Marta Limbaugh is publisher of a new West Palm Beach-based magazine aptly titled Vent, aimed at inspiring "critical thinking and unrestrained debate" among young adults, helping them cope with "the ambiguity, the mixed messages" of life.
To assist in this purpose, Vent runs a column called "Bad Examples, everything not to do... the ill-advised and the just plain stupid." Demonstrating a sensitivity and taste that seem to run in the family, publisher Limbaugh includes in this category an eleven-year-old boy who tried to jump onto a moving hayride wagon, slipped and fell under the wheels, and died. Following that "bad example" was another: the one-year-old girl who toppled headfirst into a bucket of mop water and cleaning solution and drowned.
Perhaps if they had been old enough to read Vent they would still be alive.
And for all young adults there is the cautionary example of the 21-year-old who came home from a night of drinking, aimed his gun at a bull's-eye on the wall and instead hit his roommate in the abdomen, then shot himself in the head. All because his meatball sandwich was missing from the refrigerator.
For young adults the message is clear: Lock up your meatball sandwiches.
Besides these inspiring parables, Vent's premiere issue carries a cover story on a subject about which publisher Limbaugh probably has firsthand knowledge: "Annoying People and what to do about them." The advice does not include turning off the radio.
In its continuing relationship with the Seminole Indians, New Times apparently has supplied more ammunition to the white man.
First it was the private investigator who used the March 19 cover story as a ploy to serve a subpoena on Chief James Billie. Now comes word of a skirmish in Coconut Creek, where the Seminoles are building a $40 million bingo hall on tribal land, and where some Seminole watchers predict Billie will attempt to launch a full-fledged casino.
Billie didn't exactly calm fears about a casino when he told New Times, "At a certain point, I will ruffle up my feathers and go ahead and do it, and then let them challenge me. I don't really give a shit about diplomacy in this kind of thing, but this time I thought I would be diplomatic."
Those words didn't help tribal lawyers when they discussed the bingo hall with Coconut Creek City Manager John Kelly. After a negotiating session that stretched from a scheduled 30 minutes to more than three hours, Kelly reported that Billie's lawyers tentatively agreed to several concessions, including a partial waiver of the tribe's sovereign immunity, and language that would block casino gambling without a state agreement.
It's unclear how the Seminole Tribal Council reacted to the lawyers' proposed concessions, but when the discussion turned to surrendering sovereign immunity we're sure Chief Billie was very diplomatic.
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