Opinion: Tallahassee enters unreal times

TALLAHASSEE -- Back in the golden, innocent days of the nineties when elections were things to be ignored, when presidents got into trouble over old-timey peccadilloes like oral sex, and when Chad (adorably dimpled) was just a guy who pledged Sigma Nu, Thanksgiving was America's favorite holiday.

We used to just stuff a turkey, stuff ourselves and sit around watching 300-pound guys beat the hell out of each other on a frozen field somewhere. We applauded as schoolchildren dressed as Pious Pilgrims and Friendly Indians exchanged the Corncob of Friendship in Thanksgiving pageants -- ignoring the part where the Puritans start killing the Indians with smallpox and the occasional bullet -- and congratulated ourselves on living in America where Democracy rules and each person has, at least in theory, a vote that counts.

Those were simpler times.

This Thanksgiving, Americans ate their pumpkin pie in front of the TV looking at reporters shivering in front of the Florida Supreme Court, where every once in a while the Justices' spokesman, Craig Waters, would emerge with a statement, sticking a long, rusty pin in the hopes of Bush or Gore. Poor Mr. Waters should have been on his way to a family Thanksgiving in Elberta, Alabama. All of America wanted to go with him -- there might not be television in Elberta, Alabama.

Tallahassee is no longer a real place: it's theater as imagined by Gore Vidal channeling Shakespeare, Kafka and Gary Trudeau. Last Tuesday night, the back steps of the capitol and the front steps of the Supreme Court swarmed with TV anchors, citizens, lawyers and campaign vampires. Satellite trucks packed the street from the Senate Office Building (affectionately and appropriately known as the S.O.B.) to the Governor's Mansion, where Jeb? was reportedly balled up in the fetal position staring at MSNBC. Reporters whined about the cold ("Man, I thought this was Florida"), a couple of middle-aged men ("Yankees come down to make trouble," whispered one Tallahassee native) carried hand-lettered signs reading "Supreme Court Butt Out!" and a gaggle offine young specimens in Tommy Hilfiger gear shouted for Bush and Cheney.

Just before 10 p.m., the constellation Orion, known in Greek myth as the Vote Counter of Apollo, rose in the east over the perpetually-tumescent capitol building. Just then, like one of the oracles that used to pronounce the will of the gods from the marble temples of old Greece, the silver doors of the Court opened and Craig Waters strode through the Doric columns to say that the Court had ruled that the rights of voters were paramount. The hand counts in South Florida could go on. Katherine Harris could (so to speak) go to Hades.

The Bush Youth booed, the reporters rooted like hogs at slop time, trying to get copies of the opinion, and over at the Mansion, Jeb? curled up even tighter.

At nearly midnight, the scene was less Sophocles than Theater of the Absurd. There was a press conference in the S.O.B., complete with blue-curtained backdrop and a couple of flags like the stage for a high school play. It was easy to find the place: You just followed the wires and cables (Home Depot must be utterly denuded of extension cords) from the satellite trucks through the maze of TV tents. You could feel like Theseus in the labyrinth only here the lurking evil was not the Minotaur but the monster Spin.

David Boies, the lawyer who unravelled Bill Gates like a cheap sweater, proclaimed the night's victory for Al Gore and praised the wisdom of the Florida Supreme Court. Boies looked like a Persian cat who just won Best of Show. In contrast, Tallahassee attorney Dexter Douglass, his co-counsel, looked like a guy who'd rather be in a duck blind somewhere in the woods. He stood there chewing seraphically (gum? beefjerky? baccy?) and delicately suggested that Katherine Harris, "a good personal friend of mine," had been viciously pressured by what Maureen Dowd so perfectly calls "the ruthless Bush Family Cartel." Dexter, a Southern gentleman, was defending the honor of a Southern lady. Sadly, many of the reporters had not seen Gone With the Wind and so failed to get it.

On it went into the night and the next day and the next night, court opinions falling like the leaves of Tallahassee's pecan trees. And as the Doctors of Law debated how many chads could dance on the head of a pin, and the vote counts stopped and started and stopped again like a Yugo with bad wiring, it became clear that in Florida the Bush versus Gore fight was just a sideshow: The real battle royal is yet to come. The Florida Legislature has said to the Supreme Court, paraphrasing Bugs Bunny, "Of course, you realize: This means war!"

New House Speaker Tom Feeney (who looks like the guy who in 1950s movies always played the dirty cop), Sen. Daniel Webster, one of those right-wing Christians whose Bible curiously seems to be missing the New Testament, and various of the other unlovely Republicans who control the Legislature have taken to standing in front of microphones howling that their power has been challenged. Last year, the Legislature and the governor tried to pack the Supreme Court with their minions, defund it, or otherwise punish it for forcing them to deal with little issues like our barbarous electric chair. Even though the Court gave Republicans a decision they liked in allowing Dade County to quit hand counting, they still threaten dire consequences. A two-branch government would be so much more to their taste.

The struggle between the Democratic court (Lawton Chiles' revenge from beyond the grave) and a Republican Legislature who act like they've never read the Constitution, promises to be more melodramatic and more implausible than a Mexican telenovela. It will go on way past figuring out the minor matter of who becomes president. Floridians might as well give into temptation by the Demon Budweiser, lie on the sofa, and watch the cock-fight commence.

Diane Roberts, a former Times editorial writer, teaches English at the University of Alabama.

For more by Diane Roberts

Say a little prayer to St. Chad (11/19/00)

Some good may come from all this chaos (11/16/00)

Back to Opinion

Contact the Times | Privacy Policy
Standard of Accuracy | Terms, Conditions & Copyright

From the Times
Opinion page