Kick Ass: Selected Columns of Carl Hiaasen

Despite its loss of a major advertiser, the Herald never told Hiaasen to stop writing about Lennar, even though "at many, many other newspapers there would have been a heel on the back of my neck to lay off," he says. The Herald also printed Hiaasen's criticism of the newspaper's then-publisher, Dave Lawrence, when he contemplated running for governor in 1998. While praising Lawrence as a "smart, decent, compassionate fellow who cares about Florida and believes fervently in the innate goodness of mankind," Hiaasen also vigorously objected to the "untenable and queasy position" his candidacy would have created for "this newspaper, the reporters, columnists and editors who produce it." Anything Herald staffers wrote about Lawrence or his opponent, Hiaasen pointed out, could have been perceived as coming from "Lawrence's personal campaign machine," and not from the independent voices the public was entitled to hear.

"What would our readers have thought if I stayed silent? I couldn't. The only way I knew to let our readers know it's business as usual was to do the same kind of tough column on Dave I would do on anyone," Hiaasen says. "It put us in a helluva position." The column in which he takes on his own boss (who was less surprised perhaps than others at the Herald, Hiaasen says, and who remains to this day a friend) begins with that customary punch:

It's definitely something in the water. First there was Mayor Loco, now we've got Publisher Loco.

David Lawrence, Jr., the head honcho of this newspaper, is considering a run for the governorship of Florida. Seriously.

Lawrence has never held public office. He has no fund-raising organization, and thus no funds. Most voters in Florida don't have a clue who he is. And the primaries are only five months away.

But that's our Mr. Lawrence, optimist to a fault. Since he's the Big Cheese around the newsroom, I ought to be circumspect about this bizarre situation. So here goes:

Dave, have you completely lost your marbles?

Although Hiaasen claims he took no real risks in criticizing his own publisher, such columns illustrate why former city editor Dave Satterfield likens their impact to "a baseball bat to the forehead." Calling him "one of the strongest voices in Miami," Satterfield says that because Hiaasen looks at issues in terms of right and wrong rather than according to some narrower agenda, he appeals to a wide readership. "He's looked up to throughout the community not only to be the voice of reason, but to deliver," Satterfield says. "You can cross any of those racial, ethnic divides in Miami and everyone agrees, 'Boy, Carl hit the nail on the head.' He has a very good sense of what's right."

Instead of being the voice of conscience, however, Hiaasen believes he articulates the common-sense view of an already existing but previously unrepresented constituency that has grown over the years. "People were fed up with corruption and overdevelopment," he observes, "but nobody said what everybody was thinking." Now, if an elected official is exposed by the Herald as having taken checks from taxpayers and bribes from special interests, Hiaasen weighs in. "Does that person deserve to be ridiculed and shamed? You bet," Hiaasen says. "He deserves to be miserable and wretched and go right off to jail and think about what he's done."

Doug Clifton, who believes Hiaasen's greatest gift is using an "incredible command of the language to translate his raw passion into something that ignites passion in others," maintains that people read Hiaasen to be outraged, to experience the same emotion he directs toward those who have violated the public trust. Such a response in readers, Hiaasen thinks, can help prevent corruption from becoming acceptable. Such passion in Hiaasen himself—outrage composed of disappointment, anger, incredulity, and scorn, always freshly felt—argues that his reputation as a cynic might be based more on his choice of words than on his view of human nature. That he can still be disappointed at all, after having seen and commented on the worst of Miami's graft, suggests in fact an abiding or renewable belief in the possibility of human decency. While his outrage might express a deep sense of betrayal and loss, he refuses, as Jim Savage says, "to be silenced by anybody or anything."