[Editor's Note: The following column is by Mary Jo Melone. It was posted to Daily Loaf by Joe Bardi, but the text is all Mary.]
The silly season.
That’s what some people call the months-long ritual of politics that just ended.
So why am I not laughing?
Is it because Allen West, the new South Florida Republican congressman who doesn’t live in the district he represents, once bragged he had a higher security clearance than President Obama?
Is it because Daniel Webster, the new Orlando Republican congressman, opposes abortion even in cases of rape or incest?
Or how about Pam Bondi, the new attorney general, who has lurched so far to the right her old Tampa friends hardly recognize her?
Is it because Democrats John Dingfelder and Linda Saul-Sena, after years of progressive service in politics, were simply swept away in their races for the Hillsborough County Commission?
Or because we have to call Jim Norman, the subject of a federal corruption investigation, state senator now?
We had one winner who seems to have stolen somebody else’s lines. Or was it the other way around?
This article appears in Nov 4-10, 2010.