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Big Ben? Big deal!

Don't let London's winning bid for the 2012 Olympics hurt your Florida pride

TAMPA - London? LONDON?!

In the name of all that is right and just, how did Tampa lose out to London in the competition for the 2012 Olympics?

Everybody's whining about poor Paris, thrice a runnerup. Don't waste your gall on the Gauls. You want real injustice? Look at the royal rebuff that Tampa got when the Florida 2012 bid was rejected.

That was four years ago, you say? Get over it, you say?

Never. Our indignation is as evergreen as a live oak.

We ask ourselves: What has London got that we don't?

"We're a great city, but we're not London or Paris," Tampa Mayor Pam Iorio admitted.

"It's a different league."

Hold on a minute, Your Honor. We're venting here.

They have royalty ... We have the King of Ye Mystic Krewe.

They have Buckingham Palace. We have Don Wallace's house on Bayshore Boulevard.

"I see where you're going with this," the mayor said.

"Okay, they have the Thames; we have the Hillsborough," she said. "Frankly, I think the Hillsborough is more attractive from an ecological standpoint. The Thames is pretty murky."

Now, you've got the hang of it.

"They have Big Ben ...," Iorio said.

We have the Sulphur Springs water tower.

"And we just lit it up." she said.

Good. Good.

"They have Westminster Abbey," Iorio said. "And we have Sacred Heart downtown, which is quite nice."

That might be a stretch, but good effort.

"They've got fog," Iorio said. "We've got thunderstorms. There's no comparison on the weather."

Right.

They have Earl Grey. We have cafe con leche. Give that round to Tampa.

They have the Elgin Marbles. We have the Exploding Chicken.

They have lots of pale-skinned English people in business suits. We have lots of red-skinned English people in bathing suits.

They have Nelson's Column. We have the beer can building.

Could our outrage be any more justified?

Hey, Ed Turanchik, you put a few years of your life into this effort; want to take a couple of swings?

"I was in Paris," said the man who spearheaded the Florida 2012 effort. "They had 20-foot-tall letters spelling out PARIS 2012 on the Eiffel Tower. I was trying to think what would be the equivalent in Tampa. "Paris was in lockstep for this. That city was just aroused by the thought of hosting the Olympics."

Are you saying we can't get aroused?

"I think we had decent enthusiasm," Turanchik said. "But we can't even agree whether the unincorporated county should have mass transit. "You had four capital cities and one global city in this competition," Turanchik said. "You had Tony Blair and Jacques Chirac devoting two days to lobbying each (International Olympic Committee) member individually. We sent a U.S. senator. It's no comparison."

So should we take another run at it?

"No."

No?

"It was a great exercise for us. It showed the kind of city we could be if we want. But the Olympic Games have grown so huge it's really become a national endeavor now."

Oh.

"We just landed the Super Bowl in 2009," Mayor Iorio said, reinjecting some of her trademark positivism. "That's a major national and international event that we're going to host for the fourth time. There are many cities in the U.S. that wish they had what Tampa has."

Like we said: There's just no comparison.