Florida's got nothing on us for sordid news

by Beth Teitell
Wednesday, May 15, 2002

Has anyone else noticed that it's getting more like Florida around here every day, and I'm not even talking about the balmy winter we had, although of course that's part of it.

There was a time, and it wasn't that long ago, when Florida reigned as the nation's tabloid queen. As a headline on The New York Times Op-Ed page last fall put it, ``Everything Happens To Florida,'' and the accompanying piece listed a few of the hot-button stories the land of neon and palm trees had given the nation: Elian Gonzalez, hanging chads, the first anthrax case, the Lantana airport where Mohamed Atta had rented planes.

``The tourist board used to have a slogan: `Florida - the rules are different here,' '' the piece read. ``It now seems that Florida's karma is to be the omphalos of American weirdness.''

Well, sorry Florida, it's our turn now.

Who's got congressional investigators flying up from D.C. to hold hearings on FBI misconduct? We do! Whose cardinal snuck off to the Vatican to talk about a burgeoning sex scandal? Ours did! Which airport was the shoe bomber's Paris-to-(ahem)-Miami flight diverted to? That would be Logan! Who has its own, real-life Sopranos testifying in federal court? Yours truly!

Quick! Turn on your TV. The Boston police are probably chasing a Kennedy vehicle down the Central Artery right now.

Speaking of Kennedys: Remember when they were practically our only chance at making the tabloids? We used to cling to their every move, laying claim to Kennedys who, if we were frank with ourselves, didn't even really live here. Look how far we've come. A Kennedy (OK, a Kennedy cousin) is on trial for murder in Connecticut and it's just a sideshow.

It's not that we never had scandals before, but in the old days they were respectably spaced. Think of how many years passed between Lizzie Borden and the Boston Strangler and Michael Kennedy's affair with his babysitter. Now the sordid news comes at such a furious clip you can barely sink your teeth into one before another pops up. We go from bad priest to bad FBI agent to bad-girl teen prostitutes.

It's hard to say when Boston began its steep downward ascendancy, but it might have been with the 1997 Louise Woodward trial. A town once known for its universities (even if the two best were in Cambridge), and our funny way of pronouncing ``park the car in Harvard yard,'' took the country by storm as the home of the Killer Nanny. You know you're building a reputation when you've got O.J Simpson's lawyer in your little county courthouse.

After Louise, we were warmed up, I guess, because the soap opera-style news kept on coming. There was Hockey Dad, and Pregnant Jane. Mitt, one of People magazine's Most Beautiful People, returned to run for office, and now I read that Britney Spears wants time with our own Tom Brady, who was dirty dancing recently with Mariah Carey. The West Barnstable summer house of Aerosmith bassist Tom Hamilton burned in a suspicious blaze over the weekend. Last Friday, in the perfect meeting of Boston Boston and Florida Boston, a policeman fired at a fleeing suspect in Copley Square, and one of his bullets ripped through a nearby party tent, narrowly missing several socialites attending the Boston Public Library's annual spring gala.

Looks like the only thing to do now is sit back and wait for the first alligator sighting on Newbury Street.