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Her acerbic verve spared few and chagrined many

By SUE CARLTON
Published May 17, 2006

A mere two lines in the Tampa newspaper La Gaceta must have had eyebrows around town raised in unison last week.

Lee Drury De Cesare, the 73-year-old former English teacher with the sometimes poison pen, no longer would author a column on its pages.

Even without details, this skinny tidbit buried in the editor's must-read political insider column probably caused a giant, belt-loosening sigh of relief from those still smarting from De Cesare's nips at their backsides. Good, you could hear them saying. Finally.

Her weekly column was called "On the Other Hand,'' a deceptively restrained title next to a picture of her smiling in a fancy hat. To say her railings against political outrages, grammatical errors and the occasional fashion felony pulled no punches would be an understatement. Some days, the column pretty much kick-boxed you in the head.

She wrote about public figures as potted plants and aging Lotharios. She wrote about women's rights. She criticized the mayor, beginning with her hair.

In her column, a burly politician was last seen at a political event "back at the spaghetti tub.'' Another puts her makeup on with a spatula. When God handed out brains, still another "missed the celestial lottery.''

She once referred to members of Ye Mystic Krewe of Gasparilla, the elite businessmen who lord over Tampa's yearly pirate bacchanal, as wearing "pantaloons that bag low and contain nothing.'' She thought it was one of her better lines.

Famously, she stunned a Tiger Bay meeting to silence last year when she asked Attorney General Charlie Crist if he was gay. "I'm not,'' Crist said.

Readers got the paper because of her column. Readers canceled subscriptions because of her column. De Cesare told me she has lots of enemies, but rather enjoys the acrimony. "Maybe that adds to my reputation for being crazy,'' she said.

Reading her sometimes felt like being a passenger in a speeding car, careening out of control, dangerously close to wiping out shrubs and hydrants and little kids on bikes. Great fun, as long as you aren't in the headlights.

So you would expect her to disappear from La Gaceta without controversy? Ha.

Editor and publisher Patrick Manteiga said De Cesare came up in a recent meeting he had with Hillsborough school superintendent MaryEllen Elia. This topic was old shoe. If somebody didn't ask once a week what he planned to do about De Cesare, he hadn't been out much.

Elia was concerned about the tone of articles dealing with her office, including one that questioned how two women in her administration got their high-paying jobs. "Taxpayers shouldn't subsidize any casting-room-couch-employment protocols,'' De Cesare wrote. Elia said she wanted Manteiga to be aware of the possibility of legal action. "I said, 'We have had a long relationship with your newspaper, and I think this is unacceptable,'" she said.

Editing De Cesare sounds like a weekly adventure somewhere between admiring her brashness and body-blocking her from leaping several miles over the line. "I have edited out over and over again issues that are similar to the casting room couch kind of comments, and that was one I missed,'' Manteiga said. "She kept throwing them in the column, and I kept finding them and removing them.''

After the conversation, Manteiga talked to a couple of lawyers. He spoke to De Cesare about "backing off a little bit, about minding her p's and q's.'' Of course, she resigned. (Manteiga says he has spoken to former County Commissioner Jan Platt about writing and plans to talk to First Amendment/strip club lawyer Luke Lirot, too.)

De Cesare, married to the former mayor of Madeira Beach, called it "a free speech shutdown.'' But don't imagine that she will disappear. She's going to have a blog, and who knows what will get her goat next.

"Let them sue me,'' she says, sounding cheerful. "I'll go to jail. I'll take my needlepoint.''

Sue Carlton can be reached at carlton@sptimes.com.

[Last modified May 17, 2006, 06:20:23]