At least I've got that going for me. Week ending May 30.
By Philip Cardella
May 31, 2025
Introduction
Mary Anna Mancuso, one of the editorial board at the Miami Herald wrote a piece about Florida's patriotism that included the line, "I have found Republicans to be more openly patriotic than Democrats. (Note to those on the left: Feel free to email me to tell me why I’m wrong.)"
In response she invited me to write a letter to the editor, which I did, and the paper published on Wednesday.
So, I've got that going for me.
Also, as a Californian, finding a good taco can be hard in Miami, but Costco has some reasonable ones in a kit. So, I've got that going for me too, which is nice.
A small rant on research assistant software, of all things. It's connected.
As an aside, ever notice how I never include Miami Herald stories in boxes like, for example, what's below?
DAVID FISCHER
That story about the chickens contains no lies, by the way. Every time I go Downtown I shoot (edit: with my camera, Mom) some roosters.
This is because the McClatchy family of papers do something with their URLs that make this not work. It also makes it much harder to "save" their stories in Zotero, "a free, easy-to-use tool to help you collect, organize, annotate, cite, and share research." As a researcher, Zotero is at the heart of everything I do in terms of keeping track of something. Every historian I know uses it. You should too!
Yet the McClatchy papers essentially block it. Why? I mean, seriously, why?
Finite Disappointment
A Tufts University professor and associate dean of International Relations and Law whose writing I really like, Dr. Daniel W. Drezner, wrote last week, "In other words: as someone who is an international relations professor, a university administrator, and a Jew, this week has been a fucking horror show. The news coming out of DC has ranged from mostly awful to truly awful." Regarding the state of higher education he wrote this week (the story is linked near the bottom today), "Impressively, the situation on this front has gotten even worse in the last 24 hours."
I hear you, Dr. Drezner. I hear you.
Um, okaayy...
Jonathan Chait, the guy who wrote a piece called, "Why Liberals Should Support a Trump Republican Nomination" and successfully got liberals to tear into each other over "political correctness" now wants the opposition party to have a "civil war" over...regulations? Here's 4500 words by him misrepresenting Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson's book, Abundance (link to a review that seems to actually represent Klein and Thompson's book– which to be fair, I haven't read), to try and start that civil war or something.
Meanwhile, Democrats are gleefully tearing into each other over something vitally important to the future of America: whether or not the Party tried to cover up that Joe Biden is old.
Dear America, Red, White and Blue, maybe we should focus on things that matter, like our economy, the measles outbreak, an "above average" hurricane season starting, rising antisemitism, the actual bloody civil war in Sudan, the conflict in Gaza, the health of the President, rather than an old retired guy's health or whatever the hell abundance agenda is being pushed by "policy wonks" (Chait's term: read, columnists, not, you know, people actually paid to make policy or even think about it, with the exception of a scholar named Mark Dunkleman)?
Nah.
(for those keeping score, Chait mentions four "policy wonks" in his piece championing "the abundance agenda": Appelbaum "his colleague" is Senior Editor for The Atlantic; Derek Thompson, is a staff writer at The Atlantic and creator of the term abundance agenda; Mark Dunkleman, a professor at Brown who has written for The Atlantic and whose book's big blurb is by Matt Yglesias, writer for the Atlantic and good friend of Ezra Klein; Ezra Klein, a columnist and former editor of Vox, with a BA in political science, former "Blogger of the Year" and spouse of economic policy reporter Annie Lowrey of...wait for it The Atlantic).
This appears to be The Atlantic creating a controversy to sell books about an idea they created without acknowledging almost everyone talking about it...works for The Atlantic.
The more I dug into this the madder I got until ... BOOM! Rant.
tl;dr **** Jonathan Chait. And probably The Atlantic too. This is unethical journalism.
Philip Cardella
Historic Interlude
May 30, 1925 Candidate for Governor Talks Here (Miami)
I wanted something more, I don't know, whimsical, so I randomly picked a year, 1924, and looked at the front pages of The Miami Herald from 101 years ago. Fittingly (see below), a candidate for governor spoke here that week too. In this case it was John W. Martin of Jacksonville. Martin would go on to become the 24th governor of Florida in January of 1925.
Martin would be in the Governor's Mansion for two massive hurricanes, the 1926 Miami and 1928 Okeechobee hurricanes, and for the economic collapse of Florida's real estate market in 1926 (that's a theme here) that contributed mightily to the start of the Great Depression (Florida causing global economic meltdown via shady real estate oversight is a theme too).
Is it happening again?
Giulia Carbonaro
Note the other article from 1924 talking about Miami's population. Jacksonville, where that future Governor was from (and had been the mayor of) had 91,558 people in 1920 (79th in United States--New York City had 5,620,048 in 1920), compared to Miami's 59,410 (South Bend, IN, was the 100th ranked city by population in 1920 with a population of 70,983), making Jacksonville the most populous city in the state. By 1930 Jacksonville was still the largest city in Florida with 129,549 people but Miami had jumped to 110,637 that year and would be in a dead heat with Jacksonville by 1940, with both cities at just over 170,000. By 1950, with almost 250,000 residents, Miami had surged past Jacksonville by 45,000 residents.
What happened? Two world wars injected humans and industry into South Florida and that industry generated the most important invention to ever come to South Florida–after the Cuban Sandwich, of course–air conditioning.
Fun fact, today, Jacksonville has double the residents of Miami, with Jacksonville nearly topping 1,000,000 in the city proper and Miami having "only" about 455,000. Interestingly, while Jacksonville makes up the vast majority of Duval County's 1,000,000 residents, Miami is but one of 34 municipalities home to 2,700,000 people in Miami-Dade County. Today, Miami-Dade County is the 7th most populated county in the United States.
Infinite Hope
David Jolly Town Hall
On Sunday, May 25, former Republican House member and former candidate for US Senate, David Jolly, (almost) announced he was running for Governor of Florida as a Democrat. His was a message of hope to a packed house in Coral Gables.
"If we get into this governor's race, the first thing I'm going to ask you is to believe, to believe, to believe that as a coalition we can lead change in the, in the state of Florida," he told the crowd gathered by the Coral Gables Democratic Club at Coral Gables Congregational United Church of Christ and moderated by Books and Books Mitchell Kaplan.
The crowd erupted in cheers.
I wrote a piece on it, which you can find in my "special coverage section."
Philip Cardella
Or if you want a two minute audio sample with photos you can check this out.
And the Miami Herald published this piece on it as well. I'd give them the same type of pretty box I gave myself, but, alas, for reasons mentioned above, unlike The Guardian, The Associated Press, The Miami New Times and scores of other papers, I cannot.
B. Scott McLendon
Interfaith Breakfast
The Miami-Dade Democratic Party hosted an interfaith breakfast this week. The event was a beautiful representation of Miami-Dade County, with people coming from all over the county to gather together in Coral Gables.
Pastors from Miami-Dade County as well as a rabbi and the leader of the Muslim school in the county all gave invocations. The headline speaker was a former United States Ambassador to Tanzania, the Rev. Charles R. Stith.
By this point, you know how I roll. I love interfaith celebrations. I love community events that bring the whole community together.
Ambassador Stith's message was about the importance of listening to our neighbors, particularly the tens of millions who have had it awful since, as he put it late 2001 when the economy nose dived.
Various photos from the event. Copyright Philip Cardella 2025.
Bear the History Hound Finds
Books
Last week, I posted about Florida champion of Civil Rights and Education, the Legend, Mary McLeod Bethune. Bear pointed out to me that I should have mentioned a great book that talks about Bethune's role in the Civil Rights movement, but also many other Black women, Vanguard, by Martha S. Jones.
If you want a used copy, make sure you go to biblio.com, the place I start for any search for a book. Abe books– that's owned by Amazon, by the way.
If you want to pay full price but want to support local bookstores, either go to your local bookstore (Books and Books for South Floridians, y'all!) or go to Indiebound to support local independent booksellers.
Stories Bear dug this week
About History (he is the History Hound, after all)
Made by History
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The piece below might be required reading in future Historical Methods classes at universities, somewhere. It's not really about the President, it's about, well, historical methods.
James T. Kloppenberg
About the Academy
Daniel W. Drezner
Liz Dye
About Nature
Photograph: Gaby Oráa/Reuters
President Bush thinks tacos rule.
Don't forget to check out the P and A page for regular updates (Protests and Actions)! There was another this week.
Philip Cardella