Dance of the Reptiles

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

It’s been almost twelve years since
Paradise Screwed
was published as the second collection of Carl Hiaasen’s newspaper columns written for
The Miami Herald
, and almost fifteen years since the first,
Kick Ass
, appeared. Since then, Hiaasen has written some six hundred weekly op-ed columns for the
Herald
, in addition to five novels for adults, a nonfiction book about golf, and four novels for young adults. The first of those,
Hoot
, which launched Hiaasen’s career in that genre, told the story of Mullet Fingers, a boy who relocates surveyors’ stakes to stop an illegally cited development that would destroy the habitat of burrowing owls.
Hoot
won a prestigious Newbery Honor Book award, its plotline mirroring Hiaasen’s own life: He did pull up surveyors’ stakes with his friends in youthful opposition to the paving of Florida.

Over time, much of Hiaasen’s attention has, in fact, been aimed at young people who always inherit a future and who invigorate him with the writing energy he needs to continue railing against the destruction of his beloved state. As Hiaasen says, “I want there to be something wonderful left of Florida for them to see and experience,” perhaps as he himself did when he was just six and his father took him fishing in the Keys for the first time, an adventure recounted in his well-known
essay “The Florida Keys: Something Precious Is Falling Apart.” As he observes, “You stay and fight, because otherwise you’re surrendering.” Such continuity and consistency, essential to Hiaasen as a person and a writer, are clear in this latest collection of columns.

In
Dance of the Reptiles
, Hiaasen resumes his verbal war against greed, corruption, ignorance, and hypocrisy, addressing such issues as hurricanes, offshore drilling, and water, all of which occupy center stage nationally. Devastating storms like Hurricane Sandy, for example, roared across the northern states of New York and New Jersey, capturing national attention; for years, however, Hiaasen has written about massive storms in Florida not only flattening entire communities but also driving up insurance premiums by splintering flimsily constructed homes and flooding coastal properties overbuilt to begin with.

Offshore drilling is another topic Hiaasen tackled almost 30 years ago, his urgent warnings poignant now that British Petroleum’s Deepwater Horizon inevitably blew, spewing some 206 million gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico. In a 1987 column entitled “U.S. Points Out the Bright Side of Oil Spills,” Hiaasen lampooned a government report asserting there was only a 48 percent chance that a major spill would “smear the beaches within 35 years.” The study also claimed that “offshore oil exploration is abundantly safe” and that advanced equipment “should minimize damage to reefs, tidal banks, water quality and marine life.” A fifty-fifty chance for an ecological disaster isn’t so bad, Hiaasen wryly stated, concluding with an invitation to the interior secretary to hurry on down before he had to “tiptoe through the tar balls.”

And, of course, there’s the issue of water. Surrounded on three sides, Florida remains vulnerable to all storms: Hurricanes can rip across oil derricks yet to be built or gas
lines yet to be dug, with the potential for future catastrophe very real—to the coastline, the wildlife, the economy. Any construction in those sensitive waters makes Hiaasen cringe, especially since the state has problems with drinkable water; its supply is drying up. The sustained pollution of wetlands and rivers, which have been drained, paved, or contaminated by runoff and pulp residue—all permitted by questionable legislation—has reduced and diminished Florida. Nature is interconnected, Hiaasen would say, and fragile.

That most of Florida’s concerns have gone national is nowhere more evident than in voting. As Hiaasen says, “The 2000 election … put this country in the hands of the people who invaded Iraq. Those non-existent weapons of mass destruction were this generation’s Gulf of Tonkin’s ruse.” By only 537 certified votes, Bush and Cheney won the election, or so ruled the Supreme Court a month after actual balloting, in “one of the most contorted decisions ever written,” Hiaasen says, with Florida and Secretary of State Katherine Harris, not to mention Palm Beach and its butterfly ballots, leading the way. “Anytime people say their vote won’t matter, I tell them to go to Arlington and look at the thousands of graves of American soldiers who died in Iraq,” Hiaasen says. “That war happened strictly because some impulsive, arrogant and not-very-smart people got into power.”

An entire chapter in
Dance of the Reptiles
, entitled “Shock, Awe, and Swagger,” chronicles the arguments for, as well as the consequences of, so many years invested in the Iraq war, and demonstrates what some consider Hiaasen’s greatest strength as a journalist: He digests facts, presents them accurately and articulately, and draws clear conclusions. You know where Hiaasen stands. Perhaps this advocacy role is what earned him the Damon Runyon Award from the Denver Press Club, the Ernie Pyle Lifetime Achievement
Award from the National Society of Newspaper Columnists, and a place in the anthology
Deadline Artists: America’s Greatest Newspaper Columns
.

At 60, Carl Hiaasen shows no signs of slowing down. As he says, “I haven’t mellowed one little bit. Mellowing would be the worst thing that could happen to a writer like me.” His novels allow him to create an ending that is morally satisfying for a change, though often wickedly funny and delivered with a punch by nature. His weekly newspaper columns allow him the immediacy of addressing issues as they arise, with humor and outrage. In both books and columns, Hiaasen acts as an agent of change; he is a person of integrity, dark irreverent humor, and passionate conviction based on the simple principles of loyalty, decency, and honesty. Always the first principle—and Hiaasen would agree—is one of continuity: As the columns in
Dance of the Reptiles
show, the world must be preserved for our children and theirs—environmentally, politically, geographically, and morally.

Diane Stevenson

Columbia, SC
    

July 2013
         

GO AWAY

May 30, 2001

Haul the Rampaging Nitwits Off to Tourist Court

Florida needs a special prison for tourists.

Not all tourists—just the ones who trash the place, rob, shoplift, vandalize, drive drunk, assault the cops, puke in the alleys, pee in the medians, and so on.

For some reason, Memorial Day brings out these troglodytes in droves.

This year it was South Beach that got the full treatment, but outbreaks of mayhem occur all over the state.

Maybe it’s time to stop worrying about crimes committed against tourists and do something about the crimes committed by tourists.

As it stands, rampaging visitors are tossed in jail with local criminals. This plainly is cruel and unusual punishment, and it’s only a matter of time before the criminals file a class-action suit.

Nobody deserves to be locked in a cell with obnoxious, whiny, ill-clad tourists. Such sociopaths belong in an institution of their own, a mini-Raiford specializing in hard-nosed discipline and social graces.