The word "cooter" is well-known slang for "turtle." The word means turtle in Florida. It means turtle across the South, for that matter.
The town of Allendale, S.C., holds an annual Spring Cooter Fest.
There's also a Cooter, Mo.
A character in the old TV show Dukes of Hazzard was named Cooter. The actor who played him even got elected to Congress.
So it was not in some cultural vacuum that our friends in Inverness, the seat of Citrus County, proposed to hold an annual event to be known as the Inverness Cooter Festival.
On the contrary, the idea was perfectly natural and in keeping with tradition. There's already a body of water in town known as Cooter Pond. When some out-of-town mapmaker tried to change its name to "Sunset Lake" a few years ago, residents rose up to save the name.
In furtherance of the theme for its new festival, the city's leaders decided to adopt the turtle as its symbol.
They bought a turtle costume. They planned to hold a "Name the Cooter" contest.
Everything was going just fine until the Liberal Media (by which I mean, Florida's Best Newspaper) rained on the parade.
On July 19, our learned editor of editorials in Citrus County, Greg Hamilton, wrote a column in which he pointed out that the word "cooter" also is a slang term, albeit less commonly used, for a key part of the female anatomy. It was not overly salacious; he just thought it was worth mentioning so that nobody got surprised later.
But this revelation set off shock waves among the innocent-minded of Inverness. As with towns and cities everywhere, there were already some folks unhappy with City Hall. They used this new scandal (Cootergate?) to blast the city's leadership.
These critics asked, with perhaps a hint of crocodile tears: How could Inverness be so demeaning to women, so insensitive? Were they trying to make Inverness a target of ridicule?
City Manager Frank DiGiovanni, an ardent backer of the event, finally got so fed up he canceled it.
Canceled the Cooter Festival!
In a July 30 letter, DiGiovanni spelled out his reasons. His letter was a fine mix of overreaction and self-pity.
"If we choose to continue the idea of an Inverness Cooter Festival," he wrote, "I do not feel we will be able to erase the damage that has been unfairly thrust upon the image of our city."
DiGiovanni warned against a "witch-hunt" mentality that would lead us to forbidding our children to watch reruns of Leave It to Beaver, or to renaming people with double-entendre names. "Where does this begin," he complained, "and where does it end?"
In a nice touch, he offered to pay for the turtle outfit. "I wish to thank those," he concluded, "who have been admirably relentless in reminding us when the line between doing a good thing and thinking a bad thing has been crossed."
Well. Harrumph! Maybe he was sincere, maybe he was hoping precisely for the response he got. Last week, the Inverness City Council reversed his decision.
The Cooter Festival will be held this fall as scheduled.
The council showed a high degree of resolve. "I don't think we need to yield to that kind of shenanigans," declared Dick Kaufman, council chairman. Added member John Sullivan: "It's a turtle. A cooter is a turtle."
Said Mayor Bob Plaisted: "This subculture that is going throughout the country, taking names and perverting them socially, is just unbelievable."
(In all fairness to the perverted subculture, I don't think anybody ever said: "Hey! Here's a word describing the loveable turtle! Let's steal it and make it dirty!")
Anyway, there you have it. Standing firmly against naysayers, town dissidents and those who find something dirty everywhere, Inverness will proceed with its the Cooter Festival.
In general, everybody should just lighten up. Even the organizers of the Cooter Fest in South Carolina poke a little fun at the double-entendre with T-shirts that read: "A little cooter never hurt anybody." Neither did a couple of snickers. I hope Inverness' first Cooter Festival rocks.
