. In related news, suspended Deerfield Beach Manager Larry Deetjen has provided funds to study the impact of racism on society and Broward State Attorney Michael Satz has given a considerable sum for researching the physiological roots of political corruption.
-- Tired of all the intelligent, cutting, and courageous political journalism being practiced at daily mainstream newspapers here in South Florida -- and hell, in AMERICA, for that matter? Well, for a nice break from that sort of thing, read Beth Reinhard's column. She writes this kind of thing all the time in her Saturday slot (curiously, as a reporter, she's not all that bad). But this week's mess is particularly -- and refreshingly -- meaningless.
-- The Herald's Diana Moscovitz gives us the story on David Bigoney, the son of legendary Fort Lauderdale architect Bill Bigoney. David was blinded in 1996 when his stepmother shot him in the face. His dad wasn't so lucky; she shot him dead. But the son, who is now 32, has overcome his disabilty and is participating in a reality show on The Learning Show for budding motivational speakers called The Messengers. So it was both inspiring and nauseating at the same time.
-- The Sun-Sentinel's Tal Abbady paints Chavez in Venezuela as possibly a budding Hitler. The jury's still out in my mind whether he's dangerously anti-Semitic or just politically frank. The fact that he compares Israel's actions to Germany isn't encouraging. Yes, whenever a ruler takes extreme aggression (as Bush did in Iraq), one can compare the leader to Hitler. But it's just ridiculously provocative to do it in the case of Israel. But his embrace of Iran is to be expected -- the guy hates the United States and everybody knows that countries that share a powerful enemy often cozy up. As one observer noted: "The situation now is worrying. But it hasn't been more than words. We need to wait and see." Agreed.
-- The Herald's Susannah A. Nesmith, David Ovalle, and Jacob Goldstein tell a very ugly story set in an abortion clinic. It goes like this: abortion performed, baby lives, baby dies, abortion clinic hides corpse on roof from authorities at some point. I'm leaning with Hialeah police on this one. If it's true they hid the corpse from police, then I think I'd be pushing for a manslaughter indictment too. (My personal views on abortion: I'm pro-choice all the way, but only during the first trimester -- the idea of killing a practically formed little human being repulses me and it's a realization I came upon when my wife was pregnant with my son and I really followed the development of the fetus).
-- So the Post sends one of its best reporters, John Lantigua, to Argentina and he writes an interesting torture story while there. Yes they put it on the bottom of the page -- but why in the hell couldn't you find it on the website? Of the three newspapers, I have to say that the Post's is the most difficult to navigate and discover articles.
