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Politician's phone idea deserves to be cut off
© St. Petersburg Times If Florida House Speaker Johnny Byrd gets his way, taxpayers in the state that can't find its dependent children, can't pay its school teachers a living wage and thinks mass transit is a minibus service connecting malls and a few nursing homes will start spending money on telemarketing calls to tell us all what a great job the legislature is doing. I can hear it now. CALLER: Mr. Brackwell? ME: Glidewell. CALLER: Gladwell? ME: Glidewell. CALLER: Gildwell? ME: Whatever. CALLER: How are you today? ME: Not that you really care, but actually I was just sitting down to eat dinner and discussing with my wife the State of Florida's terrible road system. CALLER: That's nice. I'm just calling to tell you what a wonderful job your state legislator, er . . . Mr., I mean Mrs., I mean Ms. . . . uh . . . anyhow, what a wonderful job he or she is doing and how hard he or she is working so that the citizens of the state will no longer have to glop up the constitution with bogus amendments to accomplish what the legislature can't. ME: Click. What's that you say? The story reported by the Associated Press and the Palm Beach Post actually says the calls will be pre-recorded? Oh. Then it will go more like this: CALLER: Hi . . . I'm just working in your area painting a few houses and paving a few driveways and passing the odd piece of legislation and thought I would take just a minute to tell you about my accomplishments and some specials we have going on. As you may know I (legislator's name inserted in different voice) have worked long and hard for veterans, infants, the elderly, pregnant pigs, pure water and, oh yes, since the State of the Union speech, hydrogen-powered cars, and . . . ME: Click. Rep. Douglas Wiles of St. Augustine, as quoted by the Associated Press, hit the nail right on the head as far as I am concerned. He said he is worried that the plan is political and designed primarily for "incumbent protection." Is any legislator's tape going to say, "I know we dropped the ball on prescription prices for seniors, health care for the indigent, proper management of the state's universities, but we did have a lot of great meals paid for by lobbyists, took a couple of really keen hunting trips and voted to install this system so we can tell you our version of things without all those pesky reporters getting in the way and pointing out how we are lying." A spokesman for Byrd assures us that the money would come out of this year's budget for house expenses. I am not comforted. There is a federal law, honored mostly in the breech, against pre-recorded telephone solicitations to residential lines, but, alas, those made by political campaigns and by government are exempt from the law to which nobody pays any attention anyway. If I'm going to start getting political propaganda calls from my legislators, I want someone to force them to make the calls in person, so I can have the pleasure of hanging up on them personally, and in a highly personalized fashion. And, since I began this column making fun of people butchering names, it's only just for me to confess my own sins in that department. I worked long and hard to make sure that I correctly spelled the last name of a Bucs fan who works at my friendly local bank branch and then, despite that I have known her for 18 years and read her name placard at least once a week for all of those years, misspelled her first name. It is Janie, not Jamie Stephens. Sorry, Janie. Go Bucs. And with any luck that is the last time I will ever have to mention professional football in my career.
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