1. TWO EXAMPLES OF TAMPA TRIBUNE COLUMNS
BY JOHN WARK
Some scenes from dinner with David
Author(s): John Wark Date: July 26, 1997 Section:
FLORIDA/METRO
Hurricane Danny has Mobile rocking through a heavy-duty rinse cycle
as I sit down to eat in a Tallahassee Boston Market. By 6 p.m. I've
picked clean my chicken dinner and opened the Tallahassee Democrat
to scan the classified listings for a home.
Three white men arrive and take seats at a table in front of me.
Although this is Saturday and all sane Tallahasseans are in shorts and
T-shirts, these three are groomed, suited and tied.
One of the three wears a sharply cut black suit, sports a trim black
goatee and has a 3-foot-long ponytail cascading down his back. It's
not the ponytail that holds my attention, though. It's his voice. He's
loud, in the way self-important people sometimes are.
His companions have short hair and are cleanshaven. Not much about
them stands out, other than that the older of the two resembles a
rough-cut Robert Redford.

2. They talk and their immersion in their own world is so complete they
don't seem to notice the rest of us.
Ponytail-man's cell phone keeps going off. I hear him tell one caller
that he can no longer give the media access to shoot footage "inside"
because "we let someone in earlier today and they crossed the line --
the media was in there and crossed the line."
The person on the other end must be pleading his case hard. Ponytail-
man chews his lower lip.
Who is this guy?
"There are a lot of people in the media who want in and we're not
letting anyone in," he says. "But I'll talk to David."
David? Who is David? As the new Tallahassee bureau chief for The
Tampa Tribune I begin to worry I've missed something. Is David a
rock star? Could ponytail-man be a publicist for a band? A politician? A
you-too-can- be-a-millionaire guy?
I flip through the newspaper for clues and my attention wanders for a
moment to the talk between two 9-year-old black girls seated at my
left.
"Grandma," says the one named Stephanie, "Did you know that all you
need to survive in the desert is a magnet?"
"And a knife," chirps her cousin, Noelle.
"Is that right?" answers their grandmother, Imogene Nelson.
The girls sit by themselves at a small table. They're in town to spend
the summer with their grandmother, who wears a colorful African
heritage scarf around her neck.
Suddenly I hear ponytail-man address Robert Redford-man as "David."
At just about the same moment my eye falls on a column in the paper
by Roosevelt Wilson, an associate professor at Florida A&M University.
Bingo!
No rock star

3. David, or Robert Redford-man, stands revealed. He isn't a rock star
after all, although he is a celebrity among some. I watch David and his
assistants walk out of the restaurant.
Stephanie turns to her grandmother as they pass and says, "Grandma,
those men are gun dealers."
"You don't know that," says her grandmother. "You can't judge a
person by looking at the outside."
David Duke, white supremacist and failed candidate for high office in
Louisiana, climbs into a sparkling Saab sedan and leaves to address a
meeting of 40 members of The National Alliance in Crawfordville. He
will denounce affirmative action and make silly remarks like this one,
quoted the next day in the Democrat: "Maybe blacks have a
disadvantage in terms of calculus in the same way that whites have a
disadvantage in the NBA."
Imogene Nelson and her granddaughters leave, too. But for a different
place. Noelle, for instance, is moving soon. Her mother holds a
doctorate in education and has taken a university teaching job in the
North.
Just asking a few primary questions
Author(s): John Wark Date: August 29, 1998 Section:
FLORIDA/METRO
"Who knows but that, on the lower frequencies, I speak for you."
-- Ralph Ellison, "Invisible Man"
The Republican candidate for lieutenant governor, Florida Education
Commissioner Frank Brogan, is making an announcement.
He stands at a lectern in Tallahassee's Florida Press Center facing rows
of reporters in folding chairs, earnestly describing how he will "close
the education gap" among students.

4. They all come here. Agency heads, consumer groups, advocates for
children, lobbyists, candidates - these days, especially the candidates.
They float grand plans to streamline government, to improve
education, to promote business growth, hoping news reports will be
written, voters will take notice, and they will be elected.
Brogan says by closing the education gap, he and the man at the top
of his ticket, Jeb Bush, will improve educational opportunities for
"economically disadvantaged and minority students."
He provides statistics: More blacks drop out than whites. Most kids in
cities' urban cores read below their grade levels. Last year, "79
percent of white students passed both sections of Florida's High School
Competency Test on the first attempt ... while only 44 percent of
African-American students passed both the math and communications
sections."
"How many minority students are there in Florida's public school
system?" Brogan is asked.
The state education commissioner answers: "I don't know."
His plan is aimed at minority children and he doesn't know how many
there are? Was this a momentary lapse, an off day? How much does
Brogan know about minority children? How deep is his knowledge of
black America?
These questions seemed at least as interesting as any on statistics,
particularly because Brogan and Bush are working hard to convince
blacks to vote Republican.
A news conference is brief. You have to slip questions in fast. And I
had no idea what question might even begin to probe what I had in
mind.
I decided to ask if he knew who wrote the classic novel "Invisible
Man." Ralph Ellison's 1952 book is a profound work that leads a reader
to see the world through the experience of a black man at mid-
century, a man keenly aware of his "invisibility" and the social illusions
that attach to race.
Out of curiosity, I put the same question to a few other candidates.

5. Ron Howard, a Democratic candidate for commissioner of education,
got it on his second try.
(The question was put to him at a news conference he called to explain
his proposed 210-day school year. Howard said the longer year
wouldn't cost anything extra because the budget for summer programs
would be eliminated and the money would be absorbed to cover the
longer year. When asked how much the state now spends on summer
programs, Howard said he didn't know.)
Peter Wallace, also a Democratic candidate for education
commissioner, got it right away.
"Ralph Ellison," he said, adding, "What else do you want to know? The
price of a gallon of milk?"
And Brogan's answer?
"I know who starred in the movie," he said. "It was Claude Rains,
wasn't it?"
The 1933 movie "The Invisible Man," based on an H.G. Wells story, is
about a mad scientist who makes himself invisible and terrorizes a
country village.