Life and politics from the Sunshine State's best city

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Diane Roberts - page 2

Diane Roberts has 33 articles published.

Diane Roberts teaches at Florida State University. Her latest book, “Tribal: College Football and the Secret Heart of America,” will be out in paperback in the fall.

Diane Roberts: Rick Scott’s breathtaking hypocrisy on water pollution

in Statewide/Top Headlines by

Rick Scott, our Trumpster-diving governor, has declared a state of emergency. He’s suddenly discovered Florida’s waters are choking in toxic algae, green as arsenic, and malodorous as a pile of rotting mullet. Images of slime-covered sand, and fish gasping their last on closed beaches are appearing in print and on screens around the world. It’s not just another day in paradise. Scott blames “the inaction and negligence of the federal government not making the needed repairs to the Herbert Hoover…

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Diane Roberts: In Scotland, Donald Trump plays the ‘ugly American’

in 2017/Top Headlines by

As he arrived at his golf course in Scotland, wearing a white “Make America Great Again” cap, Donald Trump’s cosmetically-enhanced grin was wide as the ocean, despite the guy handing out golf balls with swastikas on them, despite the protesters waving Mexican flags. The UK’s vote to leave the European Union was “fantastic,” he said. The British have “taken back their country,” no longer accepting all those immigrants “pouring over their borders.” Bloody foreigners. Watch for Trump will to try and…

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Diane Roberts: Muslims, immigrants aren’t the problem. It’s guns

in 2017/Top Headlines by

It’s back to business as usual: hating Muslims, loving guns. We had just celebrated the life of Muhammad Ali, the most famous, most beloved Muslim in the nation’s history. For a minute, one sweet minute, Americans might have been moved to think more expansively about Islam. And race. And violence. Some of us dared hope that the toxic sewer-flow of Trumpery might at least slow down, that America might manage a rare moment of introspection. Then Omar Mateen, a deranged…

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Diane Roberts: Donald Trump is no Muhammad Ali, and never will be

in Statewide/Top Headlines by

The great Muhammad Ali is dead, but that won’t stop Donald Trump trying to make political hay out of him. Trump, who famously doesn’t like Muslims or black people (except Dr. Ben “Sleepy” Carson and that poor dude Trump called “my African-American”), allowed as how Muhammed Ali, a Muslim and a black man, was “a truly great champion and a wonderful guy.” Of course, Trump WOULD attach himself to the outpouring of tributes honoring the late champion. Like an orange…

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Diane Roberts: Rick Scott’s higher education summit was missing one thing — educators

in Statewide/Top Headlines by

Gov. Rick Scott recently convened a higher education summit. Minus the educators. The Commissioner of Agriculture was there. The COO of defense contractor Northrup Grumman was there. The head of the state Dept. of Economic Opportunism was there. So was the state university system chancellor, the Senate president, assorted business types and three head football coaches. But no professors. No teachers. That’s like having a confab on space travel and inviting only NASA’s senior accountant, the cafeteria manager at Johnson…

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Diane Roberts: Bernie Sanders, stop trashing Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party

in 2017/Top Headlines by

The Bern? Duly felt. Duly appreciated. Sen. Sanders has put inequality where it belongs, in the center of the American conversation. He has energized hundreds of thousands of young people who’ve never felt a part of the political process and gotten America to revisit “socialist” ideals as universal health care, universal education, and healthy skepticism of profit über alles. But Sanders needs to cut out the tantrums. Hillary Clinton is not the enemy. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz is not the enemy, though…

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Diane Roberts: Bad science is not good for state’s waterways

in Statewide/Top Headlines by

You’d think that a state where they launch rockets into space, a state which houses the world’s most powerful superconducting magnets, a state with several perfectly good universities, would embrace science. Or at least not be so thoroughly hostile to it. But this is Rick Scott’s Florida, where there’s still legislative resistance to teaching evolution (“just a theory!”), the Agency for Healthcare Administration doesn’t understand how doctors determine pregnancy, and climate change is the impending disaster that Dares Not Speak…

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