@_FloridaMan Beguiles With the Hapless and Harebrained - The New York Times - 0 views
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His style is deceptively simple. Nearly every Twitter message begins “Florida Man.” What follows, though, is almost always a pile of trouble
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Now I think there are people who actually aspire to Florida Man-ness,” said Dave Barry, who celebrates Florida’s brand of madness in his popular columns and best-selling books. “It’s like the big leagues. It’s the Broadway for idiots.”
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But is the Florida Man who Accidentally Shoots Himself With Stun Gun While Trying to Rob the Radio Shack He Also Works At truly more wacky than, let’s say, an Arkansas Man or New Jersey Man?
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Longtime observers insist that he is.Take the Florida Man whose surgically amputated leg was found in a hospital Dumpster. “The leg has a name on it,” said the best-selling author and Miami Herald columnist Carl Hiaasen, who has wisely peopled his novels with fictitious(ish) Florida Men. “If this is New Jersey, the leg does not have a name on it. In Miami, the leg has a name on it, and it’s the name of the person who owns the leg.”
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“There is always an extra twist of weirdness at the end of the Florida story,” Mr. Hiaasen said. “Weird stories happen everywhere, but they usually come to a logical conclusion. There is always one more shoe that drops in Florida.”
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And there is so much more of it in Florida, he added. “It’s not just shooting fish in a barrel,” Mr. Hiaasen said, “but shooting mutated, deranged, slow-moving fish.”
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why Florida breeds or inspires its own brand of crime and criminals. He said it is partly the polarized nature of the state — very poor to very rich, very liberal to very conservative
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It is partly the state’s cavorting culture — South Beach, spring break, half-naked people, late-night clubs
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And it is partly the legions of immigrants from Cuba, South America, Central America and Haiti who sometimes import their old-country vendettas. “Where else do you get retired torturers from Argentina?”
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California’s kumbaya vibe is absent here, and so is Texas’ ideological fervor. With so many transplants, allegiances lie elsewhere
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“As they say,” Mr. Corben remarked, “Los Angeles is where you go when you want to be somebody. New York is where you go when you are somebody. Miami is where you go when you want to be somebody else.”